Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays. As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of that lush place, citing in a recent interview his spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music. His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley.
Dawes has published fifteen collections of poetry. His most recent titles include Back of Mount Peace (2009); Hope's Hospice (2009); Wisteria, finalist for the Patterson Memorial Prize; Impossible Flying (2007); and Gomer's Song (2007). Progeny of Air (Peepal Tree, 1994) was the winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in the UK. Other poetry collections include Resisting the Anomie (Goose Lane, 1995); Prophets (Peepal Tree, 1995); Jacko Jacobus, (Peepal Tree, 1996); and Requiem, (Peepal Tree. 1996), a suite of poems inspired by the illustrations of African American artist, Tom Feelings in his landmark book The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo; and Shook Foil (Peepal Tree, 1998), a collection of reggae-inspired poems. His book, Midland, was awarded the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize by the Ohio University Press (2001). In 2001, Dawes was a winner of a Pushcart Prize for the best American poetry of 2001 for his long poem, Inheritance.
He has also published two novels: Bivouac (2009) and She's Gone (2007, Akashic Books), winner of the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for best First Novel. In 2007 he released A Far Cry From Plymouth Rock: A Personal Narrative (Peepal Tree Books). His essays have appeared in numerous journals including Bomb Magazine, The London Review of Books, Granta, Essence, World Literature Today, and Double Take Magazine.
In September 2009, Dawes won an Emmy for LiveHopeLove.com, an interactive site based on Kwame Dawes's Pulitzer Center project, HOPE: Living and loving with AIDS in Jamaica. It has won other accolades including a People's Voice Webby Award, and was the inspiration for the music/spoken word performance Wisteria & HOPE which premiered at the National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina.
Dawes is Distinguished Poet in Residence, Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts and founder and executive director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. He is the director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute and the programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica in May of each year.
i.
I first saw you cooking in the background
of a jumpy camera shot, while the dread
held forth, constructing his facade of enigma,
dodging the barbs and darts of Babylon with code,
and three times he denied you, called you a sister,
like Isaac did to Rebecca, leaving her there,
hanging like that, open season for Ahimalech
and the boys, that is what you were,
a flower tarnished, just a helping sister,
Martha in the kitchen swollen with child.
And who, watching this, would have known
of the nights he would crawl into your carbolic
womb, to become the man-child again,
searching for a father who rode off on his white steed
and never returned, never sent a message?
ii.
For years I thought you had lied,
for it was our way to believe the patriarch,
and who would want to declare the coupling
of the downtown dread with the uptown Miss World,
too sweetly ironic, too much of Hollywood
in this sun-drenched, dust-beaten city?
Who would let your black face, weighed by the insult
disturb our reverie? I did not believe the rumours.
So while the nation grumbled and cussed you out,
declared you gold digger and such the like
when he was buried and celebrated in death,
and you published the wedding photos,
the family snapshots of another time;
when you battled like a higgler for rights,
and played every dubious game in the book,
rough-house, slander, ratchet smile and all,
I called it poetic, the justice you received,
for you played the cards right, no bad card drawn
in your hands, as you sat quietly in the back-room
like a nun, bride of Christ and slave to mission.
And when you knew other men
before the tears could dry from our eyes,
and made another child in your fertile womb,
when your garments of silence were replaced
with the garish gold and silver of decadence,
when you entered the studio to play rude girl,
naughty as hell, talking about feeling damned high,
and rolling your backside like a teenager,
I had to smile at the poetic meaning of it all,
for you fasted before this feast,
you played the wife of noble character
eating the bitter fruit of envy
while the dread sought out the light-skinned
beauties, from London, to L.A., King Solomon
multiplying himself among the concubines.
iii.
These days I have found a lesson of patience
in your clever ways, a picture of fortitude
despite the tears, you are Jamaican woman,
with the pragmatic walk of a higgler,
offering an open bed for his mind-weary nights,
an ear for his whispered fears and trepidations,
and a bag of sand for a body to be beaten,
slapped up, kicked and abused; you took it all,
like a loan to be paid in full at the right time.
I no longer blame you for the rabid battles
raging over the uneasy grave of the rhygin dread;
for now I know how little we know of those
salad days in a St. Ann's farmer's one-room shack,
where you made love like a stirring pot,
and watched the stars for they were the only light.
What potions you must have made to tie, tie
your souls together like this! I simply watch
your poetic flight, black sister, reaping fruit
for the mother left abandoned with a fair-skinned child,
for the slave woman who caressed the head
of some married white master, with hopes
of finding favour when the days were ripe,
all who sucked salt and bitter herbs,
all who scratched dust, scavenged for love,
all who drew bad cards; you have
walked the walk well. The pattern is an old one.
I know it now. It's your time now, daughter.
Ride on, natty dread, ride on, my sister, ride on.
