The Geez

This stunning new collection from Nii Ayikwei Parkes features poems which embrace play, love and the ephemeral such as water bodies, blood/heritage, history and gossip; and a healthy dose of music and popular culture. Concerned with the phase of life sometimes referred to as the midlife crisis, The Geez navigates the blurred lines between age and youth; the real and the imagined; what is seen and what is - what catches the gaze and what lies beneath. Conceived in four sections, the collection moves from play, to love, to gossip and - finally - to explorations of the intersections of self and contemporary culture, including a segment inspired by blues legends, riffing on the myth of the crossroads, as well as an eleven-part love letter to the African diaspora - specifically African-Americans, whose sacrifices have contributed to the still-suppressed freedoms of Black folk globally. A number of the poems in The Geez are written in a form called the Gimbal, which was developed by Nii - initially to work through his enduring grief at the loss of his father. It evokes the workings of a gyroscope - spinning but stable -a state that echoes the liminality that anchors this collection.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes, born in the United Kingdom to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a writer, editor and socio-cultural commentator. A 2007 recipient of Ghana's ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy, he is Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing and works across genres from theatre to fiction. Winner of multiple awards, most notably the Prix Laure Bataillon for the French translation of his novel Tail of the Blue Bird, (Jonathan Cape, 2009) he splits his time between Ghana and the United Kingdom, where he produces literature events and teaches.

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