Nii Ayikwei Parkes – författare

Filigree typically refers to the finer elements of craftwork, the parts that are subtle; our 'Filigree' anthology contains work that plays with the possibilities that the word suggests, work that is delicate, that responds to the idea of edging, to a comment on the marginalisation of the darker voice. Filigree includes work from established Black British poets residing inside and outside the UK; new and younger emerging voices of Black Britain and Black poets who have made it their home as well as a selection of the Inscribe poets who we have nurtured and continue to support. They have all responded in compelling ways to the concept of 'Filigree'. Tolu Agbelusi – Sui Anukka – Raymond Antrobus – Lynne E Blackwood – Siddhartha Bose (Sid) – Victoria Bulley – Michael Campbell – Nana-Essi Casely-Hayford – Maya Chowdhry – Rishi Dastidar – Tishani Doshi – Zena Edwards – Samatar Elmi – Christina Fonthes – Patricia Foster – Kat François – Nandita Ghose – Nikheel Gorolay – Keith Jarrett – Maggie Harris – Joshua Idehen – Sumia Jamaa – Pete Kalu – Fawzia Kane – Rachel Long – Adam Lowe – Nick Makoha – Roy Mcfarlane – Ronnie McGrath – Momtaza Mehri – Sai Murray – Selina Nwulu – Louisa Adjoa Parker – Aisha Phoenix – Barsa Ray – Akila Richards – Maureen Roberts – Roger Robinson – Selina Rodrigues – Seni Seneviratne – Ioney Smallhorne – Degna Stone – Hugh Stultz – Ruth Sutoyé – Keisha Thompson – Gemma Weekes

A stunning new collection from Nii Ayikwei Parkes, featuring poems which embrace play, love and the ephemeral such as water bodies, blood/heritage, history and gossip; and a healthy dose of music and popular culture.Concerned with the phase of life sometimes referred to as the midlife crisis, The Geez navigates the blurred lines between age and youth; the real and the imagined; what is seen and what is -- what catches the gaze and what lies beneath. Conceived in four sections, the collection moves from play, to love, to gossip and - finally - to explorations of the intersections of self and contemporary culture, including a segment inspired by blues legends, riffing on the myth of the crossroads, as well as an eleven-part love letter to the African diaspora -- specifically African-Americans, whose sacrifices have contributed to the still-suppressed freedoms of Black folk globally. A number of the poems in The Geez are written in a form called the Gimbal, which was developed by Nii -- initially to work through his enduring grief at the loss of his father. It is now a form that has evolved to mine emotion within a guiding format that, for him, evokes the workings of a gyroscope -- spinning but stable -- a state that echoes the liminality that anchors this collection."The questing and questioning poems of Nii Ayikwei Parkes’ The Geez range across time and continents, synthesising the broad and resistant histories of the global black community, with intimate questions about love, family, parenthood and grief. Formally inventive, the collection sings with its own music and with a consciousness of the transformative power of black music in the diaspora. It is rare to find a book so fiercely political and emotionally intimate. A compelling and captivating collection." Hannah Lowe

Azúcar is a novel about belonging in a world where all things are on the move: people, ideas, foods and not least music.

Oswald Kole Osabutey Jnr, henceforth Yunior, leaves his family in Accra to travel to the mythical Caribbean island of Fumaz where the revolutionary philosophy of peopleism just about keeps its flame alive against the forces of a USSRs-inspired political bureaucracy and a stifling trade blockade from imperialist USAs. Yunior brings the knowledge of the scientist, the skills of a farmer and the heart and invention of a musician to life in Fumaz. He must find some way of rescuing the island’s famed sweet rice industry from collapse; as farmer, he sees how much of his West African food has journeyed across the Atlantic to make the island’s unique cuisine; as musician he becomes part of the spirit that puts the island on the world stage, out of all proportion to its size.

This is a novel of ideas – how much is accidental in the world? How much can be planned? – but it is love and death, harmony and conflict and the motives of vividly drawn characters that are the drivers of this zany narrative whose prose is as flowing, elegant and heartfelt as the music that moves freely back and forth across the seas between Africa and the Caribbean.

'Extraordinary.' -Monique Roffey