{"title":"Nii Ayikwei Parkes","description":"Nii Ayikwei Parkes is an author and performance poet who has performed on major stages across the world, including at The Royal Festival Hall and at a reading for the London Mayor’s vigil on July 14, 2005 (in response to the London bombings). Nii is the Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing, a contributing editor to \u003cem\u003eThe Liberal\u003c\/em\u003e, a former poet in residence at The Poetry Café, a 2005 associate writer in residence on BBC Radio 3, and has held visiting positions at the University of Southampton and California State University. \n\nAs a socio-cultural commentator and advocate for African writing, Nii has led forums internationally, has sat on discussion panels for BBC Radio with literary heavyweights such as Booker winners, Margaret Atwood and A.S. Byatt, and he runs the African Writers’ Evening series, at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden.\n\nIn 2007 he was awarded Ghana’s National ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy.","products":[{"product_id":"the-north-47-25-years-in-the-north","title":"The North 47: 25 Years in the North","description":"\"Stars in the north are seen not to set.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoems, articles, reviews and features - including 25 year poems and reflections on 25 years of poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePlus Poets I Go Back To, The Collection and Blind Criticism. \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Smith\/Doorstop (The Poetry Business)","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040766284,"sku":"22305-0269-9885","price":8.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_71c19a2f-369e-4395-8bcb-aadb933a4eed.jpeg?v=1752237112"},{"product_id":"red-contemporary-black-british-poetry","title":"Red: Contemporary Black British Poetry","description":"\u003ci\u003eRed\u003c\/i\u003e is a powerful new anthology of work by Black British poets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Perhaps the most significant thing to be said about \u003ci\u003eRed\u003c\/i\u003e is that the poets in this volume burst through any constraining label with writing that throbs and pulses and seeps and flows.\" \u003cbr\u003eMargaret Busby\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRed\u003c\/i\u003e collects poems that engage 'red', poems by Black British poets writing with the word 'red' in mind—as a kind of leap-off point, a context, a germ—the way something small, minor, or grand might spur a poem. It offers the reader the freedom to come to whatever conclusions they want to about what writing as a poet who is also Black and British might mean.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe result is a book of poets ranging from well-established and published writers to first time poets. \u003ci\u003eRed\u003c\/i\u003e does find its usual associations with blood, violence, passion, and anger. Sometimes it is linked with sensuality and sexuality. But there are surprises, when red defines a memory or mood, the quality of light in a sky, the colour of skin, the sound of a song, and much, much more. The anthology, therefore, succeeds in producing poems that seem to be first about image, and only then about whatever else fascinates the poet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this sense, \u003ci\u003eRed\u003c\/i\u003e is a different kind of anthology of Black British writing, and the richness of the entries, the moods, the humour, the passion, the reflection, the confessional all confirm that Black British poetry is a lively and defining force in Britain today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEditor Kwame Dawes is a poet, novelist, playwright and critic. His work as an organiser and deliverer of poetry workshops has been hailed in many parts of the world, not least in the UK, USA and Jamaica, where he has been the Literary programmer of the Calabash International Literature Festival for the past ten years. His work as an editor received wide praise for \u003ci\u003eWheel and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRed\u003c\/i\u003e is published by Inscribe, an imprint of Peepal Tree. The Inscribe Series Editor is Kadija Sesay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eKwame Dawes\u003c\/b\u003e is widely acknowledged as the foremost Caribbean poet of the post-Walcott generation. He currently holds the position of Distinguished Poet In Residence and Louise Fry Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina.","brand":"Peepal Tree Press","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041100660,"sku":"9781845231293","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_58dc73c3-5255-4b26-8256-25d89c3a0037.jpeg?v=1752237646"},{"product_id":"filigree","title":"Filigree","description":"\u003cem\u003eFiligree \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003etypically refers to the finer elements of craftwork, the parts that are subtle; our 'Filigree' anthology contains work that plays with the possibilities that the word suggests, work that is delicate, that responds to the idea of edging, to a comment on the marginalisation of the darker voice. