Skip to main content

Poet Jason Allen-Paisant: ‘We belong in the picture’

The Jamaican-born author on exploring nature and black identity in his nonfiction debut, his chaotic writing habits, and how the TS Eliot prize changed his life

Jason Allen-Paisant, born in Jamaica in 1980, is a poet, writer and academic. Currently a professor of critical theory and creative writing at Manchester University, he released his debut poetry collection, Thinking With Trees, in 2021. His second collection, Self-Portrait as Othello, (2023) won the TS Eliot and the Forward prize. Through time spent in the north of England and Jamaica’s rural Coffee Grove district, his debut in nonfiction, The Possibility of Tenderness (Penguin), intimately explores ideas around class, leisure, economics and self-discovery, looking closely at the life of his farmer grandmother, as well as the plants and people that shaped who he is today. Allen-Paisant lives in Leeds with his wife and two children.

The Possibility of Tenderness is a departure from your work in poetry. How did you go about writing it?
I started with a mix of poetry and prose. Then I thought to write a series of essays [and] hammer out some of these big questions around leisure and class within nature but I remember thinking: “All of the ideas that I’m talking about in a theoretical way, I can bring them all out if I just tell a story.” My grandma, “Mama”, she’s the protagonist outside myself. I can use the story of her life to talk about planting, food independence, food sovereignty, living with plants, plants as medicine, globalisation and its effects and kinship with the land.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/JHNzdXF
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX
Post a Comment
Read more

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw
Post a Comment
Read more

The Green Planet review – David Attenborough’s gobsmacking, awe-inspiring return

From glowing bioluminescent fungus to 7,000 different camera set-ups for ants, the veteran broadcaster’s miraculous profile of plant life will have you gasping in astonishment so often you’ll be breathless One of the televisual joys I most remember from childhood was when a programme – often a nature documentary, but sometimes a few seconds on Sesame Street or a Tomorrow’s World demonstration of new technology – would show a flower unfolding with time-lapse photography. It was always sudden, always fleeting, and of course there weren’t even any recording buttons – let alone live pausing and rewinding facilities – that you could quickly press in order to capture and relive the delight. It was ever ephemeral, and I could never get enough. Until now, with the latest gift from David Attenborough and his endlessly patient and dedicated team of camera operators (to whom a now traditional 10-minute coda is again devoted), The Green Planet (BBC One). The new five-part series presented by the...
Post a Comment
Read more