British Black and Asian Poetry

This book studies the aesthetics and politics of British Black and Asian Poetry in conditions of crisis.

Profiling a dozen prominent British poets of color who engage urgent social crises spanning policing and racial violence through cultural recognition by museums, publishing, and prizes, this book will appeal to scholars of race and literature and poetry enthusiasts alike. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.This book examines a wide sweep of prominent Black and Asian British poets, from Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jean 'Binta' Breeze through David Dabydeen, Bernardine Evaristo, and Jason Allen-Paisant. Throughout, Omaar Hena demonstrates how these poets engage with urgent crises surrounding race and social inequality over the past fifty years, spanning policing and racial violence in the 1970s and 1980s, through poetry's cultural recognition in the 1990s and 2000s by museums, the 2012 London Olympics, the publishing scene, and awards and prizes, as well as continuing social realities of riots and uprisings. In dub poetry, dramatic monologues, ekphrasis, and lyric, Hena argues that British Black and Asian poets perform racial politics in conditions of spiraling crisis. Engaged and insightful, this book argues that poetry remains a vital art form in twenty-first-century global Britain. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.