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This month's newsletter from the editor.
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LANDMARK FOR WOMEN POETS
Five women poets, Dorothea Smartt, Raman Mundair, Rommi Smith, Seni Seneviratne and Khadijah Ibrahiim, will be published by Peepal Tree Press during Spring/Summer 2007.
Peepal Tree Press, celebrated as the home of challenging and inspiring literature from the Caribbean and Black Britain, publish the debut and second collections by these poets of African and Asian descent.
All five women demonstrate strong, dynamic, individual styles and voices. Peepal Tree Press challenge Britain’s poetry establishment by demonstrating their confidence in the work of five British born women of colour - a challenge that no other poetry publisher in Britain has dared to undertake.
Peepal Tree published the first collections of performance poets and live artists,
Dorothea Smartt (Connecting Medium, 2001), and Raman Mundair (Lovers, Liars, Conjurers and Thieves, 2003).
Now, they publish Smartt’s very special collection of poems, Bringing it All Back Home (working title), which depicts the story of Samboo, an African slave, buried at Sunderland Point in Lancaster. It began as a commission by Lancaster LitFest and will be published during the year that commemorates the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery. It also includes photographs which accompany these moving poems. Dorothea Smartt’s work has been described thus:
“...The pulse of her work rises and falls...images make noise, silences are transformed.” Konrad Keno Foster, Caribbean Times.
Her forthcoming work pulsates with the moving voice of Samboo as he tells of his Atlantic crossing.
The poems in Raman Mundair’s first collection have been called, "… gutsy writing; even the silent spaces in between words are emotionally raw." Wasafiri
Her dramatic and distinctively personal voice is equally apparent in her second collection, A Choreographer’s Cartography in which Mundair infuses themes from her South Asian heritage with the Shetland Islands – intertwining two diverse, marginalised strands of Britain. She touches on a range of other subjects too, from a love of language and the anguish of war to Queen Victoria and the history of the waltz.
Peepal Tree Press also publish the second collection of Rommi Smith, who has already received a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice (2006), for the extract of her long awaited jazz poetry collection, Morning and Midnights, about a fictitious legendary jazz diva, Gloria Silver.
"There is a place where the musical, the political, the spiritual and the beautiful exist and it is here." Benjamin Zephaniah has said of Rommi Smith’s dynamic performance.
In this collection, Smith successfully transfers her energy from her stage performance so that it is enhanced on the page. Rommi Smith is currently the Parliamentary Writer in Residence, the first time in history that there has been such a post.
Seni Seneviratne and Khadijah Ibrahiim will have their debut works published by Peepal Tree Press. They are part of the Inscribe professional development project for writers of African and Asian descent in Yorkshire.
Seni Seneviratne, described by Northern Exposure as, “a gently reflective woman”, has been published internationally over the past two decades. Her first full length collection, Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin, creates a poetic landscape shaped by family, love and loss, which reflect her personal journey as a woman of Sri Lankan and English heritage, born and bred in Yorkshire.
"Loss, love, memory, from Yorkshire to Sri Lanka and back, Seni Seneviratne's poems delve in and out of a complex history. These tender, moving poems weave a delicate web," says Jackie Kay.
Khadijah Ibrahiim, publishes a short collection, Rootz Runnin as a pre-taster to her full length collection, drawn from her live art performance ‘Hair Stories’. She takes us on a historical journey that focuses on the socio-politics of hair, dating from the Queen of Sheba to the markings of Black youth of today.
Described as “one of Yorkshire’s most prolific poets”, by BBC Radio Leeds, Khadijah Ibrahiim is a literary activist, researcher, educator, director of theatre for development and the co-ordinator/mentor for Leeds Young Authors.
See all five women perform on 9 March@ Spit Lit Women’s Festival of Words at Toynbee Studios, Commercial Street, London, E1 at 7pm. Tickets:£6/£4 conc. www.alternativearts.co.uk
For a press invitation to the reception and ticket for the performance that follows, please contact Kadija on kadija@peepaltreepress.com Detailed biographical information on the poets, images and synopsis of their new collections are available on request from hannah@peepaltreepress.com
For individual or group bookings contact
hannah@peepaltreepress.com
For more information on Peepal Tree Press visit
http://www.peepaltreepress.com
Special Notes for programmers
Dorothea Smartt’s timely special collection of poems and images makes for an ideal performance/presentation of poetry and images of Samboo’s grave and Sunderland Point for the bicentenary of the slave trade in 2007. Please make early requests for your bookings.
Khadijah Ibrahiim’s one woman show is a fascinating presentation for Black history and youth presentations on the history of black hair in poetry and song.
Seni Seneviratne’s work travels between Britain and Sri Lanka, between 15th and 21st centuries. Her performances combine poetry with song and visual images to weave a highly personal story.
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