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Kwame Dawes (c) Andre Lambertson
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Kwame Dawes is a Ghanaian who emigrated at an early age to Jamaica. His poems reflect the rhythms and contours of Ghanaian poetry and the sounds of Reggae music. He is the prize-winning author of 16 books of poetry as well as novels, plays and criticism. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award and Professor of English Literature at the University of Nebrasks, USA. In 2009 he won an Emmy for his work LiveHopeLove, an interactive website on which the Kwame Dawes Pulitzer Prize Center Project ‘Hope’ deals with the topic of Living and Loving with AIDS in Jamaica. In 2009 he was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.
His poems include both social criticism and melody which probe the whole range of language and can have a healing, comforting effect for himself as well. Dawes’ performances are powerful, musical and compelling.
Publications (a selection): Poems: Poems From the Swamp Country (2006), Impossible Flying (2006), Back of Mount Peace (2009), Hope’s Hospice (2009), Wheels (2011), Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems (2013). Novels: She’s Gone (2007), Bivouac (2010)
Awards (a selection): Emmy and Webby for LiveHopeLove, 2012; Forward Prize for Poetry for Progeny of Air, 1994; Hollis Summers Prize for Poetry; in 2004 he was awarded the Musgrave Silver Medal for his contribution to the arts in Jamaica