AUTHOR ROSALIENE BACCHUS


Reaching minds and hearts through storytelling



POEM "WORK" BY JAMAICAN POET LAUREATE KWAME DAWES



KWAME DAWES, Poet Laureate of Jamaica 2024-2017, is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays. Born in Ghana in 1962, he moved with his family to his father’s ancestral home of Jamaica in 1971. He became a naturalized citizen, having spent most of his childhood and early adult life in the Caribbean Island nation. Since then, he has lived most of his adult life in the United States.


Of his twenty-two collections of poetry, his most recent titles include:

  • Sturge Town (2023), Poetry Book Society Choice
  • City of Bones (2017)
  • Speak from Here to There (2016)
  • Duppy Conqueror (2013), winner of the Paterson Prize for Literary Excellence
  • Wheels (2011)
  • Back of Mount Peace (2009)
  • Hope’s Hospice (2009) • Impossible Flying (2007)
  • Gomer’s Song (2007) and
  • Wisteria (2005), finalist for the Patterson Memorial Prize

Dawes is also the editor of many anthologies including:

  • Seeking: Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green (2013)
  • Jubilation: 50 Poets Celebrating Jamaican Independence (2012)
  • A Bloom of Stones: A Tri-Lingual Anthology of Haitian Poems After the Earthquake (2012)
  • Hold Me to an Island: Caribbean Place (2012)
  • So Much Things to Say: 100 Calabash Poets (2010) and
  • Home is Where: An Anthology of African American Poetry from the Carolinas (2001)

In 2004, Dawes received the Musgrave Silver Medal for contribution to the Arts in Jamaica. The Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award for service to the Arts in South Carolina followed in 2008. A year later, he was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. In 2022, the Jamaican government awarded him the National Order of Distinction, Commander Class.


Until July 2011, Dawes was the Distinguished Poet in Residence, Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts, and founder/executive director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. He is currently the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska, where he is a Chancellor’s Professor of English, a faculty member of Cave Canem, and a teacher in the Pacific MFA Program in Oregon. He is co-founder and programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, held in Jamaica in May of each year.


Photo of Kwame Dawes by Chris Abani

Poet’s Official Website: https://kwamedawes.com




POEM "WORK" BY KWAME DAWES



Nine days to go, working for the next day

— Bob Marley "Work"


It is easy to slide over the word work,

take it to mean what it isn't.

Look at this man's hands, look

at the toughness in his fingers,

the way his nails darken at the edges,

the way his skin is marked

by old scars, the way his palms

are leather-tough – a grater of skin

if he drags them over your arm.

Those hands still remember

the grooves where the blisters

would settle and then harden

to toughness from holding the handle

of the clumsy seed-planter

bouncing on the uneven furrows,

planting, planting. Sometimes it's easier

not to know that on the plantation

out there on James Island,

every morning, seven days a week,

a bell sounds out, just thirty minutes

left before you line up by the fields

to start to sweat all day

to pay rent on that wood shingle

and mud chimney that they've given you.

And if you miss a day, your family

will lose shelter. That is work,

keeping the wolves from your door,

the left foot following the right,

the sickle swinging, the dirt

on your skin, and the shadow

over you when the script runs out.

Work is always behind, always owing






POEM "WORK" continued



somebody something – payment in June

for debt from December when the cold

reached into your gut, held you down.

Work is one pair of shoes each season –

grown man barefoot all summer long,

and mules for the freeze all winter.

Work is the crocus sack, stained

with dung and sweat, smacking your back,

filled with cotton. Work is the day

you think you are grown enough

to run, to stop this constant stepping back,

only to find that big-bellied white man

with his straw hat, overalls, cigar

in his mouth and black-as-night shades,

with a shotgun in his hand saying,

"Here are some stripes, nigger,

nice stripes to help you work better.

Now you get three meals a day, uncle,

now you get a bed to sleep on, boy,

now you got something to live for."

Work is the time you spend trying to eat away

the time you owe, work is all a nigger has

for sure, and work tells you that nobody,

nobody is going to give you something

for nothing. Work is like breathing,

but after a while there is no more

breathing left, and every breath

is a loan, and your pocket is empty,

and you will never pay it back. Work is all

a man has, and work is nothing,

nothing at all – work, work, work, work...



SOURCE: Sturge Town: Poems by Kwame Dawes, published

by Peepal Tree Press Ltd., UK, 2023, pp. 82-83.