Poetry in Motion: James Yékú + A Phial of Passing Memories

A Phial of Passing Memories is a literary archive of journeys, passages through the many seasons of life, and the different geographies that delineate them. With travel, both physical and symbolic, central to framing connections with the world and its daily turns and thrills, my poetic style draws from a conception of movement that values the unfolding of ideas, life’s shifting spells, and the unfurling of the many layers of growth and transitions. I began writing the collection in Lawrence, a college town in Kansas, where I teach digital cultures and literary studies, but I had to travel to Berlin at some point, completing it under the intense gaze of the city’s many striking contrasts. Spending a year in Europe afforded me a rare opportunity to travel around some other iconic cities and cultural hubs, including Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Prague. My experience of travelling and walking through different places in these cities, as well as becoming a father again, significantly contours this work. The intimacies of the times and places I encountered are woven into poems that challenge the imagination while offering a lyricism of the quotidian that animates the passing and the abiding.

James reads from A Phial of Passing Memories