Kwame Dawes

The Mountain and the Sea

As if convinced that all divination of the future is somehow a re-visioning of the past, Kwame Dawes reminds us of the clairvoyance of haunting. The lyric poems in City of Bones: A Testament constitute a restless jeremiad for our times, and Dawes’s inimitable voice peoples this collection with multitudes of souls urgently and forcefully singing, shouting, groaning, and dreaming about the African diasporic present and future. As the twentieth collection in the poet’s hallmarked career, City of Bones reaches a pinnacle, adding another chapter to the grand narrative of invention and discovery cradled in the art of empathy that has defined his prodigious body of work. Dawes’s formal mastery is matched only by the precision of his insights into what is at stake in our lives today. These poems are shot through with music from the drum to reggae to the blues to jazz to gospel, proving that Dawes is the ambassador of words and worlds.

A Testament

City of Bones

This hauntingly beautiful collection of poems is a disarming account of a man consumed by thoughts of home and loss.

Poems

Nebraska

Bernard Farai Matambo

Stray

Bivouac

Kwame Senu Neville Dawes

Colin Channer

Robert Pinsky and Derek Walcott anchor this groundbreaking, soulful poetry collection.

Over 100 Poets from the First Ten Years of the Calabash International Literary Festival

So Much Things to Say

“[A] diaspora of black culture and strong emotions, bordering the fine line between love and madness between two troubled people.” —Booklist A prominent Jamaican reggae singer falls in love with an African-American woman while on tour in South Carolina. The two struggle to forge a relationship across a cultural and psychological divide in a story that spans from Jamaica to South Carolina to New York City. “This striking debut novel is from the heart about the heart. The characters are true, the landscapes exquisite, and the relationships dynamic, insightful, and complex. Read it and be transported.” —Bernardine Evaristo, author of Mr. Loverman “She’s Gone offers intriguing geographic descriptions of South Carolina and Jamaica and interesting moments when Dawes allows Jamaicans their say about Americans.” —PopMatters “She’s Gone delves into the psychology of desire and need as it contends with issues of culture and class. If it is a love story, it is one marked by the harsh realities of human existence that we see in the most revealing of Bob Marley’s love songs, or the cool sensual intelligence of the best of Milan Kundera. Dawes is a poet but he never let’s his poetry detract from the sheer pleasure of storytelling.” —Jamaicans.com

She's Gone

The death of a Jamaican man's father raises questions about the father's political endeavors, and about the plight of 1980s Jamaica. Kwame Dawes has been named a 2019 Windham-Campbell Prize Recipient in poetry "Few other novels encapsulate Jamaica's political upheavals so well. Protagonist Ferron Morgan agonizes over his father's death, maybe from a doctor's mistake, maybe from a radical rival's hands. Meanwhile, he's running from everything, including his own emotions about his fiancée--with sad results. Bivouac is not an easy or light book, but the immediacy Dawes creates is worth it." --Literary Hub, included in 5 Books You May Have Missed in April "With expressive description and languid cadence, Dawes deftly constructs a background that serves as an amorphous setting for the complicated experience of a grieving son...With subtle yet lyrical description of internal struggles set against a foreign background, Bivouac serves as a deceptively symbolic read about the bleak and mirthless aspects of life and, subsequently, death." --The Daily Nebraskan "An examination of grief and politics in a deftly written novel set in 1980s Jamaica...Astonishing prose." --Kirkus Reviews "With...dreamlike sequences, this is best suited for readers who enjoy character studies as well as lovers of Jamaican fiction." --Booklist "A deftly crafted and absolutely riveting read." --Midwest Book Review "Bivouac has that kind of rich and luxurious writing that makes you believe there is a purpose to every element of the story." --Tonstant Weader Reviews "For anyone who likes satire, this quick-witted tale...catches a bundle of truths about a very particular and powerful corner of our world." --New West Indian Guide "Dawes examines the complicated terrain of grief with uncanny insight and spare, lucid prose. What unfolds is a story about a man, a family, and a country searching for answers and new hope." --Maaza Mengiste, author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze When Ferron Morgan's father dies in suspicious circumstances, his trauma is exacerbated by the conflict within his family and among his father's friends over whether the death was the result of medical negligence or if it was a political assassination. Ferron grew up in awe of his father's radical political endeavors, but in later years he watched as the resurgence of the political right in the Caribbean in the 1980s robbed the man of his faith. Ferron's response to the death is further complicated by guilt, particularly over his failure to protect his fiancée from a brutal assault. He begins to investigate the direction of his life with great intensity, in particular his instinct to keep moving on and running from trouble. This is a sharply focused portrayal of Jamaica at a tipping point in its recent past, in which the private grief and trauma condenses a whole society's scarcely understood sense of temporariness and dislocation.

