Tracks of My Name

Nyhet

Häftad, Engelska, 2026

349 kr

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The Tracks of My Name sees Grace Nichols embarking on a journey across the English countryside to the small town of Olney in Buckinghamshire. Olney was where the one-time English slave-trader (later abolitionist) John Newton lived and wrote his famous hymn, Amazing Grace which inspired her Guyanese Methodist parents to name her Grace Olney after both hymn and place. A narrative sequence that reads as a personal quest, The Tracks of My Name lyrically and imaginatively explores the relationship between memory and history, conscience and greed, as well as a sense of place and love of landscape, through her own distinctive way of viewing the world. Elsewhere she continues the interweave between her Guyanese/Caribbean and British heritages, striking a more celebratory note with poems that draw from her various cultures. And as the ocean lashed its leviathan tails and Wind wailed like a chainsaw carried by drowned slaves, John Newton, the self-confessed blasphemer, began to pray The Tracks of My Name is Grace Nichols's fourth new collection with Bloodaxe since her retrospective, I Have Crossed an Ocean (2010), following Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009), The Insomnia Poems (2017) and Passport to Here and There (2020). She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for 2021. Her poetry is studied in UK schools as part of the GCSE National Curriculum.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2026-11-19
Mått156 x 234 x 8 mm
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
FörlagBloodaxe Books Ltd
ISBN9781780377551

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Poesi inom Skonlitteratur

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. Most of that book is included in her later retrospective, I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010). Four subsequent poetry collections were published by Virago: 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. Her later books from Bloodaxe are Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009); I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010); The Insomnia Poems (2017); Passport to Here and There (2020), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation; and The Tracks of My Name (2026). She has also published 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 lives in Sussex with the poet John Agard and their family. She was made a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020. Grace Nichols received The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for 2021 from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle in 2022.

Over the past four decades, Grace has been an original, pioneering voice in the British poetry scene. A noted reader and ‘performer’ of her work, she has embraced the tones of her adopted country and yet maintained the cadences of her native tongue. Her poems are alive with characters from the folklore and fables of her Caribbean homeland, and echo with the rhymes and rhythms of her family and ancestors. Song-like or prayer-like on occasion, they exhibit an honesty of feeling and a generosity of spirit. They are also passionate and sensuous at times, being daring in their choice of subject and openhearted in their outlook. Above all, Grace Nichols has been a beacon for black women poets in this country, staying true to her linguistic coordinates and poetic sensibilities, and offering a means of expression that has offered inspiration and encouragement to many. She is a moving elegist, and a poet of conciliation and constructive dialogue between cultures, but also a voice of questioning dissent when the occasion demands.