(Dawes, Kwame) Kwame Dawes is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, including, most recently, Duppy Conqueror, Wheels, Back of Mount Peace, and Hope’s Hospice. He has also published two novels, Bivouac and She’s Gone, winner of the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best First Novel. An accomplished actor, playwright, and producer, fifteen of his plays have been produced, and he has acted in, directed, or produced several of these productions himself, most recently One Love at the Lyric Hammersmith in London. His essays have appeared in numerous journals including Bomb Magazine, The London Review of Books, Granta, Essence, World Literature Today, and Double Take Magazine. Until July 2011, Dawes was Distinguished Poet in Residence, Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts, and founder and executive director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. The lyric poems in City of Bones: A Testament (Northwestern University Press) constitute a restless jeremiad for our times, and Dawes’s inimitable voice peoples this collection with multitudes of souls urgently and forcefully singing, shouting, groaning, and dreaming about the African diasporic present and future. As the twentieth collection in the poet’s hallmarked career, City of Bones reaches a pinnacle, adding another chapter to the grand narrative of invention and discovery cradled in the art of empathy that has defined his prodigious body of work.
Kwame Dawes se otè sèz koleksyon pwezi, tankou paregzanp, dènye sa ki parèt yo, Duppy Conqueror, Wheels, Back of Mount Peace, ak Hope’s Hospice. Li pibliye de (2) woman tou, Bivouac ak She’s Gone, ki genyen Pri Hurston/Wright Legacy 2008 la pou Pi Bon Premye Woman. Li se yon aktè, otè pyès teyat, ak pwodiktè plen talan; yo pwodui kenz nan pyès teyat li yo, epi li jwe, dirije, oswa pwodui plizyè nan pyès sa yo li menm, pi dènyèman One Love nan Lyric Hammersmith nan vil Lonn. Esè literè li yo parèt nan plizyè jounal tankou paregzanp Bomb Magazine, The London Review of Books, Granta, Essence, World Literature Today, ak Double Take Magazine. Jiska jiyè 2011, Dawes te Powèt Envite Distenge, Pwofesè La Liberal Louis Frye Scudder, epi li se fondatè ak direktè egzekitif South Carolina Poetry Initiative. Pwezi lirik ki nan City of Bones: A Testament (Northwestern University Press) se yon jeremyad san repo pou epòk nou an, epi vwa san parèy Dawes la peple koleksyon sa a avèk yon miltitid nanm k ap chante avèk fòs, rele, bougonnen, ak reve sou prezan ak avni dyaspora afriken an. Kòm ventyèm koleksyon nan karyè remakab powèt la, City of Bones atenn yon somè, li ajoute yon lòt chapit nan bèl istwa envansyon ak dekouvèt ki plontonnen nan konpreyansyon ki defini èv fòmidab li a.