Respect Due: Symposium on the Work of Kwame Dawes

The  inaugural symposium on the work of a major poet.

Three weekly installments of essays—by peers, elders, students, collaborators, colleagues, friends, observers and witnesses of Kwame Dawes—attentively engage with his work to inform us of the nuances of his significance while resonating with the ethics, aesthetics and insights that make him so remarkable.

The contributors responded  to questions of poetics, thematics, craft, lineage, and artistic and cultural contributions, critically examining the lines and arcs of Dawes’ poetry, thought and praxis and, in several cases, specific memories of him in order to address his impact personally, socially and historically.

Visit the Poetry International  site  to read the full symposium.
 
FORUM ONE

Set Dem Free Again”: Duppy Conqueror and the Invocation of Legacy by Corinna McLeod

What We Have Learned by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Kwame Dawes’ Requiem—Or, A Defense of Narrative in Black Poetry by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

FORUM TWO

Prophet Man by Shara McCallum

BOSOMTWA: The Sacred and Profane in Kwame Dawes’Prophets by Vladimir Lucien

Seven for Kwame by Kevin Simmonds

Forum Three

Kwame Dawes on Shore by Ishion Hutchinson

On Kwame Dawes by Linton Kwesi Johnson

Kwame Dawes and the Reggae Aesthetic: a cultural, social and political proposition by John Robert Lee

Respect Due to Kwame by Lorna Goodison

POSTSCRIPT

Sight by Kwame Dawes (poem) & Kevin Simmonds (music & commentary)

Visit

Kwame Dawes: An Archive of Online Poems