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Another Way to Split Water
LONGLISTED 2023 JHALAK PRIZE
LONGLISTED 2023 GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD
LONGLISTED 2023 RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD
2022 POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION
WINNER OF THE 2020 YESYES PAMET RIVER PRIZE
In Alycia Pirmohamed’s debut collection, Another Way to Split Water, a woman’s body expands and contracts across the page, fog uncoils at the fringes of a forest, and water in all its forms cascades into metaphors of longing and separation just as often as it signals inheritance, revival, and recuperation. Language unfolds into unforgettable and arresting imagery, offering a map toward self-understanding that is deeply rooted in place: the prairies and mountains of Alberta, Canada, the hills and gardens of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the coastlines of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. These poems are a lyrical exploration of how ancestral memory reforms and transforms throughout generations, through stories told and retold, imagined and reimagined. It is a meditation on womanhood, belonging, faith, intimacy, and the natural world.
LONGLISTED 2023 GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD
LONGLISTED 2023 RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD
2022 POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION
WINNER OF THE 2020 YESYES PAMET RIVER PRIZE
In Alycia Pirmohamed’s debut collection, Another Way to Split Water, a woman’s body expands and contracts across the page, fog uncoils at the fringes of a forest, and water in all its forms cascades into metaphors of longing and separation just as often as it signals inheritance, revival, and recuperation. Language unfolds into unforgettable and arresting imagery, offering a map toward self-understanding that is deeply rooted in place: the prairies and mountains of Alberta, Canada, the hills and gardens of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the coastlines of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. These poems are a lyrical exploration of how ancestral memory reforms and transforms throughout generations, through stories told and retold, imagined and reimagined. It is a meditation on womanhood, belonging, faith, intimacy, and the natural world.
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
96 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2022
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259 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 30, 2022
I had the honour of blurbing Alycia's debut collection:
This is how Another Way to Split Water moves, wending through ossuaries and great plains, making oxbow lakes of prayers and their origins, bifurcating desire and discovery til each word holds its own river. You will want to map the navigations of these poems. You will be compelled to orbit their magnetic and inimitable oscillations. Ravenous, I reach for the depths Pirmohamed has herein abseiled.
Please, live with Alycia's work. Buy this debut. Breathe it in.
This is how Another Way to Split Water moves, wending through ossuaries and great plains, making oxbow lakes of prayers and their origins, bifurcating desire and discovery til each word holds its own river. You will want to map the navigations of these poems. You will be compelled to orbit their magnetic and inimitable oscillations. Ravenous, I reach for the depths Pirmohamed has herein abseiled.
Please, live with Alycia's work. Buy this debut. Breathe it in.
August 23, 2022
Pirmohamed's work is a river. Her words flow, though never lost to sea: there is direction, sometimes circular, permeating borders and landscapes, until you wonder if such a thing as borders or landscapes exist. 'Another Way to Split Water' contains all the stories that ever have or ever will inhabit a body "rivering between young girl and womanhood", as told in Pirmohamed's poem 'Welcome'. There is a lived intimacy to the collection, with poems like 'Hinge' reaching out to the reader:
'I stoop into my longings, plot a seed in every corner. Last week
I titled another page within my body
and surrendered every bending, spitting line of myself
to the making.'
I am lucky to know the poet and am luckier still that, even if I did not, I could find this work and a little of her in it. The rich descriptors, lush settings and gentle questioning around self, belonging (and even belonging to oneself) is rich, addictive and demonstrates considerable craft.
'I stoop into my longings, plot a seed in every corner. Last week
I titled another page within my body
and surrendered every bending, spitting line of myself
to the making.'
I am lucky to know the poet and am luckier still that, even if I did not, I could find this work and a little of her in it. The rich descriptors, lush settings and gentle questioning around self, belonging (and even belonging to oneself) is rich, addictive and demonstrates considerable craft.
September 15, 2022
These poems move through you, like a susurration, a prayer, like water softening stone. A beautiful debut collection from Pirmohamed exploring self, home, the natural world and family ties that bind and break.
This is a stunning collection of poems that also address language and religion and the way both can often reveal and conceal our place in the world.
This is a stunning collection of poems that also address language and religion and the way both can often reveal and conceal our place in the world.
