Guest Bloggers

by John Robert Lee

for Anne Walmsley (1931 – 12 July 2025)

This is a guest blog by Peepal Tree Press intern Janelle Hawthorne

by Andre Bagoo

From the translators and editors of the anthology of Caribbean women poets
The Sea Needs No Ornament/El mar no necesita ornamento
Loretta Collins Klobah and Maria Grau Perejoan

Words by Olivier Stephenson

Photo by Ryan Loughlin on Unsplash

Transliteration 

by Jennifer Rahim

Tyrannies reside in a vowel 

and more—

history-lesson Ukraine bring:

how powers dat be conspire 

to shackle a people,

an erase dey song. 

Kyiv, we hear you.

We know well dem language wars. 

Bombs draw blood first is tru, 

like sword sharp, an dat history 

is no blue moon, but it blue.

Gunman surround you, too,

put bullet in future brite-

brite like sunflower

is a colour 

Photo: Diana Evans, Nick Makoha, Juliet Gilkes Romero, Alex Wheatle MBE, Colin Grant, Hafsa Zayyan

I begin with a confession: there was a time when I thought that working in the arts was not important. I fell for the oft-advanced argument that money spent on the arts might be better spent on hospitals or schools or a range of other worthy endeavours.

Note: This obituary was originally published at the George Padmore Institute website and is republished with permission of the author.

Jean Binta Breeze (1957 – 2021)

In 1994, I was in London for the announcement of the Forward Poetry Prize for First Book of poetry. I had been shortlisted for this prize, which was then a few years old, but already quite prestigious and much sought after. On the night of the event, Jean “Binta” Breeze, who was on the judges panel that selected the winner, met me at the South Bank Centre, brilliant with her smile, and lively as ever. It was great to hear her Jamaican, comforting and reassuring, and it was truly affirming to hear her say, “You belong here,” though I felt like an interloper on so many levels.

What is remarkable about this sentence is not Lauren Delapenha nor the obnoxious and unnecessary use of the third person, but the building. The lionshead knocker at 17 Kings Ave seemed reminiscent of Narnia, or Rastafarianism. When a smiling Jeremy Poynting opened the door and invited me inside, I found a place which was neither mythical land nor mystical religion but which was no less of a world in its own right.