John Agard has been broadening the canvas of British poetry for the past
40 years with his mischievous, satirical fables which overturn all our
expectations. In this new symphonic collection, Travel Light Travel
Dark, Agard casts his unique spin on the intermingling strands of
British history, and leads us into metaphysical and political waters.
Cross-cultural connections are played out in a variety of voices and
cadences. Prospero and Caliban have a cricket match encounter, recounted
in calypso-inspired rhythms, and in the long poem, Water Music of a
Different Kind, the incantatory orchestration of the Atlantic's middle
passage becomes a moving counterpoint to Handel's Water Music. Travel
Light Travel Dark brings a mythic dimension to the contemporary and
opens with a meditation on the enigma of colour. Water often appears as
a metaphoric riff within the fabric of the collection, as sugar cane
tells its own story in 'Sugar Cane's Saga' and water speaks for itself
in a witty debate with wine, inspired by the satirical tradition of the
goliards, wandering clerics of the Middle Ages.