“… a vibrato self-searching of spirit that will inevitably find an echo in the spirit of any reader who is unafraid to confront her own inner depths.” — Dr. Joyce Jonas

About
All Made of Longing

An exploration of the longing that shapes who we are and how we move in the world, this collection of poems is both intimate and communal. Here, the lush landscapes and bittersweet history of the Caribbean form the background for desire, love and loss in their myriad forms. Here, the intricacies of our lived experience intertwine with ancestral and ecological threads to create a vibrant and multi-hued tapestry.

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About Ruth Osman

Ruth Osman, a Guyanese singer, songwriter, and flautist, based in Trinidad and Tobago, is a “poet disguised as a songbird”, according to Caribbean Beat Magazine.

She has been writing music and poetry since childhood, drawing from her lived experience as a Caribbean woman of mixed heritage, and from the rich worlds she encountered in books and her father's favourite musicals.

Her music has been described as ‘profound’, ‘entrancing', and ‘authentic’. And her sophomore album, Elemental, was dubbed 'a 10-track gem' by the Trinidad Guardian.

Osman was shortlisted for the Bocas Lit Emerging Writers Fellowship 2022. And her poem, "Lost and Found" received an Honorable Mention in the 52nd New Millennium Writing Awards.

Her debut poetry collection, All Made of Longing, won Best First Book of Poetry and placed second in the Best Book of Poetry category of the Guyana Prize for Literature 2023.

Reviews

The reader is engaging here with a soul who feels deeply, and sings her joys and sorrows with such skill and technical virtuosity that it is hard to believe this is Ruth Osman’s first full publication. I suspect and dearly hope it will not be the last.

— Dr. Joyce Jonas, former Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Guyana

If you do not wish to feel deeply, don't read Ruth Osman's poetry. If you don't want to look at life's underbelly, don't even crack the cover. And if you don't want to find sublime delight in the mundane, and discover fresh perspectives, may I recommend you find something else to do?

— Gillian Moor, singer-songwriter, writer and poet

This is a woman’s voice, a woman engaged with the lifelong project of making and remaking herself ... All in all, this is a collection of accomplished and elegant works in a strong and controlled poetic voice.

— Evelyn O’Callaghan, Professor of West Indian Literature, University of the West Indies

[Osman's] poems rustle the petticoats of the ordinary, peering deep into the well of Caribbean everydayness. From lilting explorations of domestic eros to exhortations to the divine muses twisting and winding poetry’s spindle, this collection surrenders to a pureness of honesty, a vulnerability tested in turbulent waters.

— Shivanee Ramlochan, Caribbean Beat (Jan/Feb 2024)