Born to Slow Horses

by Kamau Brathwaite

Winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize (2006)

Kamau Brathwaite's newest work, Born to Slow Horses, is a series of poetic meditations on islands and exile, language and ritual, and the force of personal and historical passions and griefs. These poems are haunted, figuratively and literally, by spirits of the African diaspora and drenched in the colors, sounds, and rhythms of the islands. But they also encompass the world of the exile and return, and the events of 9/11 in New York City. Brathwaite is one of the foremost voices in postcolonial inquiry and expression, and his poetry is densely rooted and expansive.

Using his unusual "sycorax" signature typography and spelling, Brathwaite brings a cultural specificity, with distinct accents, sonic gestures, and pronunciations, into his pages―making them new, exciting, and rich in nuances.

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2005

Reviews

[Chris]

i couldn’t finish 😭 this sounds petty but i HATED the font like it physically made me mad everytime i opened the book so i just gave up. what i did read was nice tho…

[Brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

tink yu in heaven • but yu livin’ in hell

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bermudas (5)
marine to noon on AméricasAirplane

First the dark meer

begins to breathe gently into green
into light & light green
until there are like blue

ribs upon the water. dreaming
and the ribs of water’s colour are the gills
of the first fish breathing
the first land the first eye

-lann
until there is what shd not be here
on the water
white

footsteps of sand from the bottom of the ocean
become the thin road to Eleuthera
long & thin upon the water walking
until there is suddenly a black stone

a dark
veil kabala surrounding by whorls
of worship green water scallops
folding into themselves like soft

jewels the first huge fish
out of creation
w/ribs veins glimpse
of a tail & deep channels in between

where they will be mountains & ridges
& villages & ozure indigo sunsets
of lapis lazuli & white salt marking its finely corrugated edges
& stretching out into thousands of tongues. miles

of soft drifting labials. like pellucid love
on the water. this fish
from the air of so many so many untangles
& 10 thousand years later there are trees

glistening sunlight & listening rain & white streets
& houses & people walkin bout & talkn to each other on the water & across
its blue echo
& thinking of horses & houses & now soon after midday there are great ob

-long blotches like a stain
of milk & a great spider spreading itself along the pale glazing bottom of
the water. and this great planet passing upwards towards us
out this silence & drifting & blessing of the water

Notes:
*100m sharks are assassinated each year for their fins - their carcasses thrown back into the sex of the sea - to make
fine Chinese fin soup for you to sit down & dine
w/yr sip spoon & napkin all over the wide open restaurant eye of the world
CNN NewsReport seen in Ja on the friday of arrival there

from Iwa (43)
for there is an absence of truth
like a good tooth drawn from the tight
skull. like the wave’s tune gone from the ship’s hull

there is sand
but no desert where water can learn of its loveliness

from Mountain (132)
but w/the poem still largely unwritten really
the metaphors not properly in place
not properly the property of the poem

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

First DNF in a long time. Not an indictment of this book or Brathwaite, though. There's excellent stuff here, but lacking the shared reference points and cultural knowledge--on top of the challenge of parsing out the Barbadian patois as a non-native--made this too opaque for me to engage with meaningfully. Some people in the reviews have complained about the custom typefaces. To them I say: live a little. Yes, you do lose some legibility compared with a Times New Roman or a Helvetica. But the added interest visually and thematically does enrich some of the poems.

I think I'll give it another go in a couple years.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

All I can say is that the first time I read this book of poetry I could only think, this is what I want my poetry to be when it grows up. I love his use of space and rhythm.

[Amalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read in Postcoloniality.
Fonts and typographies represent the multiple voices of the Caribbean and a visual representation of the multiplicity of the diaspora.
Linkable to Glissant's poetics of relation in its bringing together Western world, Africannes and Caribbeanness (or at least I read it like that).

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

PPE 2/27/08

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Exquisitely written in and out of dialects and fonts and forms and musicality and complexity and contemporaneity.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous and lush. This contains Brathwaite's poem on the occasion of 9/11.

[Tracy Sutherland]

He's the Uncle of a fella I've been dating for a LONG time. Awesome Caribbean Poet from Barbados!

[Rachelmari · Rating 1 out of 5]

the awful typography choices are so distracting that it was impossible for me to become invested in the content