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Shortlisted for the Forward Prizes 2023 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023, a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice
‘a joyous liberatory dance against oppression’ — Roger Robinson
Cane, Corn & Gully is a genealogical and autobiographical collection which unites dance and poetry to observe, question and ruminate on what it means to adopt, perform, and pass down the notion of black West Indian femininity. Using labanotation and rhythm to analyse movement from Caribbean dances to movements carried out in everyday rituals, Safiya Kamaria Whitaker (previously Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa) uses these motifs as a form of cartography for the poems.
Cane, Corn & Gully interrogates survival, sexual exploitation, race, gender, and class and invests in a unique discourse on the violence inflicted on the black female body (historically and presently). It explores the meaning of movement in oppressive ideological structures and serves to vindicate the rebellious acts of black women past, present and yet to come.
Shortlisted for the Forward Prizes 2023 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023, a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice
‘a joyous liberatory dance against oppression’ — Roger Robinson
Cane, Corn & Gully is a genealogical and autobiographical collection which unites dance and poetry to observe, question and ruminate on what it means to adopt, perform, and pass down the notion of black West Indian femininity. Using labanotation and rhythm to analyse movement from Caribbean dances to movements carried out in everyday rituals, Safiya Kamaria Whitaker (previously Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa) uses these motifs as a form of cartography for the poems.
Cane, Corn & Gully interrogates survival, sexual exploitation, race, gender, and class and invests in a unique discourse on the violence inflicted on the black female body (historically and presently). It explores the meaning of movement in oppressive ideological structures and serves to vindicate the rebellious acts of black women past, present and yet to come.
