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mi did 'accidentally' ketch ie lass nite 
Kwame Dawes featured on PBS NewsHour -->> PBS NewsHour segment (10-07-08)
Kwame is a Pulitzer Center grantee whose work with the Pulitzer Center culminated in the project HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in jamaica and the interactive site www.livehopelove.com. Kwame recently read at Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C. with a NewsHour crew on hand.
<span style="font-style: italic">Ghanaian-Jamaican writer and poet Kwame Dawes is the author of over a dozen collections of verse, including the critically-acclaimed “Wisteria: Poems From the Swamp Country.” Dawes is also the author of numerous plays, essays and books.</span>
He is the 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.
Sampling of his poetry:
<span style="font-weight: bold">Altar</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">For Annesha</span>
Mama settles in the shadows, her prayers
curl through the ornate burglar bars,
dance above the flat concrete roof,
then dally over the Gardens, the smell
of a rotting dog in the dry gully,
mingling with the sweet comfort
of burning weed and jerking meat--
the pepper, the pimento, the sugar;
and Papa Leg’s sound system shivers
the dense clustering of mango leaves;
and God knows the broken bottled
path along Marcus Garvey’s pocked
drive, up towards the mountains
into the narrow lanes someone
called the ghetto--this clustering
of havens; from outside stoic,
voiceless facades; inside, like here
where mama kneels in the shadow,
a shelter of crotons, aloe-vera,
hibiscus, and garish rose bushes;
all limp where the shot is still
lodged; this shelter, this temple,
where an altar of gleaming
bleached rum bottles stand
in a circle on a cruciform
platform, raised above the earth,
where an enamel pan of fresh
rain water strewn wuith petals,
these quietlt pristine bottles filled
with water caught in the last
rains; in this haven, mama’s voice
carries high against the news;
and someone is whispering to me:
“Father Holung coming for you,
baby girl. Is your time now;
the priest in white with flaxen hair
coming for you. Your time now.”
My cocktail of Baygon and rum;
my cocktail of bleach and tar;
my cleansing, my purging,
my fire into this worthless soul--
“AIDS a go kill me; AIDS a go
kill me.” Poor Mama, how tiny
her voice wailing for mercy;
asking God how come, how come;
and me praying for my daughters;
mercy, mercy until the shadow comes.
mi did 'accidentally' ketch ie lass nite Kwame Dawes featured on PBS NewsHour -->> PBS NewsHour segment (10-07-08)
Kwame is a Pulitzer Center grantee whose work with the Pulitzer Center culminated in the project HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in jamaica and the interactive site www.livehopelove.com. Kwame recently read at Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C. with a NewsHour crew on hand.
<span style="font-style: italic">Ghanaian-Jamaican writer and poet Kwame Dawes is the author of over a dozen collections of verse, including the critically-acclaimed “Wisteria: Poems From the Swamp Country.” Dawes is also the author of numerous plays, essays and books.</span>
He is the 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.
Sampling of his poetry:
<span style="font-weight: bold">Altar</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">For Annesha</span>
Mama settles in the shadows, her prayers
curl through the ornate burglar bars,
dance above the flat concrete roof,
then dally over the Gardens, the smell
of a rotting dog in the dry gully,
mingling with the sweet comfort
of burning weed and jerking meat--
the pepper, the pimento, the sugar;
and Papa Leg’s sound system shivers
the dense clustering of mango leaves;
and God knows the broken bottled
path along Marcus Garvey’s pocked
drive, up towards the mountains
into the narrow lanes someone
called the ghetto--this clustering
of havens; from outside stoic,
voiceless facades; inside, like here
where mama kneels in the shadow,
a shelter of crotons, aloe-vera,
hibiscus, and garish rose bushes;
all limp where the shot is still
lodged; this shelter, this temple,
where an altar of gleaming
bleached rum bottles stand
in a circle on a cruciform
platform, raised above the earth,
where an enamel pan of fresh
rain water strewn wuith petals,
these quietlt pristine bottles filled
with water caught in the last
rains; in this haven, mama’s voice
carries high against the news;
and someone is whispering to me:
“Father Holung coming for you,
baby girl. Is your time now;
the priest in white with flaxen hair
coming for you. Your time now.”
My cocktail of Baygon and rum;
my cocktail of bleach and tar;
my cleansing, my purging,
my fire into this worthless soul--
“AIDS a go kill me; AIDS a go
kill me.” Poor Mama, how tiny
her voice wailing for mercy;
asking God how come, how come;
and me praying for my daughters;
mercy, mercy until the shadow comes.
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