Turner

Overview

David Dabydeen’s Turner is a long narrative poem written in response to J. M. W. Turner’s celebrated poem “Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying.” Dabydeen’s poem focuses on what is hidden in Turner’s painting, the submerged head of the drowning African. In inventing a biography and the drowned man’s unspoken desires, the poem brings into confrontation the wish for renewal and the inescapable stains of history, including the meaning of Turner’s painting.

Reviews

“A major poem, full of lyricism and compassion, which gracefully shoulders the burden of history and introduces us to voices from the past whose pain we have all inherited.”  —Caryl Phillips

“David Dabydeen’s poetry vibrates with passion, energy and splendid rhythm.”  —Anita Desai

Author Biography

David Dabydeen heads the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. He was born in Guyana, but has lived in the United Kingdom from his early youth. He is the author of the novels The Intended, Disappearance, The Counting House, A Harlot’s Progress, and two earlier books of poetry, Slave Song, which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and Coolie Odyssey. He is recognized among the United Kingdom’s finest writers. He is also the author of The Counting House, A Harlot's Progress, and Hogarth's Blacks: Images of Blacks in 18th Century English Art.