Salt Modern Poets
3 total works
Anthony Joseph's last book was the critically acclaimed `The African Origins of UFOs', this is the first new collection of poetry by Joseph since 1997's `black surrealist manifesto' Teragaton. Written over a 5 year period, the highly original poems and experiments with form in `Bird Head Son' cover the poet's `1st life' in Trinidad, beginning with his departure from Trinidad to the UK in 1989, the poems are divided into 6 sections, each considering an aspect of the poets experience of Trinidad life in the 1970s and 80s.
The poems are autobiographical but they cover universal themes such as exile, family and ancestry, Carnival, `home', the dream or mythic Caribbean in a haunting section entitled `Backroads of the Mythic' and in the final `Epilogue' section, a return to `the floating island' that `home' has become. The personal becomes the universal in these poems. The collection effectively forms a poetic closure to the poet's roots and beginnings. In this process of distillation the poems illuminate the seminal experiences that have shaped the poets aesthetic. In this way, it is also an autobiography of the mind. These innovative poems, shot through with Joseph's trademark surrealism and his juxtaposition of Caribbean attitude, rhythm and post modern poetic technique show why Joseph is considered `the leader of the black avant garde' in Britain and one of the UKs most original voices.
Taking its name from a poem by American surrealist Ted Joans, Rubber Orchestras is an energetic, sensuous and intriguing collection of poems, written over a period of four years with an (as yet) undisclosed method of composition the writer calls Liminalism. This collection was selected from 100 poems written using this method. This is the poets’ most radical work so far, in parts psychedelic, surrealist but always engaging.
This is an experimental collection but only in the sense that poetry should always be a means of searching out the gaps and crevices of language. Each reader will have a different experience of these poems.
The book is divided into three sections: Precious and Impossible — a selection of poems influenced in subject and style by calypso and Jazz. The Colony of Light — poems concerning Caribbean history and society. And Grotesquerie, in which there are darker, more obscure poems.
Apart from the influence of Ted Joans’s surrealism, the resonance of Bob Kaufman, Will Alexander, Ira Cohen, and Caribbean poets such as Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite can be felt throughout. It contains all the trademarks which have informed Joseph’s work for the past decade; the blending of syncopated caribbean rhythms with surrealism and the sensual, painstaking attention to each phrase. With this volume Joseph returns to the exciting experimentalism of his landmark collection Teragaton.
This is a unique text, suggesting a new way of writing but perhaps also, a new way of reading.
This is the fourth collection from Anthony Joseph after Desafinado in 1994, Teragaton in 1997 and Bird Head Son, 2009.