Bøker av Kwame Dawes

The sixth collection of this profound dialogue between two major poets from opposite sides of the world takes on mortality. Provoked by near fatal accidents, family crisis, rising temperatures and forest fires in Western Australia, these poems confront the reality of death, and celebrate the arts of mortality in exquitite dialogue.

The site of the ruined ancestral home of Kwame Dawes's family, in one of the earliest post-slavery free villages in Jamaica, Sturge Town is at once a place of myth and, for Dawes, a metaphor of the journeying that has taken him from Ghana, through Jamaica, and to the United States. The poet ranges through time, pursued by a keen sense of mortality, and engages in an intimate dialogue with the reader-serious, confessional, alarmed, and sometimes teasing. Metrically careful and sonorous, these poems engage in a personal dialogue with the reader, serious, confessional, alarmed and sometimes teasing. They create highly visualized spaces, observed, remembered, imagined, the scenes of both outward and inner journeys. Whether finding beauty in the quotidian or taking astonishing imaginative leaps, these poems speak movingly of self-reflection, family crises, loss, transcendence, the shattering realities of political engagement, and an unremitting investment in the vivid indeterminacy of poetry.

This in-depth analysis of the reggae superstar's poetry in lyric form delves into the songwriter's intellect and spirituality with scholarly precision usually more associated with Bob Dylan or John Lennon. Thought of as the folk poet of the developing world, Marley influenced generations of musicians and writers throughout the Western hemisphere. He was a performer who held true to his heritage, yet is still awarded the status of world rock star. Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius features interviews with key people and musicians who knew the man. It's the perfect companion to Bob Marley's recordings.

unHistory is an essential record of our times by two world-leading poets, it is much more than that. It is an exploration of history's undertones, its personal, familial and institutional resonances and of the relationship between public events and the literary imagination.

This hauntingly beautiful collection of poems is a disarming account of a man consumed by thoughts of home and loss.

The process of discovering home is ongoing. The past is raked as carefully as a sand garden, for memories not tended faithfully will slip away. Each moment is sifted, held and relived. In Resisting the Anomie, Kwame Dawes celebrates his roots and holds them fast. A Ghanaian-born Jamaican, educated in Canada and living in the US, Dawes writes tightly controlled poems, wild and free poems, boisterous reggae songs; poems of faith, love, anger and humour. All offer glimpses into the poet's true home.

The third in a quartet of poem-dialogues between Kwame Dawes and John Kinsella, begun in 2015 with the critically acclaimed 'Speak From Here to There' (2016), and followed by 'A New Beginning' (2018), Tangling With The Epic explores commonalities and difference, of the power of poetry and creativity

"When Speak from Here to There was published in 2016, it was seen as doing something quite new: two poets recognised as being at the top of their game in, respectively, Australian and Caribbean poetry, had risked, in the words of Will Harris, the almost daily "structure of call-and-response, each utterance...filtered through the other." Karen McCar

The first book ever to look in-depth at reggae as an artistic form, Natural Mysticism shows how reggae combines politics, sex, spirituality and art, and offers in depth analyzes of leading reggae artists such as Burning Spear, Lee Scratch Perry and Bob Marley.

This is the seventh collection of poetry by Kwame Dawes. It draws deeply on the poet's travels and experiences in Africa, the Caribbean, England, and the American South, and is a compelling meditation on what is given and taken away in the acts of generation and influence.

A bleak portrayal of life on the Dungle--the rubbish heap where the very poorest squat--this beautifully poetic, existentialist novel turns an unwavering eye to life in the Jamaican ghetto. By interweaving the stories of Dinah, a prostitute who can never quite escape the circumstances of her life, and Brother Solomon, a respected Rastafarian leader who allows his followers to think that a ship is on its way to take them home to Ethiopia, this brutally poetic story creates intense and tragic characters who struggle to come to grips with the absurdity of life. As these downtrodden protagonists shed their illusions and expectations, they realize that there is no escape from meaninglessness, and eventually gain a special kind of dignity and stoic awareness about life and the universe.