January 31, 2024
Some beautiful, haunting and evocative lines in this poetry book, with an insight into a culture that is so different to my own. I didn't adore it though, just because it often wasn't clear what the poet was getting out without an enormous study, and it used a lot of esoteric words that the layman wouldn't naturally know. It felt a bit too literary for enjoyment in places, but it was good overall.
August 23, 2023
...because it is true
that we are portraits born
already holding the things we love.
Another Way to Split Water is Alycia Pirmohamed's debut collection, which we're told has been created over a number of years, which the long list of 'previously published in' poems at the books end seems to indicate is true.
It's is a collection that captures the fluid nature of the poet - of human beings. That question of whether the person we are now is the same person we were when we were children. The foggy, fluid nature of personality when dealing with a changing world. It also captures how our identities change through generations. How we are made up of the places our parents come from, the places we live and work, the stories we tell and are told, our dreams and our imagination.
And all along, there was also this - every poem filled
with shades of you,
even this ode to spring.
It is bulwarked with the use of nature - trees, birds, elks, deer etc - to illustrate the collection's various themes, which include faith, grief, belonging, location, migration, and love. Pirmohamed's use of her Islamic faith within the poetry reminded me - perhaps lazily - of Rumi. She isn't as ecstatic as Rumi can be but God is there.
She also uses the topography of the page well. Not just relying on the boring layout. There are columns, crossings out, diagonals, uneven lines etc, which seem natural rather than tediously affected.
I really liked it. I got my copy via Libby but I think I'd like to own a copy.
that we are portraits born
already holding the things we love.
Another Way to Split Water is Alycia Pirmohamed's debut collection, which we're told has been created over a number of years, which the long list of 'previously published in' poems at the books end seems to indicate is true.
It's is a collection that captures the fluid nature of the poet - of human beings. That question of whether the person we are now is the same person we were when we were children. The foggy, fluid nature of personality when dealing with a changing world. It also captures how our identities change through generations. How we are made up of the places our parents come from, the places we live and work, the stories we tell and are told, our dreams and our imagination.
And all along, there was also this - every poem filled
with shades of you,
even this ode to spring.
It is bulwarked with the use of nature - trees, birds, elks, deer etc - to illustrate the collection's various themes, which include faith, grief, belonging, location, migration, and love. Pirmohamed's use of her Islamic faith within the poetry reminded me - perhaps lazily - of Rumi. She isn't as ecstatic as Rumi can be but God is there.
She also uses the topography of the page well. Not just relying on the boring layout. There are columns, crossings out, diagonals, uneven lines etc, which seem natural rather than tediously affected.
I really liked it. I got my copy via Libby but I think I'd like to own a copy.
January 1, 2025
Immersive and enchanting. Alycia has such a beautiful gift.
December 17, 2023
3.5 stars
June 1, 2024
After The House of Wisdom
Once, there was a version of this river
overwhelmed with first translations.
A river shaped like the philosopher's memory.
Origins are also small memories
and there is an ethics to remembering -
I hear lilting from below the evening green
that houses our episodic ghosts.
Why is it that water edges into every
paragraph - every lexical formation?
Perhaps it is the other way around, small
rivers uncoiling into ink on this version
of my eyes. So, I rinse in a bath of citations,
feeling as human as the rest of them,
unfolding my spine in one long extended verse.
Yes, like I am someone's past, spilling out rust
onto palms, reading the wounds of the land -
like I am pouring out into a dream,
into a basin of dark peaks, into another's
history. Yes, I desire knowledge,
whether physical or moral or spiritual.
This kind of longing is a pattern embossed
on my skin. And each of my faces remember
their very first reflection ::
I am doubled. This language doubles me. (16)
from You Know It But It Don't Know You
:: The past streams from a pitcher like thirst
into the present tense
:: She is made in his image therefore she is
counter-memory [...]
:: She is made in his image therefore she is
a sieve
:: Inevitably the future sifts through (37)
Welcome
And on the other side? Birch:
So much of it that you'd think in this case, a group of trees must
also be called a herd (49)
Elegy with Two Elk and A Compass
In Jasper, Alberta, I pass through the widowed poplars.
Evening hikes up its dark hems, trees begin howling their elegies,
when loosened from the thicket, two elk walk into my gaze.
Here, in the gap between needle point and destination,
there is an unkind earth that persists even as loss petals down
leaving the poplars bare. Earlier that day, I crossed
the forest’s bridges and stepped beyond its corridors.
I longed to find the hidden trail that led to the valley of roses.
From the elk I am expecting a lesson, as if Allah has approached me
in the shape of a compass built from antler and vine.
Their muscles tense. One rises into a gallop, widening the field.
Its legs seize with strength and I remain in the space left behind:
the sudden nakedness of a northern forest - I am unable to follow.
The elk, in their way, have mastered living by mastering letting go. (76)
Once, there was a version of this river
overwhelmed with first translations.
A river shaped like the philosopher's memory.
Origins are also small memories
and there is an ethics to remembering -
I hear lilting from below the evening green
that houses our episodic ghosts.
Why is it that water edges into every
paragraph - every lexical formation?
Perhaps it is the other way around, small
rivers uncoiling into ink on this version
of my eyes. So, I rinse in a bath of citations,
feeling as human as the rest of them,
unfolding my spine in one long extended verse.
Yes, like I am someone's past, spilling out rust
onto palms, reading the wounds of the land -
like I am pouring out into a dream,
into a basin of dark peaks, into another's
history. Yes, I desire knowledge,
whether physical or moral or spiritual.
This kind of longing is a pattern embossed
on my skin. And each of my faces remember
their very first reflection ::
I am doubled. This language doubles me. (16)
from You Know It But It Don't Know You
:: The past streams from a pitcher like thirst
into the present tense
:: She is made in his image therefore she is
counter-memory [...]
:: She is made in his image therefore she is
a sieve
:: Inevitably the future sifts through (37)
Welcome
And on the other side? Birch:
So much of it that you'd think in this case, a group of trees must
also be called a herd (49)
Elegy with Two Elk and A Compass
In Jasper, Alberta, I pass through the widowed poplars.
Evening hikes up its dark hems, trees begin howling their elegies,
when loosened from the thicket, two elk walk into my gaze.
Here, in the gap between needle point and destination,
there is an unkind earth that persists even as loss petals down
leaving the poplars bare. Earlier that day, I crossed
the forest’s bridges and stepped beyond its corridors.
I longed to find the hidden trail that led to the valley of roses.
From the elk I am expecting a lesson, as if Allah has approached me
in the shape of a compass built from antler and vine.
Their muscles tense. One rises into a gallop, widening the field.
Its legs seize with strength and I remain in the space left behind:
the sudden nakedness of a northern forest - I am unable to follow.
The elk, in their way, have mastered living by mastering letting go. (76)
June 5, 2023
‘and she imagines this country unwithers,
becomes a different land,
where her body is shaped like the river
and the river
is shaped like belonging.’
✨✨✨✨
Another Way to Split Water is a lyrical poetry collection teeming with intricate language and arresting imagery. The heart of the collection is formed by Alycia Pirmohamed’s experimentation with metaphors of the natural world, as she navigates readers across the pages through motifs of cascading and flowing rivers and oceans to explore themes of longing and separation, fragile borders, ancestral memory, faith and womanhood.
Although each page is charged with lush and mesmerising descriptions of landscapes and memory, Pirmohamed’s poems are often heavily abstract and sometimes take on a surreal quality, which is why much of the depth and meaning behind poems in the first part of the collection mostly flew over my head. I think, therefore, it would be a collection better appreciated by those readers with a deeper and broader understanding of poetry.
Nonetheless, my connection to the poems really opened in the second part of the collection – perhaps because Pirmohamed seemed to write more sharply on themes I find myself frequently drawn to in literature - as I really enjoyed the way she so beautifully approached her own connection to faith and Islamic forms of worship, and how this has been shaped by traits passed down through generations of her family and the various lands she has lived in.
becomes a different land,
where her body is shaped like the river
and the river
is shaped like belonging.’
✨✨✨✨
Another Way to Split Water is a lyrical poetry collection teeming with intricate language and arresting imagery. The heart of the collection is formed by Alycia Pirmohamed’s experimentation with metaphors of the natural world, as she navigates readers across the pages through motifs of cascading and flowing rivers and oceans to explore themes of longing and separation, fragile borders, ancestral memory, faith and womanhood.
