Black Matters

Afua Cooper, Halifax’s seventh Poet Laureate, is the author of five books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed Copper Woman and Other Poems and two novels, The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montreal, and My Name is Phillis Wheatley. She has also recorded two poetry CDs, including the forthcoming Love and Revolution. A founder of the Canadian Dub poetry movement, Afua Cooper was instrumental in organizing between 2004 and 2009, three international dub poetry festivals.Dr. Wilfried Raussert is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar. He works across the boundaries of music, literature, photography, art, and literary criticism. He is Chair of North American and Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany. He is director of the International Association of InterAmerican Studies, author and editor of 20 scholarly books, including Art Begins in Streets Art Lives in Streets, Cultural Memory and Multiple Identities, and Traveling Sounds: Music, Migration and Identity in the U.S. and Beyond.

“This artful text is the emphatic means by which Afua Cooper and Wilfried Raussert arrive at this historical moment. Crafted on an anvil of brilliant collaboration in the wild and overlapping histories of the modern world, the marks of Black life are revealed everywhere. This far-seeing work is a beautiful visual object that imagines us beyond the narrow spaces of coloniality. Black Matters intervenes at every turn.”

• : Acknowledgements: Introduction: John Ware: Magician Cowboy: Fugitive: Jupiter Wise: Uncles: Shots Rang Out on My Street Today: What Do You Do with the Hurt?: For Poetry’s Sake: The Four Seasons: Cimarron: Guadalajara Street: Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right: Lami and Nina: Things I Like Doing: Live with You in a House by the River: You Dance: Bad Bwoy Jimi: Queen of Cool: See-far Woman: A World Greener Than Eden: Congo Songs: By the Rivers of Babylon, Part Two