No Known God

Marjorie Lotfi’s No Known God asks ‘What is home if not the choice – over and over again – to stay?’ Flitting between four generations of family in Ohio, Tehran and Scotland, her second collection expands upon the final question posed by her first, The Wrong Person to Ask. Her intimate poems consider parenting, children leaving home and her parents growing old in another country, while she is marked as a stranger in her own. Written at a time of continuing conflict between Iran and the US, her intimate poems consider the losses of dislocation and resettlement alongside the subtleties of continued heritage, asking what the body remembers when the mind and tongue do not. No Known God is Marjorie Lotfi’s second collection, following her acclaimed debut, The Wrong Person to Ask, winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2021 and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2024, also a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, which was shortlisted for Poetry Book of the Year (Saltire Book Awards 2024) in Scotland and longlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2025.