Propel
![Propel](https://www.deborahfinding.com/content/images/2024/06/propel-sideways-on-blue-34-600px-2w.png)
Deborah's poem 'Self Portrait As a Failed Exorcism' is featured in Issue 10 of Propel Magazine, edited by Inua Ellams.
"Propel is an online literary magazine featuring the work of poets who have yet to publish a first full length collection of poetry — showcasing exciting new poetry at an impressively high standard and acting as a free and open resource for editors, readers and curators alike. Propel publishes six issues annually, each with a different guest editor and limited to twenty poems."
![](https://www.deborahfinding.com/content/images/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-04-at-11.59.43.png)
You can read the whole issue here, and Deborah's poem in particular here.
It was an honour to be selected by Inua Ellams, who wrote 'The Actual' (Penned In The Margins), a poetry book which has been described as:
"a symphony of personal and political fury sometimes probing delicately, sometimes burning with raw energy. In 55 poems that swerve and crackle with a rare music, Inua Ellams unleashes a full-throated assault on empire and its legacies of racism, injustice and toxic masculinity. Written on the author's phone, in transit, between meetings, before falling asleep and just after waking, this is poetry as polemic, as an act of resistance, but also as dream-vision. At its heart, this book confronts the absolutism and 'foolish machismo' of hero culture from Perseus to Trump, from Batman to Boko Haram. Through the thick gauze of history, these breathtaking poems look the world square in the face and ask, 'What the actual?'"
You can buy 'The Actual' here.
![](https://www.deborahfinding.com/content/images/2024/06/inua-2.webp)
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of: The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience.), The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates poetry & hip hop, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates Poetry and Film. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work, where he tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African oral storytelling with contemporary poetics, paint with pixel, texture with vector. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins, Oberon & Methuen.