Anthony Joseph

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Biographical note:  Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician. He was born in Trinidad, moving to the UK in 1989. His publications include Desafinado (1994), Teragaton (1997) and The African Origins of UFOs (Salt, 2006). He has performed internationally and also tours with his band The Spasm Band. Joseph lectures in creative writing at Birkbeck College and at Goldsmiths College, University of London where he is a doctoral candidate.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714353
ISBN:  9781844714353
Author:  Anthony Joseph
Title:  Bird Head Son
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  09-Feb-09
Extent:  96pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  11 mm
Weight:  144 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  Anthony Joseph’s last book was the critically acclaimed ‘The African Origins of UFOs’, this is the first new collection of poetry by Joseph since 1997’s ‘black surrealist manifesto’ Teragaton. Written over a 5 year period, the highly original poems and experiments with form in ‘Bird Head Son’ cover the poet’s ‘1st life’ in Trinidad, beginning with his departure from Trinidad to the UK in 1989, the poems are divided into 6 sections, each considering an aspect of the poets experience of Trinidad life in the 1970s and 80s.

The poems are autobiographical but they cover universal themes such as exile, family and ancestry, Carnival, ‘home’, the dream or mythic Caribbean in a haunting section entitled ‘Backroads of the Mythic’ and in the final ‘Epilogue’ section, a return to ‘the floating island’ that ‘home’ has become. The personal becomes the universal in these poems. The collection effectively forms a poetic closure to the poet’s roots and beginnings. In this process of distillation the poems illuminate the seminal experiences that have shaped the poets aesthetic. In this way, it is also an autobiography of the mind. These innovative poems, shot through with Joseph’s trademark surrealism and his juxtaposition of Caribbean attitude, rhythm and post modern poetic technique show why Joseph is considered ‘the leader of the black avant garde’ in Britain and one of the UKs most original voices.

Table of contents:
BIRD HEAD SON
Bosch’s Vision
Kite Season
Conductors of his Mystery
Cutlass
Santa Cruz
His Hands
Jungle
Mr Buller
Bermudez
El Socorro
River Breakin Biche
Punk
The Cinema
Bird Head Son
BACKROADS OF THE MYTHIC
Folkways
Sylvia
Blues for Cousin Alvin
Sophocles
Barrel
Detritus
The Cat
a dream. . .
Blockorama
The Bamboo Saxophone
The Duck Coop
RIVER OF MASKS
The Myst
The Carnival Suite
Masks
Carenage
BOUGAINVILLEA
Bougainvillea: Super 8 Red
THE TROPIC OF CANCER
The Regal
The Tropic Of Cancer
A Widow’s Lament In Guava Season
Hideous Corpus Madre
EPILOGUE
The Barber
Jack Spaniard nest . . .
Sewe Wangala: A Kalinda

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Excerpt from book:  

Bermudez

for Noel Ramirez

The gold ring blinks on the barber’s crooked thumb
as he sharpens his razor, with slapping strokes on leather,
strapt from the drawer in which he keeps his fee
and his brushes in his hairy aviary
behind the tyre shop, near Bermudez biscuit factory
with its cinnamon air, where we pull kites across
the old train tracks, and you
singing high in your heaven with each whip of the tail.
It is here, between the river and the sandbox tree
that I see you most, walking
past the black tongued witches’ house,
past the stables through the brittle heat of the savannah,
steep from running sideways fastest,
hunting snakes and strange fruit.

Previous review quote:  Anthony Joseph’s genre-hopping novel, The African Origin of UFOs is a novel so rich in imagery that it should perhaps be taken only in moderation: a small dose every day. Published by the excellent Salt Publishing, surely one of the most interesting small presses working in Britain at the moment, Joseph’s novel is lyrical and complex. As well as a novelist, Joseph is a poet and musician, and his writing is striking both for its musicality and also for its intelligence and sharpness of vision.

Birmingham Words

Previous review quote:  Afro-blue to astro-black and what glimmers in between.

The Times

Previous review quote:  Joseph employs a syncretic, diasporic and highly innovative blend of genres and styles, providing an example of how diaspora becomes subject, inspiration and rationale for the innovative use of form, while experimental traditions enable him to show the diaspora in a fresh light.

Dr. Lauri Ramey, Professor of English, California State University, Los Angeles.

Previous review quote:  The African Origins of UFOs tracks the pull of place and the pull away from place, Afro-blue to astro-black and what glimmers in between. “Genetic contraband” and “bootleg melanin” afford a measure of the job it takes on. Possessing or possessed by requisite bearings, language and lore, Anthony Joseph is fully and beautifully up to the task.

Nathaniel Mackey

Previous review quote:  The leader of the Black avant-garde.

Ilkley Literature Festival

Previous review quote:  The African Origins of UFOs conflates a culturally aware attitude towards a collective literary identity with an adamantly individualistic pursuit of – artistic and stylistic – freedom. Its author is both a faithful heir and an agnostic rebel; a Black poet haunted by Africa’s past as well as a bilingual post-modernist amused by the possibilities of the future. Contemporary literature doesn’t come a lot more sophisticated and intriguing than this.

What makes The African Origins of UFOs groundbreaking, however, is the poet’s palpable desire to transcend the limits of such an adherence by subverting the rules and idioms of contemporary narrative and/or poetry at any given opportunity and coming close to redefining the very genres of free verse poetry and narrative verse. It is the text’s energetic inventiveness and relentless individuality that are most likely to impress, and at times confront, those readers unfamiliar with the sources of Joseph’s historical and literary allusions.

Ali Alizadeh
Cordite Review