Kwame Dawes

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Biography

Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana on 28 July 1962. He grew up in Jamaica and was educated at Jamaica College, the University of the West Indies and the University of New Brunswick, where he gained his Ph.D. He is currently Professor of English and Director of the S. C. Poetry Initiative at the University of South Carolina, where he has taught since 1992, and where he served for several years as Director of the MFA Writing Programme in Creative Writing. A reviewer, broadcaster, actor, storyteller, broadcaster, critic, poet and playwright, his play One Love (2001), an adaptation of Roger Mais' novel Brotherman, was commissioned by Talawa, one of Britain's leading black theatre companies, and premiered at the Lyric Theatre in London in 2001.

His poetry collections include Progeny of Air (1994), winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, Prophets (1995), Jacko Jacobus (1995), Requiem (1996), Shook Foil: A Collection of Reggae Poetry (1997), and Map-Maker (2000). His New and Selected Poems, 1994-2002 was published in 2002. He has also published a  book of short stories, A Place to Hide and Other Stories (2002), and the first full-length study of the lyrics of Bob Marley - Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (2002). He reviews and writes articles widely for newspapers and journals including the Washington Post, Wasafiri, the London Review of Books and World Literature Today, and is currently Criticism Editor for Obsidian II, an African-American literary journal, and author of a regular poetry column with the State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina. He also writes poems and stories for children, which have appeared in various anthologies.

Kwame Dawes was Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa in 1986 and was made Associate Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick, in 1996. In the same year he won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission. His book of poems, Midland (2000), draws deeply on personal travels and experiences in Africa, the Caribbean, Britain and the American South, and won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize from Ohio University Press. His other awards include a Poetry Business Prize (2000) and a Pushcart Prize for Poetry (2001). He was John Henrik Clarke Distinguished Lecturer in Autumn 2001 at the University of Alabama where he delivered a lecture entitled Natural Mysticism: Towards a New Reggae Aesthetic. He is currently the series editor of a new series of Caribbean plays and of Sweet Sop books, a Black British Poetry series, both by Peepal Tree Press.

Kwame Dawes lives in the United States. He is married with three children. His most recent books are Gomer's Song (2008) and She's Gone (2008).

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Genres (in alphabetical order)

Drama, Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Short stories

Bibliography

Progeny of Air   Peepal Tree Press, 1994

Jacko Jacobus   Peepal Tree Press, 1995

Prophets   Peepal Tree Press, 1995

Resisting the Anomie   Goose Lane Editions (Canada), 1995

Requiem   Peepal Tree Press, 1996

Shook Foil: A Collection of Reggae Poetry   Peepal Tree Press, 1997

Natural Mysticism: Towards a New Reggae Aesthetic   Peepal Tree Press, 1998

Talk Yuh Talk: Interviews with Caribbean Poets   University of Virginia Press, 1998

Wheel and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poetry   (editor)   Peepal Tree Press, 1998

Map-Maker   Smith/Doorstop, 2000

Midland   Ohio University Press (US), 2000

One Love   Methuen, 2001

A Place to Hide and Other Stories   Peepal Tree Press, 2002

Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius   Sanctuary Publishing, 2002

New and Selected Poems, 1994-2002   Peepal Tree Press, 2002

I Saw Your Face   (illustrated by Tom Feelings)   Dial Books, 2005

Twenty: South Carolina Poetry Fellows   (editor)   Hub City Press, 2005

Brimming   University of South Carolina, 2006

Wisteria: Twilight Songs from the Swamp Country   Red Hen Press (US), 2006

A Far Cry from Plymouth Rock   Peepal Tree Press, 2007

Impossible Flying   Peepal Tree Press, 2007

Gomer's Song   Akashic Books, 2008

She's Gone   Macmillan Caribbean, 2008

Read about books by Kwame Dawes at encompassculture.com - the British Council's book database and global online book club

Buy books by Kwame Dawes at Amazon.co.uk

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Prizes and awards

1994   Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection)   Progeny of Air

1996   Individual Artist Fellowship   (South Carolina Arts Commission)

2000   Hollis Summers Poetry Prize   (Ohio University Press)   Midland

2000   Poetry Business Prize   Map-Maker

2001   Pushcart Prize for Poetry (USA)

2003   Commonwealth Writers Prize (Caribbean and Canada Region, Best First Book)   (shortlist)   A Place to Hide and Other Stories

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Critical Perspective

Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana, but grew up in Jamaica, and this move is strongly evident in both his poetry and non-fictional work, which is profoundly influenced by Bob Marley and the lyrics and rhythms of reggae music. Moreover, it is the insistent connection between movement and music that characterises the author’s art more broadly, drawing together his recurrent focus on the themes of longing and unbelonging, memory and migration.

