Prophets

By: Kwame Dawes

Narrated by: Kwame Dawes, Paula-Anne Porter Jones

This groundbreaking Jamaican narrative poem takes on history, faith, sex, and poetry itself. Read by the poet, Kwame Dawes, and Paula-Anne Porter Jones.

As 24-hour television - belching out the swaggering voices of American hellfire preachers - competes with dancehall, slackness, and ganja for Jamaican minds, Clarice and Thalbot preach their own conflicting visions.

Clarice has used her gifts to raise herself from the urban Jamaican ghetto. She basks in the adulation of her followers, as they look to her for their personal salvation. Thalbot has fallen from comfort and security onto the streets. With his wild matted hair and nakedness, he is a deranged voice in the wilderness. Whilst Clarice has her blue-eyed Jesus, Thalbot brandishes his blackness in the face of every passer-by. Clarice's visions give her power; Thalbot is at the mercy of every wandering spirit. But when Clarice, under the cover of darkness, 'sins' on the beach, Thalbot alone knows of her fall. He sets out to journey - like Jonah - to denounce the prophetess and warn the Ninevite city of its coming doom.

An epic struggle begins....

Since its first publication in 1995, time has shown Prophets to be a major poem in the canon of Caribbean poetry, an epic made of Jamaican materials, written with all a young man's daring and zest.

©1995, 2018 Peepal Tree Press (P)2021 Peepal Tree Press

Critic reviews

"Prophets is a narrative poem of sheer power, contemporaneity, and hope; one that is full of beauty, sadness, wisdom, and true humanism." (Sudeep Sen)