An enthralling evening of poetry, stories and performance by two acclaimed Caribbean writers. Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze and Sharon Millar present poems and short stories and poems set in Jamaica and Trinidad.
Millar makes her UK debut at this event since her collection of stories The Whale House was published by Peepal Tree, and was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize this year for its tumultuous and compelling portrayal of contemporary Caribbean culture and Breeze reads from her new poetry collection The Verandah Poems (Bloodaxe) which was published earlier this year to mark her 60th birthday.
Event produced by Renaissance One and Southwark Libraries.
This event is offered free of charge as part of Southwark Libraries and Renaissance One's Black History Month programmes.
Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze MBE is a Jamaican poet and mentor, whose varied life and colourful personality has shaped a voice that demands attention, whether speaking of Third World poverty, the Caribbean, music, family, or themes that chart the human experience. Cited as a 'one woman festival' she has presented her work throughout the world, and she is the author of eight books including Riddim Ravings and Third World Girl: Selected Poems. She is an honorary Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Leicester and received an MBE for Services to Literature in 2012.
“The third world girl, at home for a while, sets these attractive poems in rural Jamaica. The easy-going voice talks of personal development, celebrates friends and family, comments on mortality, freedom, gender and class. The poet is examining, subtly, a more or less contented return to where her life began.”
Sharon Millar is a Trinidadian writer who lives in Port of Spain. She was a winner of The Commonwealth Short Story Prize and a recipient of a Small Axe Short Fiction award for The Whale House (Peepal Tree). Her work has appeared in The Caribbean Review of Books, Wasafiri, Small Axe and Granta. She lectures in prose fiction at the University of the West Indies and is writing her first novel.
“Millar has rooted herself into a Caribbean literature where language crackles and no ethnicity, gender, economic status or race is off limits. There is a sweet and bitter magic here that Millar performs via the bodies of the characters. This book made me catch my breath..The characters barb and the language sings.”
(Source: Event Brite)