Alien of Extraordinary Ability: Poems

By Tarfia Faizullah

Fulbright fellow and three-time Pushcart Prize winner Tarfia Faizullah fantasizes a future free of colonization in her third poetry collection.

In Alien of Extraordinary Ability, Faizullah is compelled back into the past where her Bangladeshi parents are falling in love in New York as their homeland fights for freedom while looking toward their own future as parents against the backdrop of American policy changes in immigration. The speaker longs for a love and a home of her own--basic longings complicated by concerns of displacement, migration, and state violence.

These poems question the nature of love, and strive to honor and memorialize the beloveds already in Faizullah's life: friends, family, artists, and art forms. She asks, "What is the cost of being high-achieving--exceptional, even--in a colonized world?"

Formally, Faizullah employs the sonnet, found forms, erasure, a word bank compiled only of words from the Immigration Act of 1965, and poems written within the confines of bureaucratic documents including the Alien of Extraordinary Ability visa application form.

In Alien of Extraordinary Ability Faizullah excavates and attaches love for her own personal archive to the larger archive of Bangladeshi people whose histories and personal narratives are often obscured and overlooked by the bureaucracy and erasure of migration.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HB9LP5TJ
• ISBN13: 9798888909775
• Release Date: April 2027
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Length: 80 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 2.0" x 6.0"