"A considerable tour de force by any standard." ?New York Times Book Review"

The Caribbean has produced one of the most vigorous and exciting bodies of poetry of the last one hundred year. The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse is the only contemporary anthology to present the best of the English-language poetry of the region alongside selections from the poetry of boththe French and Spanish Caribbean. Featuring a range of established poets from Derek Walcott to Jesus Cos Causse, Olive Senior to Aime Cesaire, as well as exciting new voices, this is a rich and challenging book.

An anthology of Caribbean verse, edited by the young Jamaican poet Kei Miller.

Contemporary Caribbean Women's Poetry provides detailed readings of individual poems by women poets whose work has not yet received the sustained critical attention it deserves. These readings are contextualized both within Caribbean cultural debates and postcolonial and feminist critical discourses in a lively and engaged way; revisiting nationalist debates as well as topical issues about the performance of gendered and raced identities within poetic discourse. Newly available in paperback, this book is groundbreaking reading for all those interested in postcolonialism, Gender Studies, Caribbean Studies and contemporary poetry.

Featuring poems from: Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, Danielle Jennings, Ruel Johnson, Monica Minott, Debra Providence, Shivanee Ramlochan, Colin Robinson, and Sassy Ross. With a preface by Kwame Dawes. With a generous sample from each poet, this anthology is an opportunity to discover some of the best, new, previously unpublished voices from the Caribbean. This is a generation that has absorbed Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Martin Carter, and Lorna Goodison, while finding its own distinctive voice. Peekash Press is a collaboration between Akashic and UK-based publisher Peepal Tree Press, with a focus on publishing writers from and still living in the Caribbean. The debut title from Peekash, Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean, was published in 2014. Kwame Dawes is the author of eighteen collections of poetry, most recently Duppy Conqueror, as well as two novels, numerous anthologies, and plays. He has won Pushcart prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy, and was the 2013 awardee of the Paul Engel Prize. At the University of Nebraska--Lincoln, he is a Chancellor’s Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. Dawes is the associate poetry editor at Peepal Tree Press, the series editor of the University of South Carolina Poetry Series, and the founding director of the African Poetry Book Fund. Dawes also teaches in Pacific University’s MFA program, and is the director of the biennial Calabash International Literary Festival.

The themes are universal - love, loss, resistance, hope. The voice is distinctly Caribbean. The result is a soulful collection laced with power. These poems reflect the writer's deep engagement with her society and her skill in peeling away its layers to expose the core. This is a distillation of everyday human experience, related in language that ranges from stark simplicity to intricate imagery. Throughout the entire book, the poet's touch is delicate but sure. "These poems are indeed sweet as honey and tart as lime, whether Carr is speaking about family - reminiscing about the son who is now a man, or reflecting on how she can no longer fit in her mother's lap both literally and symbolically - the poems reveal a poet's deft hand, gloved in care and love, that shimmers in the last section of the collection when the persona speaks uncensored in island tongue." Opal Palmer Adisa, author of Eros Muse and It Begins with Tears.

The period from the 1970s to the present day has produced an extraordinarily rich and diverse body of Caribbean writing that has been widely acclaimed. Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970-2020 traces the region's contemporary writings across the established genres of prose, poetry, fiction and drama into emerging areas of creative non-fiction, memoir and speculative fiction with a particular attention on challenging the narrow canon of Anglophone male writers. It maps shifts and continuities between late twentieth century and early twenty-first century Caribbean literature in terms of innovations in literary form and style, the changing role and place of the writer, and shifts in our understandings of what constitutes the political terrain of the literary and its sites of struggle. Whilst reaching across language divides and multiple diasporas, it shows how contemporary Caribbean Literature has focused its attentions on social complexity and ongoing marginalizations in its continued preoccupations with identity, belonging and freedoms.

Leo Oakley ; Evelyn O'Callaghan ; Jean Rhys ; Tom Redcam (Thomas Madcermot) ; Victor Stafford Reid ; Gordon Rohlehr ; Reinhard Sander ; Dennis Scott ; Lawrence Scott ; Karl Sealey ; Samuel Selvon ; A.J. Seymour ; P.M. Sherlock ; Rajkumari Singh ; Mikey Smith ; Henry Swanzy ; Tropica (Mary Adella Wolcott) ; John Vidal ; Derek Walcott ; A.R.F. Webber ; Sarah Lawson Welsh ; Sylvia Wynter ; Benjamin Zephaniah.

In the past 30 years, most Caribbean poetry written in English has come to the US in the lyrics of reggae music, but that is only one aspect of a tradition characterized by continuing tension within a diverse heritage. Interviews in this collection reflect a range of Caribbean voices from several generations, from those poets influenced by a dynamic interplay between the popular culture of reggae music and yard theater to those whose work is closer to classical forms of literature and oral narrative. Dawes teaches English at the University of South Carolina. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR