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A man lies in a newspaper-lined room dreaming an other life. Bob Marley's spirit flew into him at the moment of the singer's death. A woman detaches herself from her perfunctory husband and finds the erotic foreplay she longs for in journeying round the island. A man climbs Blue Mountain Peak to fly and hear the voice of God. Sonia paints her new friend Joan and hopes that this will be the beginning of a sexual adventure. Dawes's characters are driven by their need for intimate contact with people and with God, and their need to construct personal myths powerful enough to live by. In a host of distinctive and persuasive voices they tell stories that reveal their inner lives and give an incisive portrayal of contemporary Jamaican society that is unsparing in confronting its elements of misogyny and nihilistic violence. Indeed several stories question how this disorder can be meaningfully told without either sensationalism or despair. For Dawes, the answer is found in the creative energies that lie just the other side of chaos. In particular, in the dub vershan episodes, which intercut the stories, there are intense and moving celebrations of moments of reggae creation in the studio and in performance. Dawes has established a growing international reputation as a poet and these are stories that combine a poetic imagination with narrative drive, an acute social awareness and a deep inwardness in the treatment of character. In the penultimate story, 'Marley's Ghost', Dawes's imagination soars to towering myth.

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The winning manuscript of the fourth annual Hollis Summers Poetry Prize is also the exciting American debut by a poet who has already established himself as an important international poetic voice. Midland , the seventh collection by Kwame Dawes, draws deeply on the poet's travels and experiences in Africa, the Caribbean, England, and the American South. Marked equally by a lushness of imagery, an urgency of tone, and a muscular rhythm, Midland , in the words of the final judge, Eavan Boland, is “a powerful testament of the complexity, pain, and enrichment of inheritance…It is a compelling meditation on what is given and taken away in the acts of generation and influence. Of a father’s example and his oppression. There are different places throughout the book. They come willfully in and out of the poems: Jamaica. London. Africa. America. But all the places become one place in the central theme and undersong here: which is displacement…The achievement of this book is a beautifully crafted voice which follows the painful and vivid theme of homelessness in and out of the mysteries of loss and belonging.” Midland is the work of a keen and transcendent intellect, a collection of poems that speaks to the landscape from inside, from an emotional and experiential place of risk and commitment.

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"[Dawes] is highly original and intelligent, possessing poetic sensibility that is rooted and sound, unshakeable and unstopped, both in its vibrancy and direction. He writes poetry as it ought to be written."—World Literature Today "Dawes asserts himself as man and artist and finally, with grace achieved and grace said, sits down to begin life's tragic feast . . . a writer of major significance."—Brag Book "The notion of a reggae aesthetic—of the language moving to a different rhythm, under different kinds of pressure . . . underpins all Dawes' work as poet."—Stewart Brown Born in Ghana, raised in Jamaica, and educated in Canada, Kwame Dawes is a dynamic and electrifying poet. In this generous collection, new poems appear with the best work from fifteen previous volumes. Deeply nuanced in exploring the human condition, Dawes' poems are filled with complex emotion and consistently remind us what it means to be a global citizen. From «The Lessons»: Fingers can be trained to make shapesthat, pressed just right on the gleamingkeys, will make a sound that can staytears or cause them to flow for days.Anyone can learn to make some music,but not all have the heart to beatout the tunes that will turn us inside out. . . Kwame Dawes is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, two novels, four anthologies, and numerous essays and plays. In 2009 he won an Emmy Award for his interactive website, LiveHopeLove.com. Since 2011 he has taught at the University of Nebraska, and lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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Dawes is very well-known and respected in literary (and academic) circles.Dawes is a mentor of Marlon James's and also works closely on various collaborations with Colin Channer, Chris Abani, etc.Though stylistically different, Bivouac shares themes with Marlon James's Man Booker Prize winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings.Dawes's debut novel, She's Gone (Akashic), won a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best First Novel; Dawes has also won numerous poetry prizes and an Emmy Award for LiveHopeLove.comDawes is the coeditor of the critically-acclaimed African Poetry Book Fund's annual boxsets (published by Akashic)Dawes is the Glenna Luschei editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska, where he is a Chancellor's Professor of English, a faculty member of Cave Canem, and a teacher in the Pacific MFA Program in Oregon. Dawes was elected (in 2018) a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

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