Birds I Cannot Name

Part ritual, part reclaiming of self, the poems in Birds I Cannot Name offer up a chorus of voices in sometimes discordant harmony. Beginning in the Oklahoma Ozarks and migrating toward the Pacific Northwest, this debut collection sings with reverence for the natural world while reckoning with the limits of human community. Damien Uriah crafts a vision of a landscape rooted in liminal spaces that feels deeply mysterious yet mystically familiar.

Damien Uriah is a poet, teacher, regenerative farmer, and musician. Their work can be found in Cimarron Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Thrush, Heron Tree, About Place Journal, and many other publications. Damien grew up on the Cherokee Nation side of the Ozark mountains and has lived, written, and worked in various places, including in their second land-love, the Pacific Northwest. Currently a professor of writing at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, Damien lives with his wife and many plants and animals on a small eco-farm near his childhood home in northeastern Oklahoma.