The Insomnia Poems - Softcover

Grace Nichols

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780373392 ISBN 13: 9781780373393

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2017

Synopsis

In her latest collection, The Insomnia Poems, Grace Nichols explores those nocturnal hours when Sleep (the thief who nightly steals your brain) is hard to come by, and the politics of the day hard to shut out, never mind the lavender-scented pillow. Here memories of her own Guyana childhood mingle with the sleeping spectres of dreams and folk legends such as Sleeping Beauty. A lyrical interweaving of tones and textures invites the reader into the zones between sleep and no-sleep, between the solitude of the dark and the awakening of the light.

The Insomnia Poems is Grace Nichols's first new collection since Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009). Neither that collection nor this one is included in her Bloodaxe retrospective, I Have Crossed an Ocean (2010).

About this title

Review:

This beautiful volume is so excellent in so many ways that the relevance of its subject matter is a very minor feature. Drawing inspiration from the worlds of art, poetry, mythology, and with its own inherent musicality rising from each and every poem, it is a cultural education... Not often bereft of words, this reviewer struggles to praise this volume highly enough. At least one copy should be in every school library. --Elizabeth Finlayson, The School Librarian [on The Insomnia Poems]

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

About the Author:

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 three books with Bloodaxe: Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009), I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010), and her latest collection, The Insomnia Poems (2017). She lives in Sussex with the poet John Agard and their family.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1780373392
• ISBN 13: 9781780373393
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64