Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2025
Shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Poetry Prize for Caribbean Literature 2025
Shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize 2025
Christine Roseeta Walker's first book is set entirely in Negril, Jamaica. Coco Island
presents a compelling cycle of poems, attentive to the undertow and
hidden forces that shape a place and its people. In narrative poems, in
songs, in fables, in comic scenes, ghost stories and vivid character
sketches - especially of girls and women - Walker artfully lays bare how
economic necessity, religious belief, illness and addiction reach far
into the structures of family life and community. Piecing together the
isolated lives of those left behind as the island modernises, her
fearless, memorable poems chart the devastation of a world.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
'Christine Roseeta Walker can spin a long line as thick as crabs in a barrel foaming and looking for a 'mongoose sun'. Equally, she can shape a narrow concrete poem like a stick, re-delivering the impact of remembered shock. Poem after poem, the Island itself wraps you in every aspect of its texture. You will be compelled by greeting cards and cobwebs, fireflies and broken glasses, cemetery and bedroom. Through the lived and dreamt encounters of humans and other sensitive creatures desirous of a better world, Coco Island delicately explores current cruelty and the legacy of transgenerational trauma. Both magician and engineer, Walker steers us through perspectival shifts, resisting familiar "Caribbean" tropes: grandmothers don't provide teaching, mischief is in the undeclared, and madness and witchcraft pass down from Macbeth's cold land. The gorgeousness of narrative, dramatic, and other forms of saying and writing grip you and pull you close.' - Anthony Vahni Capildeo
'Not least among the achievements of Christine Roseeta Walker's work is an enviable kind of literary alchemy. Her poems transmute the stuff of a Jamaican childhood and heritage into a language which both invites and quietly disturbs.' - Rachel Mann
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Maße
Höhe: 135 mm
Breite: 216 mm
Dicke: 12 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-80017-400-9 (9781800174009)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Christine Roseeta Walker is a Jamaican poet and novelist living on the outskirts of Manchester, England. She studied Creative Writing at the University of Salford and the University of Manchester. Her debut novel, The Grass is Weeping, is a revenge tragedy set in Jamaica. She also works as a commissioned poet with an archaeologist working in the Peak District, and she spends her time writing and organising poetry reading workshops in care homes for people living with dementia.
