14. Sarah Hymas and Jason Allen-Paisant

Shortlisted for the Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections, “Water that sings/ through blood and brain” permeates the mesmerizing series of contemplative poems in Sarah Hymas’s melt.

The judges praised the book as ‘A triumph of imagery interweave, human and sea, these moving poems employ lush, melodious language, rhythmic pacing, a hypnotic sense of attentive presence.’ Sarah Hymas is a writer of poetry, short fiction, essays, artistbooks, site specific walks and not so easily definable work. Jason Allen-Paisant’s Thinking with Trees is a radical response to the pastoral and walking traditions, in woods where dogs are welcomed but black men are suspect. ‘In these quietly subversive lyrics, expectations are undone, of ecologies, of people, of poems: trees, dogs,
thoughts, cells, the daily world here is rendered wholly new (Rachael Allen).  Allen-Paisant is from a village called Coffee Grove in Manchester, Jamaica. At present, he’s a lecturer in Caribbean Poetry & Decolonial Thought in the School of  English at the University of Leeds.

Hosted by Ledbury Critic Mantra Mukim

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Jason Allen-Paisant  Sarah Hymas