Using the power of language to explore and discover patterns of meaning,
this stunning and ambitious collection brings the lyric poem face to
face with the external world, with its politics, social upheavals, and
ideological complexity.
Whether it is a poem about a near victim of the Lockerbie bombing
reflecting on the nature of grace, a president considering the function
of art, or a Rastafarian defending his faith, the selections all seek
illumination and understanding in the world. Using images from Garcia
Marquez's novels, accounts of slave rebellions, passages from the Book
of Ezekiel, the art of modernist painters and wall-to-wall news
coverage, Dawes creates a striking series of poems that are about
finding pathways of meaning, and the quest for love and faith.
Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962 but grew up in Jamaica. He is
widely acknowledged as the foremost Caribbean poet of the post-Walcott
generation. A poet, actor, editor, critic, musician and professor of
English, he is the author of 17 books. He was awarded a Pushcart Prize
for Poetry in 2001. His poetry collections include Progeny of Air
(Peepal Tree, 1994), winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First
Collection, Shook Foil: A Collection of Reggae Poetry (Peepal Tree,
1997) and Map-Maker (Smith/Doorstop, 2000), winner of the The Poetry
Business Prize. His New and Selected Poems, 1994-2002 was published by
Peepal Tree in 2002. He recently edited the acclaimed anthology Red:
Contemporary Black British Poetry (Peepal Tree, 2010).
