Forgotten Lands

Poems of the Ancestors

Published by She Writes Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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About the Book

In the tradition of Joy Harjo and Sandra Cisneros, Forgotten Lands is a fearless poetry collection exploring disability, divinity, and erasure—offering a voice from the margins that refuses to be silenced.

After her acclaimed debut, psychotherapist and poet Lauren Martin returns with a luminous second collection written from a life changed by spinal cord injury. From the quiet of recovery, she turns to ritual, prayer, and language.

Rooted in the West African tradition of Ifá, and honoring the Òrìsà who walk with her, these poems move through love and loss, illness and the body, isolation and faith, and the daily politics of being overlooked.

With a voice both melodic and raw, Martin shifts between verse, haiku, and prose poems. She writes toward nature, toward God’s presence in all forms, and toward the fierce tenderness that survives transformation.

Forgotten Lands is poetry as prayer and protest—an offering of what endures when everything else shifts.

About the Author

Lauren Martin is a psychotherapist, poet, and devoted Ìyánífá. She studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. She spent years writing without submitting her work due to a long shamanic journey that led her to both Ifá and the writing of this collection of poems. Lauren lives in Oakland, California.

Product Details

  • Publisher: She Writes Press (December 8, 2026)
  • Length: 104 pages
  • ISBN13: 9798896362203

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Raves and Reviews

“Maps the unsettled ground between estrangement and return . . . A searching, emotionally candid collection that makes spiritual inheritance feel palpable and real.”Kirkus Reviews

“In this charged collection powered by fury, reconciliation, and the ghosts of the past, Martin has stitched together a tapestry of diverse poetic forms to create a woeful, impassioned battle cry for the love of humanity and the grief that is inheritance . . . Ifá-inspired poetry exploring femininity, climate change, and the passage of time.”—BookLIfe Reviews

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