Ship Shape

Focusing on a sense of duty—to record family history, to envision wholeness out of fragments, and to dissolve the differences that prejudice may interpose between private and public selves—this rich collection of poetry hinges upon a sequence of poems that excavate the missing history of Samboo, an African slave brought from the Caribbean to the city of Lancaster in Lancashire, England. Drawing connections between present-day Lancaster and the foundations of its 18th-century prosperity in ...