Katabasis by Jay G Ying

Winner of the 2019 New Poets Prize judged by Mary Jean Chan

‘Katabasis’ means a descent, the sinking of the winds or sun, a military retreat, a trip down into the underworld. This mythopoetic and experimental sequence of poems, texts and translations links the ancient Sumerian epic ’The Descent of Inanna’ to contemporary neo-colonial violences as a consequence of military occupation.