Description
Book SynopsisCourtney Conrad’s powerful work interrogates the tensions within Caribbean migration, gender-based violence and national politics. Migrating from Kingston as a teenager, she is unflinching in her attempts to capture the vibrancy and violence of her experiences in both the UK and Jamaica. Her poetry draws together subversive diasporic imagery, national political commentary and shatteringly personal narrative in its exacting response to the political corruption and violence she witnessed as a young girl in Jamaica in the wake of its colonial subjugation under the British Empire. The themes of her work stretch across state- and gender-based violence, religion, raw bodily introspection and lush cultural memorabilia that reimagines the warmth and blood of both her homes. I Am Evidence was the winner of the 2022 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Pamphlet Competition judged by Imtiaz Dharker, and includes some work which won her an Eric Gregory Award in 2022. It is her debut pamphlet.
Trade ReviewCourtney Conrad is one of the most promising voices to emerge in the British literary world. A voice of affirmation, testimony, survival and revival. The Jamaican spirit of remixing and mashing up English into new and deeper coherences. These poems are evidence of a truth-telling lyrical arrival. -- Raymond Antrobus
Courtney Conrad is an important voice to watch. Her book I Am Evidence feels like a new shot in the Caribbean Artist Movement. Throughout the book her identity and culture resonate in the fresh use of national language which enables a nuanced unspooling of hidden Caribbean narratives exploring the micro of Jamaica’s underclass as it alludes to the macro of Jamaican politics. -- Roger Robinson
Conrad is forging her own distinctive Jamaican poetic seeped in a literary orality, which enables the witness bearing of: the persevered, the forsaken, the rock bottom, the hold on better must come, all speaking to a fragile existence. Yet these are not downtrodden but celebrated as resilient. Conrad continues the tradition of Jamaican poets like Louise Bennett, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze and Olive Senior who unapologetically empowered the working-class voice. -- Malika Booker
Table of Contents9 Mommy Carry Mi Guh Coronation Market 10 Classifieds: Brute Neighbour 11 Inna Di Trenches 12 Tief like Puss 13 When Yuh Point Finga, Three Point Back 14 Kibba Yuh Mouth 15 If Wi Neva Block Di Road, Wi Wouldn’t Find Her 16 Community Breeds Miracle 17 Snapper 18 Shhh… Gunshot Can Pick Padlock 20 Water Polo Sessions Before Coke 21 Extradition of Drug Lord Dudus Coke: Barbican Girl Dash Weh Tivoli Boy 23 Morning after Coke 24 Puss and Dog Nuh Have Di Same Luck 25 the path of no papers 26 Motherland Nuh Wah Wi Again 27 Babylon Wah Tun Us Inna Rasta Mouse 29 Acknowledgements 32 Biographical note
