In 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 was 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).
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 four books with Bloodaxe, Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009), I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010), The Insomnia Poems (2017), and Passport to Here and There (2020). She lives in Sussex with the poet John Agard and their family.
Title: The Insomnia Poems
Author: Grace Nichols
ISBN: 9781780373393
Binding:
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publication Date: 2017-02-23
Number of Pages: 64
Weight: 0.1000 kg
Lunar and likeable, Grace Nichols's Insomnia Poems chart the hinterland between sleep and wakefulness, memory and desire, dreams and the realities of life. -- Suzannah V. Evans * Times Literary Supplement *
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] *
Not only rich music, an easy lyricism, but also grit, and earthy honesty, a willingness to be vulnerable and clean' - Gwendolyn Brooks. -- Gwendolyn Brooks