"The miracle of empathy," Kwame Dawes once said in an interview, "is the ultimate aim of my writing."

New and Selected Poems

Duppy Conqueror

Chris Abani

An Introduction in Two Movements. An introduction in two movements / Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani

@Seven New Generation African Poets

Contributors include: Robert Pinsky, Derek Walcott, Elizabeth Alexander, Amiri Baraka, Martin Espada, Terrance Hayes, Valzyna Mort, Sonia Sanchez, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Patricia Smith, Saul Williams, Staceyann Chin, and 88 others. Imagine a night of a hundred poets reading their work to an audience of intensely engaged, responsive, and lively people. Imagine the reading taking place under a tent pitched on a grassy lawn that overlooks the Caribbean Sea. Imagine the sun setting, imagine the scent of curried goat and fried fish wafting through the air, imagine the heat, imagine the cool tongue of wind off the sea, imagine a stage like an ancient shrine with a podium artfully pieced together with bamboo, strips of still green wood, leaves, twine, and shells. Imagine one hundred poets, some whose names you know and some you have never heard of, stepping onto the stage, opening their mouths and hearts, and singing out poems of such variety, complexity, beauty, and passion. This is what a poetry reading at the Calabash International Literary Festival is like, and this new anthology provides readers a taste of what this festival offers year after year. Edited by Kwame Dawes and Colin Channer, two of the founders of the festival, this is an exciting example of Calabash's commitment to create a festival that is diverse, inspirational, earthy, and daring each May. This anthology is at once a celebration of ten years of a remarkable literary event as it is a gesture of love to seek ways to continue to fund and support this festival for the future. All profits from this publication will go toward the running of the festival, which remains free and open to the public.

100 Poets from the First Ten Years of the Calabash International Literary Festival

Marlon James

Jennifer Egan

Sonia Sanchez

Amiri Baraka

Quincy Troupe

Staceyann Chin

Willie Perdomo

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor

Jacqueline Johnson

Hal Sirowitz

NY Writers Coalition

Making the Trees Shiver is an eclectic collection recreating the magic that is the annual Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival. Poetry and prose by Chris Abani, Amiri Baraka, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Staceyann Chin, Kwame Dawes, Jennifer Egan, Marlon James, Jacqueline Johnson, Willie Perdomo, Sonia Sanchez, Hal Sirowitz, and Quincy Troupe is interspersed with work by the talented next generation of writers from NY Writers Coalition's creative writing workshops. Making the Trees Shiver celebrates community writing at it's finest: expansive, authentic, and full of life. Like Fort Greene Park itself, these pages are noisy at times, chilling at others, but always full of spectacular views.

An Anthology of the First Six Years of the Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival

Making the Trees Shiver

James Engelhardt

Marianne Kunkel

After ten years of selecting great books from writers, new and established, Prairie Schooner celebrates the first decade of its Book Prize series by offering this collection of excerpts from each year's winners in fiction and poetry. Writers such as Brock Clarke, Anne Finger, Rynn Williams, and Paul Guest open windows to ordinary and fantastic experience showcasing the liveliness and power of contemporary literature. Greg Hrbek's darkly comic, genre-bending tales stand alongside Ted Gilley's stories about achieving bliss through pain and John Keeble's reflections on community and the difficulty of love. Here Shane Book's poems serve as an elegiac witness to suffering, while Kathleen Flenniken's poems consider ordinary women constructing their own significance, and Kara Candito's explore sex, loss, and human passions. Whether the topic is fantastic or quotidian, childbirth or monsters, South American airplane disaster or suburban Wisconsin, this writing carries us to the furthest reaches of human experience.

Tenth Anniversary Reader

The Prairie Schooner Book Prize

The quintessential folk poet of the Third World, Bob Marley influenced generations of musicians and writers. He was a performer who held true to his religious and cultural heritage, who rallied against injustice, and who became an internationally revered musical icon. Renowned poet and scholar Kwame Dawes analyses in detail his verses and lyrics, matching them against the social and political climate of the time and asking of them what it meant to be a black, Jamaican man thrust into the limelight of western society; how change can be affected through music; and how political and ethical truths can be woven into song. His lyrics are poignant, powerful and poetic and this book showcases his written word. Updated to include an interactive timeline of his life, formed with videos and imagery, as well as integrated Spotify playlists, this is the perfect companion to Bob Marley’s recordings.

Kwame Dawes

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