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    I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems
    I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems
    I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems
    Ebook217 pages1 hour

    I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems

    By Grace Nichols

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    About this ebook

    Grace Nichols' poetry has a gritty lyricism that addresses the transatlantic connections central to the Caribbean-British experience. Her work brings a mythic awareness and a sensuous musicality that is at the same time disquieting. Born and educated in Guyana, Grace Nichols moved to Britain in 1977. I Have Crossed an Ocean is a comprehensive selection spanning some 25 years of her writing.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloodaxe Books
    Release dateMar 27, 2014
    ISBN9781780370347
    I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems
    Author

    Grace Nichols

    Born in Guyana, Grace Nichols has lived in Britain since 1977. Her first collection, I is a Long Memoried Woman (1983) won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Her later poetry collections – published by Virago – include The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984), Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (1989), Sunris (1996), winner of the Guyana Prize, and Startling the Flying Fish (2006), poems which tell the story of the Caribbean, along with several poetry books for younger readers, including Come on into My Tropical Garden (1988), Give Yourself a Hug (1994), Everybody Got a Gift (2005) and Cosmic Disco (2013). She has published two books with Bloodaxe, her latest collection, Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009), and I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010), published on the occasion of her 60th birthday. Her latest collection, The Insomnia Poems, is due from Bloodaxe in 2017. She lives in Sussex with the poet John Agard and their family.

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      Book preview

      I Have Crossed an Ocean - Grace Nichols

      GRACE NICHOLS

      I HAVE CROSSED AN OCEAN

      SELECTED POEMS

      Grace Nichols’ poetry has a gritty lyricism that addresses the transatlantic connections central to the Caribbean-British experience. Her work brings a mythic awareness and a sensuous musicality that is at the same time disquieting. Born and educated in Guyana, Grace Nichols moved to Britain in 1977. I Have Crossed an Ocean is a comprehensive selection spanning some 25 years of her writing.

      ‘Not only rich music, an easy lyricism, but also grit, and earthy honesty, a willingness to be vulnerable and clean’

      –

      GWENDOLYN BROOKS

      ‘Grace Nichols has wit, acidity, tenderness, any number of gifts at her disposal’

      –

      JEANETTE WINTERSON

      ‘Grace Nichols came to Britain from Guyana at the age of 27 and she has carried the warmth of her Caribbean sensibility through many a cold English winter. Her poems celebrate sensuality and generosity and attack petty mean-spiritedness… Deeply Caribbean in sensibility, she writes sensitively of other traditions, especially Africa and India’

      –

      PETER FORBES

      , Contemporary Writers

      ‘From her first collection in 1983, I Is a Long Memoried Woman, she has been a strong presence in the linguistic interweave between the Caribbean and the UK. Her poetry and prose move easily between the poised world of Western culture, Old World history and myth, and the gritty rhythms of the Caribbean everyday… There is wit, irony and passion…real poise’

      –

      MICHELENE WANDOR

      , Poetry Review

      COVER PAINTING

      Olmec Maya – Now and Coming Time (1985)

      by Aubrey Williams

      OIL ON CANVAS © DACS, 2010 / TATE, LONDON 2010

      Grace Nichols

      I HAVE CROSSED AN OCEAN

      SELECTED POEMS

      For John, Lesley, Kalera and Yansan,

      and for my sisters and brother,

      Avril, Valerie, Dennis and Claire

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      This book includes poems which Grace Nichols has herself chosen from her previous collections: I Is a Long-Memoried Woman (Karnak House, 1983); The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984), Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (1989), Sunris (1996) and Startling the Flying Fish (2006) – all published by Virago. The poems for younger readers are from the following books: Come On Into My Tropical Garden (A&C Black, 1988), No Hickory No Dickory No Dock (Puffin/Viking 1991), Give Yourself a Hug (A&C Black, 1994), The Poet Cat (Bloomsbury, 2000), Paint Me a Poem (A&C Black, 2004) and Everybody Got a Gift (new and selected, A&C Black, 2004).

      A new collection by Grace Nichols, Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009), is published by Bloodaxe Books separately from this book.

      CONTENTS

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Acknowledgements

      FROM

      I Is a Long-Memoried Woman

      (1983)

      from One Continent to Another

      Days That Fell

      Waterpot

      Each Time They Came

      Taint

      Sacred Flame

      Without Song

      Ala

      Sugar Cane

      Like a Flame

      Up My Spine

      I Coming Back

      Night Is Her Robe

      Skin-Teeth

      Love Act

      In My Name

      Yemanji

      Like Anansi

      Of Golden Gods

      I Will Enter

      This Kingdom

      Wind a Change

      Omen

      Holding My Beads

      Epilogue

      FROM

      The Fat Black Woman’s Poems

      (1984)

      Price We Pay for the Sun

      Those Women

      The candlefly

      Iguana Memory

      Star-apple

      Be a Butterfly

      Back Home Contemplation

      Praise Song for My Mother

      Like a Beacon

      Island Man

      Spring

      Waiting for Thelma’s laughter

      Winter Thoughts

      Two Old Black Men on a Leicester Square Park Bench

      THE FAT BLACK WOMAN’S CYCLE

      The Assertion

      The Fat Black Woman’s Motto on Her Bedroom Door

      The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping

      A Fat Poem

      Tropical Death

      Invitation

      Thoughts Drifting Through the Fat Black Woman’s Head While Having a Full Bubble Bath

      The Fat Black Woman’s Instructions to a Suitor

      Small Questions Asked by the Fat Black Woman

      FROM

      Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman

      (1989)

      Dust

      Grease

      With Apologies to Hamlet

      In Spite of Me

      Wherever I Hang

      My Black Triangle

      Even Tho

      Configurations

      Abra-Cadabra

      Out of Africa

      FROM

      Sunris

      (1996)

      Introduction to Sunris

      Sunris

      To the Running of My River

      Timehri Airport to Georgetown

      Blackout

      First Generation Monologue

      Long Man

      My Northern Sister

      Against the Planet

      Black

      White

      Wings

      Icons

      Hurricane Hits England

      FROM

      Startling the Flying Fish

      (2006)

      My Children Are Movers

      To My Coral Bones

      I, Cariwoma Watched History

      Other Ships

      In My Sea-House

      Palm-Tree Seductions

      Facing Atlantic

      Startling the Flying Fish

      Is That You, Columbus?

      Our Cassandra

      The People Could Fly

      Many an Aztec Eye

      Gold

      Mother of the Mestizo

      You There, Hummingbird,

      Old Canecutter at Airport

      Cane Still Dancing

      Hibiscus

      Sly Anansi

      Why Shouldn’t I

      Not the Kind of Tree

      Rain Music

      For the Life of This Planet

      Follow That Painting Back

      Ink of Exile

      The Children of Las Margaritas

      Lip-shore

      Footprints of My Arrival

      Poems for Younger Readers

      Sun Is Laughing

      Headmistress Moon

      In the Great Womb-Moon

      Baby-K Rap Rhyme

      Give Yourself a Hug

      Cat-Shots

      Cat-Rap

      Sleeping Out

      Me and Mister Polite

      Turner to His Critic

      Come On into My Tropical Garden

      Mama-Wata

      For Forest

      Wha Me Mudder Do

      Granny Granny Please Comb My Hair

      Don’t Cry Caterpillar

      Ar-a-rat

      Teenage Earthbirds

      Book-heart

      GLOSSARY

      About the Author

      Copyright

      from

      I IS A LONG-MEMORIED WOMAN

      (1983)

      Even in dreams I will submerge myself

      swimming like one possessed

      back and forth across that course

      strewing it with sweet smelling flowers -

      one for

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