Part of Virago's Five Gold Reads: five reissues of significant titles representing fifty years of feminist publishing. Representing the 1980s, a stunning collection of poems from Grace Nichols, winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2021

A stunning collection of poems from Grace Nicholas, winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2021

Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors. In other sequences of this collection, Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures and sadnesses of memory, of loving, of 'the power to be what I am, a woman, charting my own futures'.