Kwame Dawes

Biography

Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays, including Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2013). He has edited more than a dozen anthologies. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and teaches at the University of Nebraska and in the Pacific MFA Program. He is the director of the African Poetry Book Fund and the artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. 

http://www.kwamedawes.com/

See Work

VIDEO

The Guardy and the Shame

By Kwame Dawes ,  Photography by Andre Lambertson

Kwame Dawes confronts the legacy of homophobia and the shame in Jamaica’s largely Christian culture.

VIDEO

To Disclose or Not?

By Kwame Dawes ,  Photography by Andre Lambertson

In early December 2013 and early 2014, writer Kwame Dawes and photographer Andre Lambertson traveled to Jamaica to investigate the experience of people living with HIV/AIDS in the Christian church.

REPORTING / Winter 2015

The Guardy and the Shame

By Kwame Dawes ,  Photography by Andre Lambertson

Jamaicans are primed to contend with all who speak ill of their country. As someone who grew up and lived in Jamaica until my midtwenties—although I now live in the US—I understand how the culture reacts to criticism.
ESSAYS / Spring 2011

City of Dust, City of Stones

By Kwame Dawes ,  Photography by Andre Lambertson

Photographer Andre Lambertson and I visited Haiti together four times during 2010. We spent a week there on each occasion. We were there to learn and tell the story of HIV/AIDS in Haiti after the earthquake. Three hundred thousand Haitians...

Summer 2010

Breath

By Kwame Dawes

This song came from me—
my breath formed this sound,
full of groove and hope,

Summer 2010

White Pigeon

By Kwame Dawes

When I hold the pigeon,
white as sun-bright,

when I feel the bone
and muscle, the delicate

Summer 2010

In the Hospital

By Kwame Dawes

Who will plait
your hair, sister,
who will clean the matter
from your eyes,

Summer 2010

Getting High

By Kwame Dawes

For a moment,
everything seems

brilliant as the sweet
revelation of an orgasm

Summer 2010

Dumb

By Kwame Dawes

I am dumb as death—
the city swallows us.

Summer 2010

Deep Empathy

By Kwame Dawes

I met Andre Lambertson less than a year ago in New York. I was on a panel at a leading journalism school talking about work I had done with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on HIV/AIDS in Jamaica for VQR and for a website called...