Although each page is charged with lush and mesmerising descriptions of landscapes and memory, Pirmohamed’s poems are often heavily abstract and sometimes take on a surreal quality, which is why much of the depth and meaning behind poems in the first part of the collection mostly flew over my head. I think, therefore, it would be a collection better appreciated by those readers with a deeper and broader understanding of poetry.
Nonetheless, my connection to the poems really opened in the second part of the collection – perhaps because Pirmohamed seemed to write more sharply on themes I find myself frequently drawn to in literature - as I really enjoyed the way she so beautifully approached her own connection to faith and Islamic forms of worship, and how this has been shaped by traits passed down through generations of her family and the various lands she has lived in.
Read
July 28, 2024A collection of poetry exploring the complexities of multi-cultural identity, heritage, belonging and womanhood.
I enjoyed all the water-related imagery, but many of the references to faith and Canadian nature and landscapes went over my head. Unfortunately poetry tends to fall a bit flat when you’re missing a lot of the reference points, but obviously that doesn’t mean it’s bad poetry. Just that it wasn’t quite poetry for me, which is a shame as I really expected this collection to resonate.
June 29, 2023
Sadly did not really enjoy most of these poems. Several lines were gorgeous but to me they were lost within poems of mediocrity. My favourite poem that had great lines and a great overall poem was Avian Circulatory System.
Themes of being a woman, being a girl, coming of age, being a daughter, nature, water, elk, birds, religion, Allah, belonging, inheritance, memory and alienation. The themes are spot on and several images are beautiful but failed to come together for me.
Themes of being a woman, being a girl, coming of age, being a daughter, nature, water, elk, birds, religion, Allah, belonging, inheritance, memory and alienation. The themes are spot on and several images are beautiful but failed to come together for me.
October 19, 2022
A beautiful, reflective and vivid collection from Alycia Pirmohamed that touches on family, heritage and religion.
“In the blood of every migrant
there is a map pointing home this body
is an ode to the scattered landscapes
that have marbled my neck
with dark
hairs and sharp coarse
longings.”
“In the blood of every migrant
there is a map pointing home this body
is an ode to the scattered landscapes
that have marbled my neck
with dark
hairs and sharp coarse
longings.”
November 8, 2023
"This body unravels its cacophony across time, country, would the great sea"(39)
I thought these poems were great and well written. I thought it had great emotions and flow. I liked the different poem styles throughout.
This book was a quick read, as I read it in about an hour.
I would recommend this book to anyone into poetry.
I thought these poems were great and well written. I thought it had great emotions and flow. I liked the different poem styles throughout.
This book was a quick read, as I read it in about an hour.
I would recommend this book to anyone into poetry.
February 8, 2025
Stunning, careful prose that investigates and mimics water on many levels. I really enjoyed this book, and the invitation to be with water that it generously offers. I also love the swim practice behind the pages—Alycia makes a poetic practice of going for swims all over the world, documenting the swim and writing about it. Viva la poesía!!! <3
March 9, 2024
Took my time with this collection and it was so lovely reading a few of these poems every day. Beautiful imagery and incredibly lyricism - I loaned this from the library but will be on the hunt for my own copy!
April 5, 2024
“In the middle of the night, I walk right into my dreams
and cluster with the other lost sisters of the moon”
“I’ll split into myth
And pass through the mouths of a hundred generations.
I am woman after woman after spooling
Woman, ensorcelled by water”
and cluster with the other lost sisters of the moon”
“I’ll split into myth
And pass through the mouths of a hundred generations.
I am woman after woman after spooling
Woman, ensorcelled by water”
October 23, 2022
‘From you I was born/ my body an isosceles triangle/ with two equal sides/ of longing’
Gorgeous collection.
Gorgeous collection.
November 10, 2022
some of the best use of form and shape I've read!! loved the simple delights and everyday discovery in this book
November 14, 2022
absolutely loved this so writing to remind myself to reread !!
November 27, 2022
A deft collection exploring the landscapes of memories, examining the flora/fauna of identity closely. Poems permeating the reader like a mist, going through them like a river.
March 29, 2023
Devoured in one sitting and highlighted so many images and lines. A masterpiece!
October 6, 2023
Evocative debut collection. Authentic & sacred. Inspiring.
June 5, 2023
Alycia doesn’t have one bad poem and this is the truth !
September 26, 2025
from "Another Last Prayer": "Prayer like bees in my mouth."
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews