Making use of water: Safia Elhillo’s diasporic hydropoetics

Abstract

Abstract This article engages with multivalent ways in which Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo employs water in her poetry. I argue that studying Elhillo’s use of water imagery and settings in her work offers valuable insights into her intertextual and metatextual poetic method, as well as her thematic concerns with identity, “race,” gender and migration. Her poems with oceanic settings resurface historical traumas associated with slavery, while other poems explore more recent oppressions, such as the flooding of Nubian people’s lands during the building of the Aswan Dam. Water is also used as a metaphor for the loss of language or blurring of identity entailed by migration. Furthermore, Elhillo’s participation in multimodality through creative YouTube videos contributes additional layers to the meanings of water in her work. Comparisons are made throughout the article with poets such as Warsan Shire and Koleka Putuma, underscoring Elhillo’s participation in a wider milieu of contemporary African women poets.