Author: Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa
Publisher: Out-Spoken
Paperback
Staff Pick! So says...
Choreography as chronicle, music as medicine: this first collection changes everything, flexing poetry to its fullness with the rhythms of Caribbean dances crossing the pages and resonating with powerful words. Welcoming in ancestral voices of all kinds - verbal, gestural, spiritual, rooted - Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa listens through her words to a black West Indian past-present-future, suffused with continuities of rage and grace. Here is one of this generous book’s guest choreographers, the bearded fig tree, leaving a note to accompany the hand-drawn labanotation of its elliptic and embracing moves:
when you are not able to bury your roots
you must remain vigilant
& become de prayers you offer
you must remain vigilant
& become de prayers you offer