Poetry
Guanahani, My Love
Marion Bethel · 1994
Synopsis
The author's first collection, it puts precise poetic forms to work for an account of the history of the Bahamas. Marion Bethel wrote a first draft of it in 1986, during the summer when she put off her bar examinations in order to write, then took it up again after Kamau Brathwaite's poetry workshop in Miami in 1991, of which it is, in her words, the direct result.
Context
The collection received the Casa de las Américas poetry prize in 1994, and the Casa published it in a bilingual edition, Guanahani, mi amor: y otros poemas. House of Nehesi Publishers, in St. Martin, reissued it in 2009. A James Michener fellowship had enabled her to attend the Caribbean Writers Summer Institute of the University of Miami in 1991. Nicolette Bethel, in the review Tongues of the Ocean, presents the author as perhaps the most recognised woman poet of the Bahamas.
Who it is for
For reading a Bahamian memory set in poetic forms, born of a workshop with Kamau Brathwaite.
Prizes and reception
After this Cuban prize, the author was invited to the Miami Book Fair, then received a Bunting Institute fellowship in 1996.
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