Calling a Wolf a Wolf

2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Gold Winner

2018 Levis Reading Prize Winner

2017 Julie Suk Award Winner

A 2017 Nautilus Silver Award Winner

2017 Florida Book Award Gold Winner

A 2018 First Horizon Award Winner

Winner of the 2017 John C. Zacharis First Book Award

A 2018 Montaigne Medal Finalist

A 2017 NPR Best Book of the Year

A 2017 Library Journal Best Book of the Year

A 2017 Entropy Magazine Best Book of the Year

A 2017 The Coil Best Book of the Year

A 2017 Interview Best Book of the Year

Addiction. Recovery. Repeat. Akbar blazes the poetry scene with this introspective, powerful, and passionate debut.

This highly-anticipated debut boldly confronts addiction and courses the strenuous path of recovery, beginning in the wilds of the mind. Poems confront craving, control, the constant battle of alcoholism and sobriety, and the questioning of the self and its instincts within the context of this never-ending fight.

from "Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before"

Sometimes you just have to leave

whatever's real to you, you have to clomp

through fields and kick the caps off

all the toadstools. Sometimes

you have to march all the way to Galilee

or the literal foot of God himself before you realize

you've already passed the place where

you were supposed to die. I can no longer remember

the being afraid, only that it came to an end.