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eFiligree \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003eincludes work from established Black British poets residing inside and outside the UK; new and younger emerging voices of Black Britain and Black poets who have made it their home as well as a selection of the Inscribe poets who we have nurtured and continue to support. They have all responded in compelling ways to the concept of 'Filigree'. \u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Peepal Tree Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":12493365674062,"sku":"978‑1‑84523‑426‑3","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/original_3143fb49-0026-4bc3-9374-af5020fe2e79.jpg?v=1752239687"},{"product_id":"the-geez","title":"The Geez","description":"A stunning new collection from Nii Ayikwei Parkes, featuring poems which embrace play, love and the ephemeral such as water bodies, blood\/heritage, history and gossip; and a healthy dose of music and popular culture.  Concerned with the phase of life sometimes referred to as the midlife crisis, The Geez navigates the blurred lines between age and youth; the real and the imagined; what is seen and what is -- what catches the gaze and what lies beneath. Conceived in four sections, the collection moves from play, to love, to gossip and - finally - to explorations of the intersections of self and contemporary culture, including a segment inspired by blues legends, riffing on the myth of the crossroads, as well as an eleven-part love letter to the African diaspora -- specifically African-Americans, whose sacrifices have contributed to the still-suppressed freedoms of Black folk globally. A number of the poems in \u003ci\u003eThe Geez\u003c\/i\u003e are written in a form called the Gimbal, which was developed by Nii -- initially to work through his enduring grief at the loss of his father. It is now a form that has evolved to mine emotion within a guiding format that, for him, evokes the workings of a gyroscope -- spinning but stable -- a state that echoes the liminality that anchors this collection.  \"The questing and questioning poems of Nii Ayikwei Parkes’ The Geez range across time and continents, synthesising the broad and resistant histories of the global black community, with intimate questions about love, family, parenthood and grief. Formally inventive, the collection sings with its own music and with a consciousness of the transformative power of black music in the diaspora. It is rare to find a book so fiercely political and emotionally intimate. A compelling and captivating collection.\" \u003cb\u003eHannah Lowe\u003c\/b\u003e ","brand":"Peepal Tree Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":32629542879310,"sku":"9781845234775","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/original_3eadea72-64ac-4a9d-9d0c-5ed8382fede4.jpg?v=1752240073"},{"product_id":"azucar","title":"Azúcar","description":"\u003cp\u003eAzúcar (sugar) is a novel about belonging in a world where all things are on the move: people, ideas, foods and not least music. Oswald Kole Osabutey Jnr, henceforth Yunior, leaves his family in Accra to travel to the mythical Caribbean island of Fumaz where the revolutionary philosophy of peopleism just about keeps its flame alive against the forces of a USSRs-inspired political bureaucracy and a stifling trade blockade from imperialist USAs. Yunior brings the knowledge of the scientist, the skills of a farmer and the heart and invention of a musician to life in Fumaz. He must find some way of rescuing the island’s famed sweet rice industry from collapse; as farmer, he sees how much of his West African food has journeyed across the Atlantic to make the island’s unique cuisine; as musician he becomes part of the spirit that puts the island on the world stage, out of all proportion to its size. This is a novel of ideas – how much is accidental in the world? How much can be planned? – but it is love and death, harmony and conflict and the motives of vividly drawn characters that are the drivers of this zany narrative whose prose is as flowing, elegant and heartfelt as the music that moves freely back and forth across the seas between Africa and the Caribbean.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Peepal Tree Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44791690199329,"sku":"9781845235475","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/original_6da65e71-8f24-4523-a699-91cd5596a251.jpg?v=1752240715"}],"url":"https:\/\/inpressbooks.co.uk\/collections\/nii-ayikwei-parkes\/lemn-sissay.oembed","provider":"Inpress Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}