In his three collections of verse, Mama Dot, (Chatto 1985), Airy Hall (Chatto 1989) and British Subjects (Bloodaxe 1993), Fred D'Aguiar established himself as one of our most distinctive and exciting poets. This volume brings together the best poetry from those collections and will be invaluable to both his established fans and the new reader, coming to Fred D'Aguiar's work for the first time. D'Aguiar's poetry draws on his childhood in Guyana and his later life in England. It moves from vivid evocations of Guyanese village life and ritual to the council estates of London, exploring ideas of radical difference and lost homelands. The language reflects this dichotomous experience, shifting between the English of Guyana and of England with great inventiveness and originality.
