Roger Robinson's range is wide: the joys and pains of family life;
observations on the threatening edge of violence below the surface
energies of Black British territories in London; memories of an older
Trinidad and visits that tell him both how he and the country have
changed; emblematic poems on the beauty and often bizarre strangeness of
the world of animals; quizzical responses to the strange, the
heartening, and the appalling in incidents encountered in daily life;
reflections on the purposes and costs of making art, as in fine poems on
a George Stubbs' painting, cocaine and Coltrane's Ascension, and
questioning thoughts on the ideologies of Toni Morrison and John Milton.
The poems express a fierce anger against injustice, but also convey the
irrepressible sense that Roger Robinson cannot help but love people for
their humour, oddity and generosity of spirit.
'With A Portable Paradise, Roger Robinson shows us that he can be the
voice of our communal consciousness, while at the same time always
subverting, playing and beguiling with his beautiful verse' Afua
Hirsch