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Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent collection, UnHistory, was cowritten with John Kinsella (Peepal Tree Press, 2022). Dawes is a George W. Holmes University Professor of English and the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He teaches in the Pacific University MFA Program and is the series editor of the African Poetry Book Series, director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022, Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction, Commander class, by the Government of Jamaica.

Poetry

Nov/Dec 2019

South Carolina, Again

By Kwame Dawes

1 And all around the world, lovers’ bodies are tingling — then fatigue sets in. Will you teach me that my body is loved? I cannot carry my angst all night. I […]

Poetry

Nov/Dec 2019

The Stink

By Kwame Dawes

The eyes can become seared. Change your country, the light changes, the earth changes, the sky can be as comforting as the new unfamiliar place you have fled to. And […]

Poetry

Nov/Dec 2019

Lagos

By Kwame Dawes

That it is an island arrives as something of a revelation — but that is not the word, for I have known this in the music and the poems and the way […]

Poetry

Spring 2023

Gated

By Kwame Dawes

The Kenyon Review · “Gated” by Kwame Dawes Kingston I was raised in a city of clanking gates, the tinkling and metal symphonies of welcome, the ritual minutes looking through […]

Poetry

Spring 2023

The Remnant

By Kwame Dawes

The Kenyon Review · “The Remnant” by Kwame Dawes Debris spreads like the scattering of bones on the seabed, coral growing around the long history of bodies jettisoned. This is […]

Poetry

Jan/Feb 2015

In This Saying

By Kwame Dawes

i There is a way to end books; the gathered papers, their weighty gift—the clean parade of words in columns of paragraphs and in columns of images—the tidiness of things— […]