Grace Nichols' poetry has a gritty lyricism that addresses the transatlantic connections central to the Caribbean-British experience. Her work brings a mythic awareness and a sensuous musicality that is at the same time disquieting. Born and educated in Guyana, Grace Nichols moved to Britain in 1977. I Have Crossed an Ocean is a comprehensive selection spanning some 25 years of her writing.
Dies ist die Geschichte der Familie Walcott, die in den 60er Jahren vom Land in die Stadt Georgetown, Guyana, zieht. Wir erleben das tägliche karibisch-tropische Leben, sehen es vor allem mit den Augen des jungen Mädchens Gem. Wir begegnen seltsamen, ungewöhnlichen Menschen, es geschehen merkwürdige Dinge, es wird viel gelacht, aber es gibt auch politische Aufstände, Plünderungen, Mord und Totschlag. Trotzdem ist der Roman in ein heiteres, klares Licht getaucht, den Morgenhimmel eines jungen, fröhlichen Lebens.
Grace Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors, to a white world that still turns its back. Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures and sadnesses of memory, of loving, of 'the power to be what I am, a woman, charting my own futures'.
In her latest collection, The Insomnia Poems, Grace Nichols explores those nocturnal hours when Sleep (the thief who nightly steals your brain) is hard to come by, and the politics of the day hard to shut out, never mind the lavender-scented pillow. Here memories of her own Guyana childhood mingle with the sleeping spectres of dreams and folk legends such as Sleeping Beauty. A lyrical interweaving of tones and textures invites the reader into the zones between sleep and no-sleep, between the solitude of the dark and the awakening of the light. The Insomnia Poems is Grace Nichols's first new co... continue