Exiles of Eden
“Ladan Osman has an abundance of talent, and she is one of a kind. There is informed wisdom to her poetry, which, on top of being moving, inspires the reader with positive thinking. A wonderful collection.” —Nuruddin Farah
“Ladan Osman is a poet of wonder and inquiry. Her wonder is muscular and thorough, and requires an inventory of the known, a charting of what is lost, and the incantation of desire…The marriage, the homelands, the underworlds that exile Osman’s speakers must be named, circumscribed, and if possible, released, or if not, borne along the curves of the body.” —Donika Kelly
“Ladan Osman is one of the most alive minds in poetry today. Whether with the pen or with the lens, everything is lifted to a higher, fantastic dimension in the frame of Osman’s looking. Exiles of Eden scares me. It’s that good.” —Danez Smith
“Ladan Osman can identify the physical muscles of an emotion as well as the pain come of the lack of its exercise: the lack of a sister’s companionship, missing a mother, missing the love in a marriage… She does the remarkable thing of detailing pain as places of departure, from a marriage, from a country.” —Ed Roberson
The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony
“True visionary poets are very rare. Ladan Osman is one. What she sees is extraordinary, and needful.”—Brigit Pegeen Kelly
“The language is rich and playful and can be both brutal and transformative—sometimes in the same poem.” –Alex Dueben, The Paris Review
“...The poems in Somali-American poet Ladan Osman's debut collection, The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony, are by turns arguably as good as and even better than watching a film...this book is stunning.” –Kathleen Rooney, Chicago Tribune
“Osman is a warrior poet, and she is dangerous because she is especially gifted and disciplined about her craft, her technical facility with the poem. This collection offers numerous examples of this skillfulness.”—from the foreword by Kwame Dawes
"Ladan Osman conveys a language and logic that is disturbingly fresh; it leaps from one observation to another and speaks familiarly yet obliquely enough to make us listen a little harder."—Wesley Rothman, Rain Taxi
Ordinary Heaven (chapbook)
“I have rarely encountered a young poet whose work was so completely its own thing, was so little influenced by what trend might be elbowing itself forward on the writing campuses. Osman is a worldly and acutely sensitive writer who knows how to reach right through the sequined veil of fashion and put her hand squarely on the reader’s heart, with frank and candid expression, with unaffected wonder.”—from the preface by Ted Kooser
“Osman’s poetry focuses on uncertain internal worlds. Many poems are filled with doubt, often shifting between sanity and madness. Despite the uncertain psychological states, Osman’s voice is assured; her surprising images are original…Osman’s work is provocative and sure-footed.” —Mike Puican, TriQuarterly