Kwame Dawes - THE POETRY MANUSCRIPT AS MIX-TAPE

Every poetry book is a unique thing. Every poetry book is the same. Neither of these statements is true, but there is a vexing way in which they are both true statements. This hands-on craft-talk and workshop will focus on the challenges and opportunities that can come with thinking about organizing a poetry collection for the literary market. Using examples from existing works of poetry, and drawing on years of experience editing, judging, and organizing poetry collections, Dawes will lead participants through a few processes that should prove useful as they consider their own poetry collections.

Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent collection is Sturge Town (Peepal Tree Press, UK 2023). Dawes is a George W. Holmes University Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He teaches in the Pacific 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 for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Kwame Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award 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.

Note: Kwame's latest collection will be available at the masterclass.

Sturge Town is a stunning collection of poems that connects with the earliest days of Kwame Dawes’ work as a poet, from the roots of childhood in Ghana to the reflections of a man turned sixty who is witnessing his children occupying the space he once considered his own. It ranges from poems that make something special of the everyday, to poems of the most astonishing imaginative leaps into the numinous.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Somerset House, Strand, London, United Kingdom