black british poets

Her new book, Passport to Here and There, was published this year. The Caribbean Artists Movement, founded by Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite, Trinidadian publisher John La Rose and Panamanian-Jamaican writer Andrew Salkey in London in 1966, set about promoting the work of marginalised Caribbean artists, writers and poets. See you in McKeldin at 5pm! Can poetry change the world?I don’t know, is the obvious answer, I don’t have a bloody clue.Interview by Killian Fox. For more information and bookings, please contact: Kadija George: inscribewriters@gmail.com Who are the poets you turn to?Kamau Brathwaite, one of the giants of Caribbean poetry, Derek Walcott and John La Rose, especially his Eyelets of Truth Within Me collection. Even when I was younger, I was just known for touring with John Cooper Clarke. Peepal Tree's focus is on what George Lamming calls the Caribbean nation, wherever it is in the world, though they are also concerned with Black British writing. They don’t want some old fuddy-duddy turning up. I love his short, witty pieces. I also love William Blake, and how he wrote about class, and the literary landscape he created in London. [Jamaica’s poet laureate] Lorna Goodison was on to something when she said there is a medicinal quality to poetry. I’ve always been on the periphery. Are you inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests around the world? Spread love mankind, spread love mankind, I got involved in drama and a teacher gave me a diary and I’d write plays. Four years later, he released his debut album with Dennis Bovell, Dread Beat An’ Blood (he has released 12 dub poetry albums, and five compilations). I’m so moved and impressed by them and I feel like I’m in the middle of a seismic shift and worldwide revolution. Everything else is cut away. [It begins: “I was wondering if I could shape this passion / Just as I wanted in solid fire.”] It’s beautiful, profound and elegiac in tone. Statues have come down since then with a crane and by official council appointment, but in Bristol we don’t roll like that, we just pulled the fucker down and chucked it in the river. As a marginalised community, it’s about supporting each other to develop craft and be raw and vulnerable. Black British poets, many of whom got their start through performing, have always been on the periphery. Name a poem you wish you had written. She was born in London to Guyanese and Grenadian parents, grew up in Guyana and currently lives in Leeds. Grace Nichols was born in Guyana in 1950 and has lived in Britain since 1977. Only One of Me: Selected Poems. London: Macmillan Children’s, 2004. Who are the poets you turn to?I’ve been looking to poets coming up behind me, like Gboyega Odubanjo and Belinda Zhawi, and poets ahead of me, like James Berry, who was the first black poet to anthologise black British voices. Can poetry change the world? I’m so glad I’m alive to see it happening. Performance poetry revolutionised me. Every editor’s perspective on what is good is subjective, but a great editor looks beyond that: they take their time with work that’s unfamiliar and learn to appreciate it on its own terms. And I love to read my contemporaries, in Poetry London or Granta or zines like Zarf, and be blown away by what people are doing. Did you face any challenges from the UK publishing industry?When I approached Oxford University Press back in the early 80s with my first collection of poems, I Is a Long-Memoried Woman, they felt that Edward Kamau Brathwaite had already covered that territory, even though my book was from a female perspective, the journey of an African woman captured in slavery and taken to the Caribbean. Name a poem you wish you had written.One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, that poem about losing things. Quote a line from a poem of yours that best reflects our times.“Oh Lord, there is pepper in the deads’ mouths and coffins fly overhead”– from a poem called Island Grief after Hurricane Ivan, which devastated Grenada. How does it feel to be included on the GCSE syllabus?I was pleased to have two of my poems studied by GCSE students after having studied many English poets such as Shakespeare, Keats and Wordsworth when I was at school in Guyana. Print. Can poetry change the world?Yes. That’s smaller. West Indian poetry showed its ability to be modern and up-to-date when it raised such topics as modern technologies, vegetarianism, environmental protection, creative work and the role of the artist in society. See our Filigree events page for more information. His debut collection, Kumukanda, won the 2018 international Dylan Thomas prize and a Somerset Maugham award. It’s all still relevant today. Included are young Poet Laureates of London; the LGBT History Month Poet Laureate; poets from the Octavia collective, Barbican Young Poets and The Complete Works; as well as a wealth of other recognisable names. It follows in the footsteps of previous successful anthologies: Red: Contemporary Black British Poetry (edited by Kwame Dawes) and Closure: Contemporary Black British Short Stories (edited by Jacob Ross). Have you felt compelled to write anything about our current chaotic times?In terms of the current politics of race, I’ve been writing about that already, so I don’t feel a need to create new work as such. Dorothy Wang is Professor in the American Studies Program and Faculty Affiliate in the English Department at Williams College (Massachusetts). Contact us here. Are you inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests around the world? Together, along with visiting poets, they ran writing workshops for teenagers. Poets interrogate the world to arrive at truth and honesty and that can inspire people.Interview by Anita Sethi, Malika Booker is curator and host of the Peepal Tree Press podcast New Caribbean Voices. February is Black History Month, and to celebrate the contributions black poets have made, and continue to make, to the richness of American poetry, we asked twelve contemporary black poets from across the country to choose one poem that should be read this month