'I was made in Kumasi, Ghana,' writes the poet. And indeed, Ghana is a durable touchstone in the metamorphic landscapes of these remarkable poems, where we are as likely to encounter a snowstorm in Manhattan or a garden in New Mexico as a barbershop in Accra, where a Pentecostal baptism and the memory of a childhood beating can structure generations of familial narrative. Gyamfi is a poet of rare mythic abundance; his imagination seems to have no limits." -Linda Gregerson, author of Canopy

"The imaginative force behind Brian Gyamfi’s What God in the Kingdom of Bastards is raw and electric, fusing myth, memory, theology, and sexuality with fearless originality. Gyamfi reshapes biblical and diasporic mythologies with irreverent reverence—sacred cosmology meets visceral absurdity. Here, faith becomes dance, disruption, and wound; theory becomes flesh. Grief, masculinity, and mental illness unfold through intimate, bodily metaphors: ‘Jesus at McDonalds,’ boys baptized in creeks, the smell of oranges in a casket. This is a breathtaking debut, a dizzily exhilarating and boundary-breaking poetics—at once grounded in dirt and soaring into the dream depths of mythology." - Khaled Mattawa, author of Fugitive Atlas

“These are poems possessed by influence—the shades of elders, both familial and literary, the spirits of language and history and home—but from these ghostly voices, Gyamfi has forged an oracular style all his own: searching, restless, and utterly radiant. What God in the Kingdom of Bastards is a stunning, searing debut.” —Peter Ho Davies, author A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself 

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• Feature at AWP 2026