The Choreic Period: Poems

by Latif Askia Ba

A ground-breaking collection of poems exploring disability, syntax, and rhythm from a Brooklyn-based Senegalese American writer with cerebral palsy. 

Latif Askia Ba—an acclaimed poet with Choreic Cerebral Palsy—honors all the things that arise from our unique choreographies. Meeting each reader with corporeal generosity, these poems create space to practice a radical reclamation of movement and the body. Together. In dialogue. In disability. At the bodega, in the examination room, on the move. “This way. My body looks like a dancing tattoo.” Here, the drum of the body punctuates thought in unexpected and invigorating time signatures.

These poems are percussive and syncopated, utilizing a polylingual braid of French, Spanish, Jamaican, Fulani, and Wolof, reminding the Anglophone  “I am not here to accommodate you.” Because these poems are not so much for you as they are with you, an accompaniment rather than an accommodation, something to be rather than something to own.

With startling nuance, The Choreic Period encourages us to “relinquish the things that we have. And mark the thing that we do,” all to see and sing the vital “thing that we be.”

Genres: Poetry, Disability

96 pages, Paperback

Published January 21, 2025

Reviews

[Lauren Oertel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is a brilliant demonstration of the power of punctuation. The poems sizzle with energy and I loved the access into a glimpse of this particular disability through the use of strong narrative, tension, and manipulation of cadence through surprising punctuation choices.

I’ve never read anything like it, and it’s a thrill to find such a unique approach.

Some of my favorite lines include:

“I put a period in the middle of your disability. So that now. When I breathe / you. Are trapped in my breath.

“The poem is a filtration mechanism. Into which I shove my head. And scream”

“My body was a crisis. Then an enigma. Then a liability. Now a brief encyclopedia.”

I highly recommend this poetry collection by a poet more readers need to know.

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. This is a genuinely excellent poetry collection about disability that plays with language and punctuation (periods). Intertwining syntax with the disabled experience? Genius and daringly unique. Latif Askia Ba has officially won me over as a new fan. Thank you to Milkweed Editions for the advanced copy of The Choreic Period! Out January 2025!

[Annette Boehm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've not yet finished reading, but I already like this book a lot. Ba's idisyncratic use of syntax and punctuation (the period, mainly) echo the rhythms of his body and his speech. Ba writes with tenderness and humor about his daily life, his loved ones, his disability. If you're on the fence on whether to read this book, look him up online - he has some wonderful poems at the Poetry Foundation website, complete with audio. Highly recommended.

[Sylvia Grey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the whole world

[Made Linear · Rating 4 out of 5]

fucking incredible poetry is alive again

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is genius