{"id":3942,"date":"2013-04-03T20:54:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T20:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=3942"},"modified":"2016-03-27T18:18:49","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T18:18:49","slug":"darling-new-selected-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=3942","title":{"rendered":"Darling: New &#038; Selected Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloodaxebooks.com\/ecs\/product\/darling-877\" target=\"_blank\">Darling: New &amp; Selected Poems<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloodaxebooks.com\" target=\"_blank\">Bloodaxe Books<\/a><br \/>\n2007<br \/>\n224 pages<br \/>\nPaperback ISBN: 1 85224 777 0<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/elll\/staff\/profile\/jackie.kay\" target=\"_blank\">Jackie Kay<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Creative Writing<br \/>\n<em>Newcastle University<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloodaxebooks.com\/ecs\/product\/darling-877\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bloodaxebooks.com\/content\/products\/2015-07\/l\/55a8e163daf82.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Humour, gender, sexuality, sensuality, identity, racism, cultural difference: when do any of these things ever come together to equal poetry? When Jackie Kay\u2019s part of the equation. <em>Darling<\/em> brings together into a vibrant new book many favourite poems from her four Bloodaxe collections, <em>The Adoption Papers<\/em>, <em>Other Lovers<\/em>, <em>Off Colour<\/em> and <em>Life Mask<\/em>, as well as featuring new work, some previously uncollected poems, and some lively poetry for younger readers.<\/p>\n<p>Kay\u2019s poems draw on her own life and the lives of others to make a tapestry of voice and communal understanding. The title of her acclaimed short story collection, <em>Why Don\u2019t You Stop Talking<\/em>, could be a comment on her own poems, their urgency of voice and their recognition of the urgency in all voice, particularly the need to be heard, to have voice. And what voice \u2013 the voices of the everyday, the voices of jazz, the voices of this many-voiced United Kingdom.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HiEyuJTyAlI?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jackie Kay reads from <em>Darling<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jackie Kay reads three poems, &#8216;In My Country&#8217;, &#8216;Somebody Else&#8217; and &#8216;Darling&#8217;, from <em>Darling: New &amp; Selected Poems<\/em> (Bloodaxe Books, 2007). This film is from the DVD-book <em>In Person: 30 Poets<\/em> filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, edited by Neil Astley, which includes eight poems from <em>Darling<\/em> read by Jackie Kay. \u00a0Jackie Kay was an adopted child of Scottish\/Nigerian descent brought up by Scottish parents. With humour and emotional directness, her poetry explores gender, sexuality, identity, racism and cultural difference as well as love and music. Her poems draw on her own life and the lives of others to make a tapestry of voice and communal understanding. We filmed her at her home in Manchester in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>A short biography of Jackie Kay written by Elizabeth Shostak can be read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com\/topic\/Jackie_Kay.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.\u00a0 An excerpt is below.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Unconventional Upbringing<\/strong><br \/>\nKay\u2019s fascination with themes of identity can be traced to an upbringing that set her apart, in many ways, from the majority culture in her native Scotland. Born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, she was adopted by a white family and raised in Glasgow, where she often accompanied her communist parents to antiapartheid demonstrations and peace rallies. Life wasn\u2019t easy for a biracial child in mostly\u2013white Glasgow. \u201cI still have Scottish people asking me where I\u2019m from,\u201d she told Guardian writer Libby Brooks. \u201cThey won\u2019t actually hear my voice, because they\u2019re too busy seeing my face.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Early Works Explored Identity<br \/>\n<\/strong>When Kay was twelve, she wrote <em>One Person, Two Names<\/em>, an eighty\u2013page story about an African\u2013American girl who pretended to be white. The question of how we define ourselves, and why, has intrigued Kay in all her subsequent work&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup>Shostak, Elizabeth. &#8220;Kay, Jackie 1961\u2013.&#8221; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Contemporary Black Biography<\/span>. 2003. <em>Encyclopedia.com.<\/em> (May 2, 2010). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com\/doc\/1G2-2873900038.html\">http:\/\/www.encyclopedia.com\/doc\/1G2-2873900038.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Darling: New &amp; Selected Poems Bloodaxe Books 2007 224 pages Paperback ISBN: 1 85224 777 0 Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing Newcastle University Humour, gender, sexuality, sensuality, identity, racism, cultural difference: when do any of these things ever come together to equal poetry? When Jackie Kay\u2019s part of the equation. Darling brings together into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,414,125,8,1617,10,842,25],"tags":[1588,1587,1475],"class_list":["post-3942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-family","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-poetry-books","category-uk","category-videos","category-women","tag-bloodaxe-books","tag-jackie-kay","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3942"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46272,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942\/revisions\/46272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}