“Jason Allen-Paisant deftly inscribes his own signature on worlds inner and outer in these gorgeous poems. The future of Caribbean lyric poetry is in great hands.”
Jason Allen-Paisant is a write of poetry, memoir, and critical life writing who hails from Coffee Grove, Jamaica and is currently based in Leeds. He has the rare achievement of having won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize in the same year for his second collection Self Portrait As Othello (2023 awards). Drawing inspiration from the natural world and his heritage to craft writing that has been described as “bold and impressive” (The Guardian) and “years ahead of its time” (Anthony Anaxagorou), he has been featured widely in print since his awards as well as on radio and television.
His debut poetry collection, Thinking with Trees (2021), explores his identity as a Black man and its connections to nature. He describes the work as addressing “issues of time, class, race, and the environmental conditions underpinning black identity”. It was the 2021 Irish Times Poetry Book of the Year, White Review’s 2021 Books of the Year, and won the Poetry category of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.
Self-Portrait As Othello (Carcanet Press, 2023). This poetry places the character of Othello in modern urban landscapes and raises challenges and questions on history, masculinity and the black male gaze.
His creative non-fiction book Scanning the Bush will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann in 2024.
Jason Allen-Paisant is an Associate Artist with Renaissance One.
On Thinking With Trees
“Jason Allen-Paisant deftly inscribes his own signature on worlds inner and outer in these gorgeous poems. The future of Caribbean lyric poetry is in great hands.” - Lorna Goodison
“A bold and impressive debut.” - The Guardian
“Allen-Paisant has penned a debut that may be years ahead of its time” - Anthony Anaxagorou
“These observant poems lay their burdens down by the rivers of Babylon and try to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. What might it mean for the black body to experience nature, not as labour, but as leisure?
What might it mean to simply walk through a park and observe the birds and the trees? The poems are beautiful and gentle, but the questions they raise are difficult and important. ”
Twitter: @jallenpaisant
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Website: https://www.jasonallenpaisant.com/
On Self-Portrait As Othello
‘Playful, intimate and allusive, these poems interrogate masculinity and history, experiment with the myth of Othello, mourn absent fathers, and offer us a refreshing mash-up of languages that regenerate poetry so that it feels freshly minted.’ - Bernardine Evaristo
‘Exhilarating - I recommend it highly.' - Roger Robinson