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Elsewhere: An Elegy is now out from Next Page Press! (The cover features my painting, "My Father's Songs.") To order a copy, please do so directly from the publisher.
Elsewhere: An Elegy meditates on the complexities of loss, on how private and everlasting the weight of grief can be. Moving between short fragmented “answers” to the same lingering question, deconstructed haibun, and dream sequences, the speaker in Elsewhere: An Elegy cannot but help see himself as his own father, and his infant son as his own young self. He admits, “I’ve still not divined / how to unhusk this steadfast / grief from my poems.” Ultimately, he comes to recognize that the most healing way to grieve is to give, is to translate loss into generosity, pain into poetry. 
Read Faisal's poem "Allah Castles" from the May 2021 issue of Poetry. And listen to The Poetry Magazine Podcast where Faisal and Ashley M. Jones talk about faith, teaching, race, human connection, authenticity, seeing and honoring others, and the place of poetry in our lives.
Listen to Faisal's poem "Prayer" featured on the "A Poem for Ritual and Reset" episode of Poetry Unbound, a podcast hosted by poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama and produced by The On Being Project.
Watch Faisal on Ours Poetica, a new program on YouTube that "captures the intimate experience of holding a poem in your hands and listening as it's read by poets, writers, artists, and sometimes unexpected--yet familiar--voices. Brought to you by Complexly, the Poetry Foundation, and poet Paige Lewis. Uploading every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday."
FAISAL MOHYUDDIN is a writer, artist, and educator. The child of immigrants from Pakistan, he is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy (forthcoming spring 2024 from Next Page Press) and of The Displaced Children of Displaced Children, (Eyewear, 2018), which won the 2017 Sexton Prize in Poetry, and was selected as a 2018 Summer Recommendation of the Poetry Book Society and named a "highly commended" collection of the year by the Forward Arts Foundation; it went on to receive an Honorable Mention in the Association of Asian American Studies 2020 Book Award for Poetry. Faisal is also the author of the chapbook The Riddle of Longing (Backbone Press, 2017). His work has received Prairie Schooner's Edward Stanley Award, a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize from the Illinois State Library, and an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. His recent work appears in Poetry Magazine, Poet Lore, Kweli, The Margins, Pleiades, Chicago Quarterly Review, and RHINO. An alumnus of the U.S. Department of State's Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms program, Faisal is a graduate of Carleton College, Northwestern University, and Columbia College Chicago. An educator adviser and master practitioner for the global-not-for-profit Narrative 4, he teaches high school English in suburban Chicago and creative writing at the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern University. (Author photo by Wendy Alas / @wendyalasphotography)
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2017 Sexton Prize in Poetry | Judged by Kimiko Hahn
2018 Summer Recommendation | Poetry Book Society "Highly Commended" | Forward Arts Foundation Honorable Mention | Association of Asian American Studies, Book Award for Poetry, 2020 ORDER NOW: From your local independent bookstore. In the Chicago area, I recommend:
(signed copies available upon request) Read the opening poem and the story behind it: (courtesy of the Missouri Review)
"Dua for America" (ink on paper, 2020) by Faisal Mohyuddin
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