Nii ayikwei parkes poems about friendship

for Pops

Night cannot grasp the swift flight

of wind, but blackens every tree

the air moves, paints them darker, pushes

them against the light, the shapeless

light that gives them shape to shift

before my eyes. I am often in the embrace

of night; I am myself a dark thing –

the kind that was once called boy when man –

that was born of a woman descended from hills

and a man delivered from boyhood by the sea,

a man now lifeless though he gave me life.

I am often in the embrace of dark thoughts,

in the dim grasp of memory, a bottle in hand,

reflecting the light of the moon. I recall

a can of Guinness left in a London fridge –

one my father bought but didn’t get to drink –

kept for me by a well-meaning aunt. And how

hard my throat shrank with every sip, how sharp

that smooth black liquid felt inside me, how hard

these nights that blacken me, broken with grief

for a man I loved, who can no longer grieve.

from The Geez (Peepal Tree, ), © Nii Ayikwei Parkes , used by permission of the author

Filigree: Contemporary Black British Poetry

August 23,

Poems in this rich and varied collection encompass many countries and continents. Speakers are often in transit, between countries, handling multiple currencies, living between time zones, Skype-calling family, their speech a medley of non-European languages and urban-English slang. Poets in this book use their craft to give new life to a language that seeks to subjugate them. In Filigree, in addition to traditional poetry forms, poets use a wide variety of techniques such as strikethrough, erasure, fragmentation, broken words, concrete poems, prose and playscript, as well as blending standard with non-standard English, slang and free grammar to create a multitude of original, inventive poems which are thrilling to read. A comprehensive introduction by Dorothy Wang and an anthology of over 70 poems make this book a valuable addition to any poetry library, whether in a home, school, university or other community setting. Read my full review online at Peepal Tree Press or at Nine Arches Press blog. Originally published in Under the Radar magazine.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes

Nii Ayikwei Parkes grew up in Ghana but was born in the UK where he later returned for further study, where with the friendship and tutelage of fellow black poets he became a vibrant new voice in British performance poetry.

Parkes has published five books of poems, beginning with the pamphlet eyes of a boy, lips of a man (), M is for Madrigal (), and the Michael Marks Award-shortlisted ballast: a remix (). His debut collection, The Makings of You, was published by Peepal Press in That year, Parkes also published his first novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and translated into multiple languages, winning both of France&#;s major prizes for translated fiction – Prix Baudelaire and Prix Laure Bataillon. His most recent collection, The Geez, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for , described by PBS as navigating &#;the blurred lines between age and youth; the real and the imagined; what is seen and what is.&#; The Geez was also longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and shortlisted for the Walcott Prize for Poetry. Other honours include visiting positions at the University of Southampton and Calif

The basketball games I used to watch were

taped from a scrambled channel, had no sound

to speak of. I used to replay them in my head,

lend my own fillip to the images, splice them

into details: a hand like the arc of a mother’s

belly awaiting the return of a ball sent down

to concrete; a half-raised foot – pre-fake and swivel;

a fall, fluid and dramatic, alive with the sweat

of exertion. For me, the moves had no names

but there were patterns in the chaos; determination

flexed hard on five faces usually muscled a win.

Those games had a silent energy that hung over

me, left clouds in my head that school could not

disperse. Walking past the main court for my piano

lessons, I would stop, listen to the older boys bragging,

belittling each other as they contorted their bodies

into screens of guile. I only went four times before

I skipped my first lesson – enough time for me to learn

scales, how to hold my hand above the keys, curved

like a basketball, but not enough to play anything

but do re mi and the bass lines of hit songs I’d heard

at the time. It seemed like music had lost the battle.

I learnt the language of the court: how to bow

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