Chris Abani

Kwame Senu Neville Dawes

TJ Dema, Clifton Gachagua, Tsitsi Jaji, Nick Makoha, Ladan Osman, Warsan Shire, Len Verwey

Seven New Generation African Poets

new and selected poems

Duppy conqueror

"Red collects poems that engage 'red', poems by Black British poets writing with the word 'red' in mind--as a kind of leap-off point, a context, a germ--the way something small, minor, or grand might spur a poem. It offers the reader the freedom to come to their own conclusions as to what writing as a poet who is also Black and British might mean"--P. [4] of cover.

An Anthology of Contemporary Black British Poetry

Directly addressing the relationship with his father, a Marxist Caribbean nationalist, Kwame Dawes presents a memoir of intellectual rigor that is coupled with great tenderness. With the immediacy of a man thinking aloud and the careful structure of art that recalls the places that have molded his life—from Ghana and Jamaica to Canada and America—Dawes explores the nearly universal conditions of migrants. Ultimately about the joys of personal differences, this autobiography is a touching look into the life of a son, husband, and father.

A Personal Narrative

A Far Cry from Plymouth Rock

Gomer, an Old Testament harlot, was the non-conformist wife of the prophet Hosea. In Dawes' contemporary reinterpretation of this Bible story, he presents a beautiful and sometimes erotic exploration of the cost of arriving at freedom with an uneasy grace. Dawes examines the insidious qualities of power, the confining nature of gender roles and the limits of protest. Through Gomer's journey, readers are asked to consider how each one of us is able to express our own defiance, as well as to tally the costs of our individuality.

Gomer's Song

Colin Channer

Kwame Dawes

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 man lies in a newspaper-lined room dreaming an other life. Bob Marley's spirit flew into him at the moment of the singer's death. A woman detaches herself from her perfunctory husband and finds the erotic foreplay she longs for in journeying round the island. A man climbs Blue Mountain Peak to fly and hear the voice of God. Sonia paints her new friend Joan and hopes that this will be the beginning of a sexual adventure. Dawes' characters are driven by their need for intimate contact with people and with God, and their need to construct personal myths powerful enough to live by. In a host of distinctive and persuasive voices they tell stories that reveal their inner lives and give an incisive portrayal of contemporary Jamaican society that is unsparing in confronting its elements of misogyny and nihilistic violence. Indeed several stories question how this disorder can be told without either sensationalism or despair. For Dawes, meaning is found in the creative energies that lie just the other side of chaos. In particular, in the dub vershan episodes, which intercut the stories, there are intense and moving celebrations of moments of reggae invention in the studio and in performance.

A Place to Hide

Matthew Shenoda

Bearden's Odyssey: Poets Responding to the Art of Romare Bearden is a collection of thirty-five poems by the most celebrated African diaspora poets in the United States, presented together with full-color reproductions from Bearden's famous Odyssey series.

Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden

Bearden's Odyssey

Seven New Generation African Poets: Seven new generation African poets: an introduction in two movements

Dawes' most personal and universal collection, 'telling family secrets to strangers'. The family secrets focus primarily on the triangular relationship between the poet, his father and younger brother.

Poems

Impossible Flying

Jerry Pinkney

Tom Feelings

A poem and portraits of children illustrate the shared beauty and heritage of people of African descent living throughout the world.

I Saw Your Face

"In Wisteria, Kwame Dawes finds poignant meaning in the landscape and history of Sumter, a small town in central South Carolina. Here the voices of women who lived through most of the twentieth century - teachers, beauticians, seamstresses, domestic workers and farming folk - unfold with the raw honesty of people who have waited for a long time to finally speak their mind. The poems move with the narrative of stories long repeated but told with fresh emotion each time, with the lyrical depth of a blues threnody or a negro spiritual, and with the flame and shock of a prophet forced to speak the hardest truths. These are poems of beauty and insight that pay homage to the women who told Dawes their stories, and that, at the same time, find a path beyond these specific narratives to something embracingly human. Few poets have managed to enter the horror of Jim Crow America with the fresh insight and sharply honed detail that we see in Dawes's writing. With all good southern songs of spiritual and emotional truth, Dawes understands that redemption is essential and he finds it in the pure music of his art. Dawes, the Ghanaian-born, Jamaican poet is not an interloper here, but a man who reminds us of the power of the most human and civilizing gift of empathy and the shared memory of the Middle Passage and its aftermath across the black diaspora. These are essential poems."--Publisher's website.

Kwame Senu Neville Dawes

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