In Castaway Yvette Christiansë presents an epic yet fragmented poetic story set off the coast of Africa on the island of St. Helena: Napoleon Bonaparte’s final place of exile, a port of call for the slave trade, and birthplace of the poet’s grandmother. Amid echoes of racialized identity and issues of displacement, the poems in Castaway speak with a multiplicity of voices—from Ferñao Lopez (the island’s first exile) and Napoleon to that of a contemporary black woman. Castaway is simultaneously a song of discovery, an anthem of conquest, and a tortured lamentation of exiles and slaves.
Instead of offering a linear narrative, Christiansë renders the poems as if they were emerging from the pages of imaginary books, documents now disrupted and scattered. An emperor’s point of view is juxtaposed with the perspectives of various explorers, sailors, and unknown slaves until finally they all open upon the book’s “castaway,” the authorial female voice that negotiates a way to write about love and desire after centuries of oppression and exploitation.
Daring and sophisticated, Castaway challenges and captivates the reader with not only its lyrical richness and conceptual depth but also its implicit and haunting reflections on diaspora and postcolonialism. It will be highly regarded by readers and writers of poetry and will appeal to those engaged with issues of race, gender, exile, multiculturalism, colonialism, and history.
- Contents
- The Name of the Island
- The Island Sings Its Name
- And All Things Come to Pass
- On Being Restless
- Letter to General D'Albuquerque - On the Pleasures of Taste
- Letter to General D'Albuquerque - On the Pleasures of Touch
- Letter to General D'Albuquerque - On Desire
- Letter to General D'Albuquerque - On Solitude
- Letter to General D'Albuquerque - On Forgiveness
- For the Devout Mouth
- For the Record
- Sleigh Ride
- The Enemies of Progress
- Neccessary Things
- The Emperor Considers the Fate of His Book
- Last Battles
- A Very Sick Man
- One More Mile, One More Town
- Face to Face
- Brotherhood
- And What of Africa?
- Another Strange Night
- For the Arrival of a Serious Enemy
- Gold
- Sunday School
- The Sleeper
- Blow the Wind Southerly
- And Bring Him to Me
- Courtship
- Fire on Board
- Man in a Room
- What the Girl Who Was a Cabin Boy Heard or Said - Which is Not Clear
- Geography Lesson
- On Hearing of the Exiled Prophet
- In the Hull
- Under the Feet of Angels
- When All Else Fails
- Felony
- Contagion
- The Enlightenment Sees Its Face in a Different Light
- Even When They Smile They Smoulder
- Sometimes the Surfface of Water, Sometimes a Mirror - The Horror
- Nightwatch
- A Dictionary of Surrvival
- Memorial
- Floating
- Middle Passage
- She Feels the Vanishing Sickness Move behind Her Navel
- The Face of the Deep
- Eclipse
- Adrift
- In the Maw
- In the Wake
- An Easter Confession, of Sorts
- For Strength in the Face of a Powerful Enemy
- Desire
- Devilry
- Aubade
- For a Lover Who Keeps to Another Hemisphere
- Sweeter and Dearer
- Is It Not Sweet?
- Southerly, Southerly
- Moon
- Now That She Is a Woman Herself
- With the Art of Birds
- She Oberves the Blue Bird
- A Riddle to Save Face
- The Cabin Gril Sees on All Sides Evidence of the Dream
- She Looks Up and Points
- The Beautiful Flood
- What Is Out There?
- Some of the Women
- Behind My Back
- She Confesses
- Land Ahead
- Headwind
- The Cabin Girl Sings, of Love, Reluctantly and ino an Empty Sky
- And When I Write the Muscles in My Chest Move as if in Flight
- The Voyage Out
- St. Helena - Time Line
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