Biography:
Dubbed 'Brit-born Bajan international' by Caribbean literary icon Kamau Braithwaite, Dorothea Smartt is a poet and live artist. Her poetry braids together standard and Caribbean English; poetic form and speech rhythms; myth, history, observation and reflection. Her first collection Connecting Medium (2001, Peepal Tree Press) was highly praised and features poems from her outstanding performance works Medusa and From You To Me To You (An ICA Live Art commission). Her latest publication Ship Shape is a rich collection of poems, connecting past and present, presence and absence.
Her recent poetry video installation Landfall was part of an international exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands and featured new works exploring the Atlantic Ocean as a natural phenomenon and transporter of dreams and peoples. Dorothea Smartt performs, and exhibits internationally, and regularly works with schools. She is SABLE LitMag's poetry editor, and Co-Director of Inscribe, a Black & Asian writer's development program.
Related Podcasts & Events:
aubergine angels
Inside Old Street station,
I meet my Waterloo:
Aubergine Afros, primed,
shining and armed, wrestle
my gaze from briefcases,
from city zombies' eyes;
the sweating on the back
of broad builder' T-shirts;
a small boy's arms running,
with ice-cream: a bacon,
sarnie in the happy
mouth of a homeless man.
Arrested by the sight!
- the light of the grander dark
halos moving me up
and out. So I exit
to City Road behind
young Black boys. Black angels.
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