The Smell of Friends

Friendships deserve praise songs, and here’s a praise song — an ode — to friends that have crossed continents for each other, and would go further if needed.

Sudanese by way of D.C., Safia Elhillo is the author of Girls That Never Die, The January Children, and Home Is Not a Country, and is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, the Arab American Book Award, and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, she is also the recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation. Her work has appeared in Poetry magazine, The Atlantic, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, among others.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Safia Elhillo’s poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.