Happy Birthday, Kwame Dawes, born 28 July 1962.
Quotes
- I work with musicians routinely, and we continue to combine music and poetry in ways that I think are meaningful.
- This poet is a griot in search of a village.
- I believe that all fiction is personal and all writing is at some level personal. As you may know, my motto is: ‘All memory is fiction’. It could just as easily be: ‘All fiction is memory’. Unpacked, these two statements defy the ease of logic, but offer some really important truths about narrative art, at the very least, and about memory. So I would say that all art is personal.
- Maybe that is the power of poetry. It somehow transcends news cycles, and becomes a part of our collective imagination.
- I am most interested in people. I try to capture their complexity and contradiction and beauty. It does not matter where they are from.
Read Kwame Dawes Memo to Poets – A Twitter Journey
Kwame Dawes is Ghana-born poet, actor, editor, critic, and musician, who grew up in Jamaica. His collections of poetry include Wisteria: Poems From the Swamp Country, Impossible Flying, and Back of Mount Peace. He is Professor of English at the University of Nebraska and editor-in-chief at the Prairie Schooner.
Photo: Via publicists / credit to © Rachel Eliza Griffiths
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