and to tell us a bit about why. I love Lorca. I’m so glad I’m alive to see it happening. There’s been a huge response here because there is racism in the legal system, and a culture of impunity in the police. Whoop an’ Shout! The Guyanese poet Mahadai Das whose work has a sad beauty and whose life was tragically cut short. It can be soothing, therapeutic or even just distracting if you have a troubled mind. #blackandjewish. What kinds of challenges have you faced as a black poet in the UK publishing industry?I’ve never been part of the publishing industry. They turned to the book for solace. However, with the development of anti-racist movements and the considerable success achieved in this sphere, Benjamin Zephaniah, of the second generation, took the problem of racism beyond UK borders. She is winner of the Cholmondeley award, founder of writers’ collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Forward prize for best single poem. The other set is the people who come to the readings I do up and down the country. It begins: “Even/After/All this time/The sun never says to the Earth/ ‘You owe me.’” He wrote in his everyday vernacular, but his words transcended. He lives in West Yorkshire.What are the biggest challenges faced by black poets in the UK publishing industry?One is to do with a process of tokenisation, whereby one poet is taken to be reflective of a kind of monolithic black experience, when there are as many black experiences as there are kinds of people. If existing editors do that, and if new editors are allowed to enter the fold, then I think British poetry publishing will be much better for it. The last matter for me to tackle was the Creole language, which was frequently used in poems by West Indian authors. All labels finally reduce the complex layers of the imagination. Has editing poetry at the White Review given you an insight into how progress might be made?We sometimes fall into this notion that there isn’t a range of poetry to choose from in the UK, but there really is. I want to big up Jay Bernard for Surge, a profoundly important book, and Roger Robinson’sA Portable Paradise totally resonates. Even when I was younger, I was just known for touring with John Cooper Clarke. Who are the poets you turn to again and again?Danez Smith is someone who continues to blow my mind, and there’s always something new to see in their work. I’m very sceptical of the poems I write as a knee-jerk response to a particular situation, and so I have to take some time and resist the urge to react immediately. It doesn’t matter if the current protests were inspired by America. School developed my love of William Blake and the language of the Bible. It started with my mum teaching me English in Zambia by labelling all the different things in the house with the English name – I guess that gave me a playful relationship to the language. Chingonyi is poetry editor for The White Review and an assistant professor at Durham University. There hasn’t been a proper reflection in publishing of the rich tradition that I draw on as a black poet in the UK. Psychotherapy is often dubbed as a psychological therapy or talking therapy. She has published nine collections of poetry for adults as well as several poetry books for younger readers. Hannah Bannister: hannah@peepaltreepress.com / 0113 245 1703, Facebook: facebook.com/inscribewriters Twitter: @inscribewriters, Instagram: @inscribewriters Pinterest: pinterest.co.uk/inscribewriters. Red has been described by Michael Rosen as, “a major contribution to the diverse cultures of blackness.” Filigree’s inclusion of fresh voices from a younger generation of Black British poets illustrates Inscribe’s commitment to producing groundbreaking anthologies. In my research I presented phonetic, grammar and lexical features of Caribbean Creole and spoke about Creole roots and the social status of Creole in modern British society. I think this introduces teenagers here to a diversity of modern voices such as Gillian Clarke, Imtiaz Dharker, Carol Ann Duffy, Daljit Nagra, John Agard, Simon Armitage. They’re often anecdotal, about the absurdities of everyday life, like parodies of poets doing poetry. He showed me how to write poetry of protest and witness. Can poetry change the world?I don’t separate myself as a poet from being an educator, and in the classroom, I can see how a poem can change a person’s life. It’s combative in tone, and revels in its language. Poems performed at the festival taught me about police brutality, gentrification and climate change before I even owned a computer. Whether beggars or businessmen, seamen or soldiers, publicans or poets, writers or runaways, the Black population’s fortunes were subject not only to the ups and downs of British … From Sonia Sanchez to, Benjamin Zephaniah’s The Death of Joy Gardner, first poet to win the Rathbones Folio prize. No. Performance poetry immersed me in a world of critical thinking, but also, a community of black poets. Publishers need to open up their ideas about the poetic. It serves a purpose, like the Bible did in my mother’s generation. Third time meeting Cornel. The selling point was that I would get the chance to travel to the US to compete in a poetry slam festival, but the excitement of getting on an aeroplane was soon overshadowed by what I can only describe as enlightenment. Poetry can’t change anything. Are you inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests around the world?Yes. What’s your favourite protest or political poem?There It Is, by Jayne Cortez, the great American jazz poet. The whole object of making albums for me was to get my poetry out to people, which worked. In 2009, Peepal Tree launched the ‘Caribbean Modern Classics Series’, which restores to print essential classic books from the 1950’s and 60’s. Have you joined in yourself? I explored how these contemporary trends manifested themselves in Caribbean poetry for children. Finally, for my research, I chose five Black British poets: James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Valerie Bloom and Benjamin Zephaniah.

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