Belling the Leopard

Joint winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize

In her wide-ranging debut collection, Clementine Ewokolo Burnley asks what remains after once-familiar places and people have gone. The poems criss-cross the Atlantic, beginning in the 1850s. The voices of Caribbean returnees to the west African coast mingle with those of west African recaptives, German missionaries, and kidnappers. They witness the changes in family life through the generations as villagers or townsfolk are uprooted or stay put ...