Poetry Express: Afua Cooper + Black Matters

During the month of April, you can buy any of our featured Poetry Express books for 20% off + free shipping in Canada. Just use promo code NPMexpress at checkout. All Lit Up: Can you tell us a bit about your collection and how it came to be?Afua Cooper: The collection came about as a result of conversations I had with Wilfried Raussert on art, photography, and poetry. We then hit upon a collaboration—my poems coupled with his images.

Photo of Afua Cooper

[Image Description: A front-facing picture of the author giving a speech behind a podium at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. She is Black and is wearing a blue and Ankara on her right shoulder, an orange headscarf and black top.

ALU: What has been your most unlikely source of writing inspiration?AC: I get inspiration from riding the city transit. I watch the people (passengers), and I try to imagine what they are thinking. In the winter people on the bus seem unhappy, but much happier in the spring and summer. I imagine stories of beauty about their lives. Another unlikely source of inspiration comes from washing the dishes and cleaning the house. I feel liberated doing these chores, because it is an unburdening, and poems just flow from the process.ALU: Has your idea of what poetry is changed since you began writing poems?AC: Yes. In a simple but profound way. I used to think that a poet had to have a specific topic to write on. But now I know that poetry can be made up of just nouns, or verbs, or gerunds, simply letters across a page. Poetry can be a laugh the poet tries to capture on the page. Poetry can be orderly on the page or disorderly. Poetry can jump around, make sense or not make sense.ALU: What are you most in the mood to read these days? Any poets you’re especially enjoying?AC: I go back always to my old poets: Rumi, Nazim Hikmet, Kamau Brathwaite, Lorna Crozier, Sue Goyette, Rita Dove, Pablo Neruda. There are others.ALU: Describe your ideal escape.AC: A place in the Caribbean. Either in the mountains or by the sea. If it is in the mountains, then I sit on the porch gazing at the trees and watch the hills unfolding. If it is by the sea, then I walk every morning on the sand listening to the sea, conversing with the wind.

* 

A poem from Black Matters

JUPITER WISE  * Jupiter Wise was an enslaved man who in 1785 sought to freehimself from Prince Edward Island slavery** Patoo in African Jamaican language is an owl

* * *

Afua Cooper, Halifax’s seventh Poet Laureate, is the author of five books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed Copper Woman and Other Poems and two novels, The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montreal, and My Name is Phillis Wheatley. She has also recorded two poetry CDs, including the forthcoming Love and Revolution. A founder of the Canadian Dub poetry movement, Afua Cooper was instrumental in organizing between 2004 and 2009, three international dub poetry festivals.Dr. Wilfried Raussert is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar. He works across the boundaries of music, literature, photography, art, and literary criticism. He is Chair of North American and Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany. He is director of the International Association of InterAmerican Studies, author and editor of 20 scholarly books, including Art Begins in Streets Art Lives in Streets, Cultural Memory and Multiple Identities, and Traveling Sounds: Music, Migration and Identity in the U.S. and Beyond.

* * *

During the month of April, you can buy Black Matters and any one of our other featured Poetry Express books for 15% off + free shipping in Canada with promo code NPMexpress. Or find them at your local independent bookstore! Keep up with us all month on Twitter,  Instagram, and Facebook with the hashtag #ALUPoetryExpress.