In conversation with Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes, Poet Laureate of Jamaica, and often described as “the busiest man in literature,” has built an impressive body of work as a poet, writer, literary critic, and festival organizer. His poetry is deeply rooted in Jamaican culture, rhythms, and history. He has received numerous prestigious awards for his work, including the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry. This program offers an opportunity to learn more about his work, his inspirations, and his vision of poetry’s power—an unmissable chance to gain insight into one of the most influential poets of his generation. This special conversation will be moderated by poet and translator Alfred Schaffer.

Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes is the current poet laureate of Jamaica (2025-2028). Among other things he is also a playwright, actor, producer, musician, reporter, and author.

Born in Ghana, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of Ghana, citing in an interview his “spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music”.

Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His sixteen collections of poetry most recently include Sturge Town (2023), Nebraska (2019) and Duppy Conqueror (2013), which was shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, as well as Progeny of Air (1994), which won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in the UK. In addition to having edited several anthologies, he has published two novels: Bivouac (2009) and She’s Gone (2007), which won the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best First Novel. His essays have appeared in numerous journals including Bomb Magazine and The London Review of Books. In 2024 Dawes received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Furious Flower.

In 2009, Dawes won an Emmy for LiveHopeLove.com, an interactive site based on his Pulitzer Center project, HOPE: Living and loving with AIDS in Jamaica. In 2011, Dawes reported on HIV AIDS after the earthquake in Haiti. His poems, blogs, articles, and documentary work were a key part of the post-earthquake Haiti reporting by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, for which the center won the National Press Club Joan Friedenberg Award for Online Journalism.

Kwame Dawes is currently Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University, the Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, Chancellor Emeritus for the Academy of American Poets, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Director of the African Poetry Book Fund. He also teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the Series Editor of the African Poetry Book Series. Dawes was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award of Poetry and was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica in 2022.

Alfred Schaffer

Alfred Schaffer (1973) is a poet, teacher and translator with a sharp eye for the absurdity of the mundane. His poetry navigates between lightness and severity, level-headedness and amazement. Since his debut collection Zijn opkomst in de voorstad (2000), he has built an impressive body of work, for which he has been awarded prizes such as the Herman de Coninckprijs and the P.C. Hooft Prize. Schaffer lives in South Africa, where he teaches at Stellenbosch University.