Kwame Dawes
Born in Ghana
in 1962, Kwame Dawes moved to Jamaica in 1971 and spent most of his childhood
and early adult life there. As well as poetry, he is a writer of fiction,
nonfiction, and plays; he also practices as an actor and musician. His poetry
is profoundly influenced by his "spiritual, intellectual, and emotional
engagement with reggae music", and he has collaborated with musicians and
artists to create a dynamic series of performances based on his poetry. His
book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius book remains the most
authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley.
Dawes studied
and taught in New Brunswick, Canada on a Commonwealth Scholarship, and as a PhD
student he was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The
Brunswickan. From 1992-2012 he taught at the University of South Carolina;
he is currently Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, and with
Glenna Luschei editor-in-chief at the Prairie Schooner. Dawes is
also a faculty member of Pacific University’s MFA Program. He is co-founder and
programming director of the biennial Calabash International Literary Festival,
which takes place in Jamaica.
He is the
author of seventeen collections of poetry. The most recent titles include Duppy
Conqueror (Copper Canyon, 2013); Wheels (2011); Back
of Mount Peace (2009); Hope's Hospice (2009); Impossible
Flying (2007), and Gomer's Song (2007). Progeny
of Air (1994) was the winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best
First Collection. In 2001, Dawes was a winner of a Pushcart Prize for his long
poem, 'Inheritance'. He is the editor of many anthologies, including Wheel
and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poems, and Red: Contemporary
Black Poetry, and he is also the Associate Poetry Editor of Peepal Tree
Books, where he edits their impressive Caribbean Poetry list. Dawes received
the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.
In 2009, Dawes
won an Emmy Award in the category of New Approaches to News and Documentary
Programming - his project documented HIV/AIDS in Jamaica, interspersed with his
poetry, photography by Andre Lambertson, and music by Kevin Simmonds. The
website Livehopelove.com is the culmination of this project.
In these
recordings made specially for the Poetry Archive, Dawes' command of a range of
tones and styles of delivery is demonstrated - from the powerful social
commentary of 'Yap', a brutal account of homophobic violence made all the more
disconcerting from the voice's impersonal reportage, to the melodious,
rhythmical lament of 'Trickster', where the explorations of language become a
path, 'a way to tell how I would be met on the road.' 'Sketch' is a tender
portrait of illness that draws on and then questions the power of words to heal
and console, revealing the impermanence of a wish, however keenly felt, to
'clean a grey line where your brows were…these markings of what you have
suffered'. 'Wheels', meanwhile, alertly and humorously catalogues the doubts of
a 'gangly televangelist', and 'Rituals Before the Poem' gently satirises the
reverence around poetry's typical subjects, striking a tone of playful
instruction - paralleled in Dawes' 'Memos to poets' (viewable on his website):
over 100 short pieces originally broadcast on Twitter, that include everything
from acidic witticisms on writing, to memorable, aphoristic adages that
challenge and appeal to the wisdom of poetry reader or writer.
A Good Woman Blues
O Lord, Berta, Berta, O Lord, gal oh-ah,
O Lord, Berta, Berta, O Lord, gal well.
Go ’head marry, don’t you wait on me oh-ah,
Go ’head marry, don’t you wait on me well.
Might not want you when I go free oh-ah,
Might not want you when I go free well.
When you are out on the road, hustling
shelter in some taking-woman’s hovel,
when you wonder how long you will be
a broke blues man with only some
twenty-year-old story of how you were
somebody, how you sat in the same
studio where big-ass Ma Rainey
used to sit and drink bourbon; of how
people knew you, knew your voice,
how it was to buy a suit, walk
the country street and hear your
voice on the radio, and it has been
so long these stories like your clothes
have gotten so thin they don’t keep
you warm no more; and when out
there, you walking to the crossroads,
where you meet all kinds of monsters
and ghouls, and where you learn
how to limp and use your big
stick to part the arms of women,
you have nothing to keep you going
on dark nights when everything
feel like crap, and you are fifty
years old and you are not dead
and you have nothing to show for it;
no child whoever called you daddy
cause you never stayed long enough
for them to smell your skin,
and for you to hear them say it;
and you know that going back,
you will spoil all the lies
those women told for you, about
their daddy who will walk
around with his big hands
and his only instrument; who can
make a woman take off
all her clothes on the spot
and leave her man just by
the weeping and lonesome
feelings he can make with the piano.
