Review: Time Cleaves Itself by Jeda Pearl, Peepal Tree Press, 2024

"An exciting debut collection negotiating an identity caught between a Jamaican and Scottish dual heritage. With an innovative mix of dialect (patois and brogue, rap and street slang) these poems follow brown bodies encountering racism, childbirth, disability; remembering slavery, colonialism and ancestral myths. The inventive use of the vernacular electrifies the page: “This land – dis ere land – is drookit with your blood” says the poet as she clarifies history and repression in a cauldron of past and present languages." - Shash Trevitt for Poetry Book Society Autumn Bulletin