Book description
Humour, gender, sexuality, sensuality, identity, racism, cultural
difference: when do any of these things ever come together to equal
poetry? When Jackie Kay's part of the equation. Darling brings
together into a vibrant new book many favourite poems from her four
Bloodaxe collections, "The Adoption Papers", "Other
Lovers", "Off Colour" and "Life Mask", as
well as featuring new work, some previously uncollected poems, and
some lively poetry for younger readers. Kay's poems draw on her own
life and the lives of others to make a tapestry of voice and communal
understanding. The title of her acclaimed short story collection,
"Why Don't You Stop Talking", could be a comment on her own
poems, their urgency of voice and their recognition of the urgency in
all voice, particularly the need to be heard, to have voice. And what
voice -- the voices of the everyday, the voices of jazz, the voices of
this many-voiced United Kingdom.
