The Gathering of Bastards

Winner of the 2023 Julie Suk Award Winner of the 2024 Nebraska Book Award Finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award  Finalist for the 2024 Midwest Book Award Finalist for the 2025 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Shortlisted for the 2024 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry Like I knew, standing on the seashore, the hunger wracking a migrant’s body is movement. -from Romeo Oriogun’s “Migrant by the Sea” The Gathering of Bastards chronicles the movement of migrants as they navigate borders both internal and external. At the heart of these poems of vulnerability and sharp intelligence, the poet himself is the perpetual migrant embarked on forced journeys that take him across nations in West and North Africa, through Europe, and through American cities as he navigates the challenges of living through terror and loss and wrestles with the meaning of home.