The Self is an Ocean
"Cypher’s debut full-length poetry collection - The Self is an Ocean - is a poetic memoir rich with cultural commentary. Through striking metaphors and images, paired with a deeply musical writing style, this visceral collection delves into complex trauma, mental illness, womanhood, queerness, religion, culture, grief, and the search for meaning. Each poem here promises to crawl beneath the reader’s skin and unfold from the inside out.”
“Cypher’s poems are shaped with an expertise around form, integrating playfulness into formality, which cultivates an inviting vibrancy for readers to come alive in. The scenes we enter through each poem are visceral; bursting with color, shape, touch, scent, music, and light, even as we approach spirits, death, loss, and phantoms. In short, it is an exquisite ode to the embodiment of the unembodied, to wholeness that is fought for, and to survival and humanity despite it all.”
- Devaki D. Devi, author of Earth & Earth-like Planets (Abode Press)
Hi! I’m Cypher
I am a self-taught and community-taught brown, queer, and working-class Tamizh diaspora writer in Canada.
My debut full-length poetry collection, The Self is an Ocean,is out now!
Thank you for stopping by <3