- Paperback: 72 pages
- Published: 9/1/07
- IBSN: 9781933354446
- Genre: Poetry
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Gomer’s Song
Award-winning poet Kwame Dawes explores the insidious nature of power and the limits of protest for Chris Abani’s Black Goat poetry series.
What people are saying…
“As someone who professes to be a writer, I’m struck dumb by Kwame Dawes’s pinpoint and devastating lyricism and the unflinching assurance of each and every stanza. These gems, threaded with mesmerizing narrative, exhibit both unbridled imagination and a lean technical mastery, a combination that Dawes’s fans rely on. This is the kind of work writers strive for. This is Dawes at the pinnacle of what he does.”
—Patricia Smith, author of Teahouse of the Almighty
Description
Read Kwame Dawes’s contribution to “Are We Related?”
Black Goat is an independent poetry imprint of Akashic Books created and curated by award-winning Nigerian author Chris Abani (author of Becoming Abigail and Song for Night). Black Goat is committed to publishing well-crafted poetry with a focus on experimental or thematically challenging work. The series aims to create a proportional representation of female poets and non-American poets, particularly poets from Africa.
Gomer’s Song is a contemporary reinterpretation of a Bible story. Gomer, a harlot, was the wife of the Old Testament prophet Hosea. But even after her marriage to Hosea, she refused to conform to her expected role. In Gomer, poet Kwame Dawes finds the subject for a beautiful contemporary exploration on the cost of arriving at freedom with an uneasy grace.
Dawes examines the insidious nature of power, the expectations of gender roles, and the limits of protest. Through Gomer’s journey, we are asked to consider how each one of us must articulate not only our own defiance, but tally the costs of earning our individuality. Gomer’s Song is a great fable for finding our humanity in the confusion of a post-9/11 world. This is tender a book with profound lyrical insights.
Watch Kwame Dawes and Vampire Weekend’s appearance at Barnes and Noble’s Upstairs at the Square.
- Subjects: Black Interest, Caribbean Interest, Poetry
- Tags: Africa, Black Goat, Chris Abani, Ghana, Jamaica, Kwame Dawes
Book Details
Author
KWAME DAWES’s debut novel She’s Gone (Akashic) was the winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (Debut Fiction). He is the author of twenty-one books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. In 2016, his book Speak from Here to There, a cowritten collection of verse with Australian poet John Kinsella, was released along with When the Rewards Can Be So Great: Essays on Writing and the Writing Life, which Dawes edited. His most recent collection, City of Bones: A Testament, was published in 2017. His awards include the Forward Poetry Prize, the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Silver Medal, several Pushcart Prizes, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and an Emmy Award. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and is Chancellor Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. Dawes serves as the associate poetry editor for Peepal Tree Press and is director of the African Poetry Book Fund. He is series editor of the African Poetry Book Series—the latest of which is Tisa: New-Generation African Poets, A Chapbook Box Set—and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. Dawes is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2018 was elected as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Bivouac is his latest work published by Akashic.