unHistory : a poem cycle by Kwame Dawes and John Kinsella

After completing four collections of dialogue in poems, Kwame Dawes in Nebraska (via Ghana and Jamaica) and John Kinsella in Western Australia, have produced a monumental fifth volume in four movements: unHistory. unHistory is an essential record of our times by two world-leading poets, acutely sensitive to the bracing global turmoil of the last five years. It is an exploration of history’s undertones, its personal, familial and institutional resonances and of the relationship between public events and the literary imagination. It is at the same time an elegant enactment of friendship and memory. As in previous volumes, the marvel is poetry that has all the fluidity of spontaneous response, and the shapeliness and finesse of the most deeply considered work written by two prolific and influential writers at the height of their powers as poets.

What Dawes and Kinsella provide each other with is less a means of achieving perfect insight than of casting light on the other’s blindnesses. Will Harris on Speak from Here to There

“Kwame Dawes is one of the most important writers of his generation who has built a mighty and lasting body of work.” Elizabeth Alexander

“John Kinsella is one of Australia’s most vivid, energetic and stormy poets, a writer who turns to the natural world with a fierce light.” Edward Hirsch, Washington Post

After completing four collections of dialogue in poems, Kwame Dawes in Nebraska (via Ghana and Jamaica) and John Kinsella in Western Australia, have produced a monumental fifth volume in four movements: unHistory. unHistory is an essential record of our times by two world-leading poets, acutely sensitive to the bracing global turmoil of the last five years. It is an exploration of history’s undertones, its personal, familial and institutional resonances and of the relationship between public events and the literary imagination. It is at the same time an elegant enactment of friendship and memory. As in previous volumes, the marvel is poetry that has all the fluidity of spontaneous response, and the shapeliness and finesse of the most deeply considered work written by two prolific and influential writers at the height of their powers as poets.
“What Dawes and Kinsella provide each other with is less a means of achieving perfect insight than of casting light on the other’s blindnesses." Will Harris on Speak from Here to There “Kwame Dawes is one of the most important writers of his generation who has built a mighty and lasting body of work.” Elizabeth Alexander “John Kinsella is one of Australia’s most vivid, energetic and stormy poets, a writer who turns to the natural world with a fierce light.” Edward Hirsch, Washington Post