New & Selected Poems: Kwame Dawes

Increasingly recognized as a poet of both the Caribbean and of the United States, especially for his "Midland," which won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, Selected Poems contains a generous selection from all six volumes of Dawes's poetry, showing the breadth and depth of his achievement. From writing the poems of displacement and loss of "Resisting the Anomie," the vibrant, unstoppable narratives of "Prophets" or "Jacko Jacobus," the concentrated poems of "Requiem" ("shrines of remembrance" for the millions of victims of transatlantic slavery), to the autobiographical poems of "Progeny of Air" and the questioning psalms and reggae poetry of "Shook Foil," Kwame Dawes's poetry has a unique, signal voice.

Author Biography: Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962, grew up in Jamaica, studied in Canada (where he fronted a reggae band) and now is professor in the Department of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. In addition to his poetry, he is the author of Natural Mysticism: Towards a Reggae Aesthetic and Talk yuh Talk.