That sharp-faced, cool-eyed man,
their daddy, who took a schooner
to France where everybody knows
his name—if you go back
with your tired self, looking
for a nip of booze to keep you warm,
and some fried chicken
for old time’s sake, what good
will that do? So all you have
is this one truth: that Cleo
is your Penelope and until
they nailed that coffin,
she stayed the one good thing
you ever did; she was a good
woman and she loved you,
and sometimes that is all a man
needs to keep on walking,
sometimes it all a man’s got;
all that has kept him from
the chain gang to the juke joint,
along those lonely roads
cutting across America—
that Cleo is all he ever had,
and Lord knows, she waited,
but you can’t outwait God,
Lord, Berta, Berta, you can’t
outwait, the Lord.
If
you know your woman, know her rhythms,
know
her ways; if you paying attention
to
her all these years, you will know
how
she comes and goes, how she slips
away
even though she is standing in
the
same place, you will know that her
world
is drifting softly from you, and she
may
not mean it, because all it is
is
she is scared to be everything, scared
to
be finding herself in you every time,
scared
that one day she will ask herself,
all
forty-plenty years of her, where
she’s
been; if you know your woman,
you
will know that mostly she will
come
back, but sometimes, when she
drifts
like this, something can make her
slip;
and then coming back is hard.
If
you know your woman, you can
tell
by the way she puts on heels,
and
she does not sashay for you
because
it is not about you—how
she
will buy some leather boots
and
not say a word about it,
and
you only see it when she walks
in
one night, and she says she’s had
them
forever; you will see the way
she
loses the weight and pretend
its
nothing, but when she isn’t seeing you
looking,
you can see how she faces the mirror
lifts
her chest to catch a profile,
and
how she casually looks at her
ass
for signs of life. If you know
your
woman, when you are gone, she
will
find things to do, like walk
alone,
go see a movie, find a park,
collect
her secrets and you won’t know,
because
she is looking for herself.
And
she won’t tell you that she wants
to
hear what idle men say when she
walks
by them; because what you say
is
not enough. If you know your
woman,
you know when she’s going
away
and you will feel the big
hole
of your love, and you can’t
tell
why she’s listening and humming
to
tunes you did not know she heard
before,
and she will laugh softly
at
nothing at all. If you know your
woman,
you will see how she comes
and
goes, and all you can do is wait
and
pray she will come back to you,
because
you know that your sins
are
enough for her to leave and not return.
Avoiding the Spirits
Berniece: I don’t play that
piano cause I don’t want to wake them spirits.
They never be walking around in
this house.
—The
Piano Lesson, August Wilson
When at sunset the congregation gathers
in the low light of St. Helena’s old gray
Baptist chapel; they guard their hearts
from the whisper of the low-bellied trees;
calling on the blood as they brush off
the dew on their coats by the burial ground.
When they sing, the sound has the flat
simplicity of prayer, a sound that brings
heat to your neck, tears to your eyes
because you can hear in the rugged
rafters, hewn from old-growth trees
at the water’s edge, the voices of all those
people who had nothing but lament
and Jesus to fill the gap of a stolen life.
The sisters can’t make a man cross
that threshold unless he has come
to lay someone to rest or to witness
a child’s blessing or a daughter’s
wedding, for a man can’t hear the flat
voices in the church and not feel
the droop of his shoulders
and the weight of his dangling
empty hands that have too often
hung helpless for prudence’s sake, for good
sense, making him not a man
but an empty shell, a creature
who laughs to stop the shame
of not being able to keep his family
together and safe. No, he will rather
sit in the dark cathedral of the juke
joint and let the blues of sardonic
regret and caustic distance
wash him, make him know that
he is alone on the road, and all
he’s got is his story. My people
long gave up on the ancestors
when they learned that those
stepping out of the woods
are the crippled gods, the beaten
gods, the blackened and burnt-out
tongueless gods, the broken
gods, the castrated gods, the shadow
gods with questions, asking
us if they will ever heal, asking
for a balm from the living. Who wants
to pour libation for the burdened
spirits? Silence is our salvation,
that and the reassurance of this earth,
this clear air, this forgetting.
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