With music at its core, Samatar Elmi's The Epic of Cader Idris's themes resonate across history, mythology, philosophy and consciousness. The result is an expansive book that maintains a constant tune in the key of displacement - a daring, ambitious pleasure to read

ROGER ROBINSON

Samatar seamlessly blends influences from Somali oral history, Ovidian tales and Homer's Odyssey ... Cathartic, musical, emotionally satisfying as well as erudite

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY

Elmi's whose plangent lyrics disguise a sharp bite

GUARDIAN, Best recent poetry

Samatar Elmi is engaged in the timeless project that is at poetry's root; that of bringing disparate consciousnesses into dynamic, thrilling, relation across boundaries of time and space

KAYO CHINGONYI