Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings-On
From the first poem to the last, Smartt’s new chapbook collection advocates a revolutionary decampment from the madhouse of desires “reigned in” to protect a precarious and often incoherent code of Caribbean respectability.
Price
£4.99
Author(s)
Dorothea Smartt
ISBN number
9781845232870
Pages
32
Price
£4.99
Classification
Poetry
Country setting
Barbados
United Kingdom
Europe
Publication date
07 Jul 2014

From the first poem to the last, Smartt’s new chapbook collection advocates a revolutionary decampment from the madhouse of desires “reigned in” to protect a precarious and often incoherent code of Caribbean respectability. This is Smartt at her sensual and lyrical best. These poems sing, and dance and love passionately ‘til morning cum. From the hazardous terrain of same-sex loving in Jamaica for some couples, to the manipulation of heterosexual marriage conventions in Barbados in the name of love, to the freedom of sexual abandon and the fulfilment of desire in Amsterdam, this small body of work is subversive, radical, and surprisingly panoramic. Smartt’s cartography renders new the old directive that we love each other, that we build and sustain community, that we protect and care for each other’s needs, desires and dreams. Ultimately, Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings On is about Black diasporic love at its most radical and life-affirming.

Variations

Dorothea Smartt

Dorothea Smartt has an international reputation as a respected literary activist, live artist, and established poet. Born and raised in London, with Barbadian heritage, she is described as a 'Brit-born Bajan international’. Over the past twenty years, her credits include engagements with the British Council in Bahrain, South Africa, USA, Egypt, and Hungary. She was keynote speaker at Barbados’ Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award, 2013. She has two full collections, Connecting Medium and Ship Shape [Peepal Tree Press]. Her recent chapbook, Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings-On, “…is subversive, radical, and surprisingly panoramic...” She is currently researching a live art work, including a third full poetry collection. In it she continues to rework standard narratives, this time imagining same-sex relationships and cross-gender experiences among ‘West Indian’ workers on the Panama Canal in the early 1900’s.
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