His first collection, Progeny of Air (1994), won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) and is faintly reminiscent of Seamus Heaney’s Lough Neagh sequence where eels perform a similar poetry to the salmon of Dawes’. Progeny of Air counterpoints the life journey of the farmed Canadian fish with the poet’s own journey from Jamaica to Canada. His next collection, Jacko Jacobus (1995) involves the book’s protagonist in a similar journey, this time from Jamaica to South Carolina, but here the poetry moves more assertively to the rhythms of reggae that also characterises Dawes’ Prophets (1995). As its title suggests, Jacko Jacobus draws on the biblical story of Jacob and Esau, and like much of his later work, including his recent poetry collection Gomer’s Song (2008) which focuses on the unfaithful wife of a minor Old Testament prophet and reworks a range religious narratives, symbols and motifs. Resisting the Anomie, also published in 1995, is similarly preoccupied with themes of migration, unbelonging and alienation as it moves impressionistically between Haiti, Jamaica and Canada, often allowing physical journeys and artistic processes to coincide:

'leave behind the voices 

the music in the uneasy vans 

playing roulette with the traffic lights 

and the chaos of pedestrians 



I repeat the ritual of departure 

as one would rehearse lines'

The poetics of migration and diaspora that emerge in these ‘lines’ are pushed into the past in Requiem (1996) as Dawes offers an extended meditation on the slave trade that carries with it a tragic contemporary resonance. The poetry has a strong visual dimension to it, and the sequence as a whole was inspired by the artwork of the African American artist, Tom Feelings. In his more recent collection, Brimming (2006), Dawes again turns to visual art in order to expose histories of violence and oppression. Focusing on lynchings and slave rebellions the poems are inspired by the South Carolina painter, Brian Rutenburg.

After a relatively long break (for him, that is) from poetry, Dawes returned to form publishing two prize-winning collections, Midland (2000) and Map-Maker (2000). Both collections deal with the by now familiar themes of dislocation and migration, but here they are counterpointed with a heightened sense of space, place and territory as we journey between Europe and the Americas. As such, these are collections concerning roots as much as uprootedness, inheritance as much as loss. The spatial metaphor, midland, is telling in this context, at once nowhere - a space between places; and a meeting point that connects here and there, past and future. Similarly, Impossible Flying (2007), situates issues of itinerancy and loss in terms of personal and familial roots, with poems engaging with father, mother, and most moving of all, younger brother.

In addition to his numerous poetry collections, Dawes is a prolific critic, short story writer, novelist and editor. Collections such as Twenty: South Carolina Poetry Fellows (2005) and Wheel and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poetry (1998) are testament to Dawes’s wider commitment to contemporary African Caribbean writing both locally and internationally. Meanwhile, Dawes’s non-fictional work reveals a sustained interest in the intersections between reggae and poetry. Most notably, perhaps, Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (2002) is a passionate and detailed study of the lyrics of the great musician, lifting his words to the level of poetry, while always maintaining a focus on the musical quality of Marley’s language.

Dawes’s latest work is a critically acclaimed novel that represents something of a departure from his prior preoccupation with short, condensed, and economical literary forms. She’s Gone (2008) is the story of Kofi, a Jamaican reggae singer, who meets Keisha during an American tour. Kofi persuades her to return with him to Jamaica where the relationship quickly disintegrates, and Keisha finds herself in a land entirely incommensurate with the world she has left behind. Written in a deceptively simple, and stripped-back prose, Dawes’ poetic novel was praised by poet cum novelist, Bernadine Evaristo in glowing terms:

'This striking debut novel is from the heart and about the heart. The characters are true, the landscapes exquisite, and the relationships dynamic, insightful and complex. Read it and be transported.'

Dawes describes himself on his web site as the ‘busiest man in literature today’, and with more than a dozen volumes of poetry to his name since 1994, not to mention his growing number of essays, anthologies and fictions, few would argue.

Dr James Procer, 2009
 

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Contact information

Publisher (General enquiries) Peepal Tree Press 17 Kings Avenue Leeds  LS6 1QS England Tel: +44 (0)113 245 1703 E-mail: contact@peepaltreepress.com http://www.peepaltreepress.com

Agent William Morris Agency (UK) 52/53 Poland Street London  W1F 7LX England Tel: +44 (0)20 7534 6800 Fax: +44 (0)20 7534 6900

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Related links

www.kwamedawes.com

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