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In this new collection of
poetry, Kuwabong shows a maturity of voice and a larger poetic
vision to celebrate love—love for the people of the Caribbean
and love between lovers.
In the first part of this
collection the love that is
celebrated emerges from a deep sense of historical reconnection
with the poet’s African ancestors who were taken captive and
sent to the Caribbean. But the focus is not on the brutality of
their enslavement, though that is the guiding principle that
informs the poetic voice. The poems perform a retrospective
search for the roots that his African ancestors planted in the
new world without romanticizing their struggles, defeats, and
victories. Thus they recreate the continental African as a
seeker of a poetic understanding of the African Diaspora in the
Caribbean.
In the second part, Kuwabong takes the reader through a Prufrockian maze
of relationships complicated by expectations and
disappointments. The city of Hamilton, Ontario especially
provides the social and physical landscapes that initiate the
personae’s responses to love made tricky by the extreme
challenges of the mundane. Though the poems silently scream with
pain and disappointment, these moods are calmed by epiphanies of
extreme tenderness that bind the relationships. |
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Dannabang
Kuwabong is a Ghanaian Canadian born in Nanville in the
Upper West Region of Ghana. He was educated in Ghana, Scotland,
and Canada and teaches Caribbean literature at the University of
Puerto Rico, San Juan. He has a published three books: Konga
and other Dagaaba Folktales, Visions of Venom
(poetry), and Echoes from Dusty Rivers (poetry).
Kuwabong’s poetry adds a new dimension to the growing body of
new voices that is beginning to expand and redefine Canadian
literature. |