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Kwame Dawes Biography

Kwame Senu Neville Dawes (born 28 July 1962, Ghana) is a Ghanaian poet, actor, editor, critic, musician, and former Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. He is now Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and editor-in-chief at Prairie Schooner magazine. New York-based Poets & Writers named Dawes as a recipient of the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, which recognises writers who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community.

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Kwame Dawes Quotes

There is no access to contemporary poetry in the libraries.

Access, Contemporary, Libraries, Library, Poetry

My concern is always that I can do justice to what I see and hear.

Can Do, Concern, Hear, Justice, See

Our goal is to publish African poets in as many ways as possible.

African, Goal, Poet, Poets, Possible, Publish

The aesthetic, as I understand it, is really about the way in which we understand beauty and speak and think about beauty.

Aesthetic, Speak, Thinking, Understand, Way

Racist writing is a craft failure.

Craft, Crafts, Racist, Writing

When people open up and share their stories, you have a responsibility to tell these truths truthfully and with the same quest for grace and beauty that you see in them.

Grace, People, Quest, Responsibility, Same

Maybe that is the power of poetry. It somehow transcends news cycles, and becomes a part of our collective imagination. That is the beauty of the art form I like to play with.

Art, Becomes, Imagination, Maybe, Play

Latino poets, are really having a significant impact on American poetics today.

Impact, Poet, Poetics, Significant, Today

I believe that all fiction is personal and all writing is at some level personal.

Believe, Fiction, Level, Writing

For me, reggae music and its aesthetic are touchstones in both simple and complex ways. Reggae's capacity to be a folk music that is created in a wholly modern context of the recording studio (and sometimes that is the sole performance space) is riddled with the kinds of contradictory impulses that we have come to expect from the post-modern. I revel in this, for it gives me, shall I say, permission.

Capacity, Contradictory, Giving, Simple, Sole, Space

As you may know, my motto is: "All memory is fiction. " It could just as easily be: "All fiction is memory. " Unpacked, these two statements defy the ease of logic, but offer some really important truths about narrative art, at the very least, and about memory. So I would say that all art is personal.

Art, Logic, Memories, Say, Truths, Two

One of the blessings and curses of my life is that I carry so many projects at the same time.

Blessing, Blessings, Curses, Life, Life Is, Projects

I am a black person. I come out of an experience of exile and migration. I have always felt myself to be at once at home and away from home at the same time. It is inevitable that my perspective will be international.

Black, Home, International, Perspective, Same

The rich and complex history of South Carolina is the history of the African diaspora, and in many ways, I felt acutely the sense of this collective memory of migration, suffering and transformation while living in South Carolina.

Collective Memory, History, Memories, Memory, Rich, Suffering

I believe that many lives around us now can reflect this strange pattern of migration and movement. The question is: are we aware of it, and do we embrace it as a kind of birthright? I do. And yet, I feel deeply connected to at least two homespaces - Jamaica and Ghana, and more recently, South Carolina.

Believe, Deeply, Ghana, Question, Two

I have dear friends in South Carolina, folks who made my life there wonderful and meaningful. Two of my children were born there. South Carolina's governor awarded me the highest award for the arts in the state. I was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. I have lived and worked among the folks in Sumter, South Carolina, for so many years. South Carolina has been home, and to be honest, it was easier for me to define myself as a South Carolinian than even as an American.

Art, Children, Define, Easier, Inducted, Meaningful