Ground Provisions traverses landscapes from West Africa to the Caribbean and into North America all the while navigating the sensate world and immersing readers in lush language and imagery. Taking us on a sensory journey across landscapes of the body and the earth, the collection provokes questions about identity in the making of diasporas and the creation of multi-ethnic realities. What remains and what is created anew? What emerges at the fissures of culture? What is learned from human relationships with the natural world? These poems want to interrogate power, the desire for freedom, the necessity of ancestral memory, and the need to touch the earth and each other as a means to engage the past and the future.

Many of the poems explore cultural syncretism using traditional forms such as the sonnet and sestina. Contemporary forms like the haibun, duplex, contrapuntal, and mirror poem offer intimate views of various speakers and bring us into their interior lives. We witness grief that overcomes the mind and body, children holding painful secrets, women exploring their bodies, families coming to terms with fracture and reconciliation.  The collection is concerned with identity and personhood as it ventures into the experimental and demands we examine deep familial legacies as well as wider heritage.