Ceremony in a New Language: Peace Akintade-Oluwagbeye’s The Goat’s Tongue Translates Silence into Soil, Symbol, and Song

The Goat’s Tongue is a ceremony of silence, soil, and becoming—an interdisciplinary poetry collection that traces the story of a girl, a goat, and an owl as they traverse landscapes of vulnerability, belonging, and memory through symbolic dialogue. The book asks enduring questions: What does it mean to be truly human? What does it mean to forgive those who reject you?

Written in English and a symbolic language developed during Peace Akintade-Oluwagbeye’s 138-hour performance ritual Ori. Ara. Emi. (Ori. Ori. My Head), the books expands the possibilities of what a poetry book can hold: an archive of an ephemeral exchange, a material trace of a live ritual, and a living bridge between Yoruba oral tradition and contemporary performance-based poetics. The symbolic system—eighteen symbols derived from thirty-six—carries its own meanings and theology, inviting readers into layered forms of translation, interpretation, and intimacy.

Rooted in Yoruba folklore and shaped by postcolonial themes of silence, isolation, and communication, The Goat’s Tongue moves through pica, ancestral memory, grief, care, and forgiveness with visionary force. This is a book that refuses confinement—poetry as movement, poetry as secret, poetry as witness—insisting that language can be feral, tender, and communal all at once.

Winner of the 7th International Metatron Poetry Prize, selected by guest judge Precious Okoyomon.