Volume 21 in the City Lights Spotlight Poetry Series A searing indictment of antiBlack social and political violence by British Jamaican poet and leading scholar of Afropessimism DS MarriottA book that turns Blackness into a question of reading of inscribing and decoding Blackness in poetry Before Whiteness ranges from medieval Beowulf to contemporary UK grime Born in Britain but now living in the US DS Marriott trains his analytical gaze on grim American subjects like the Middle Passage and lynchings yet also finds inspiration in African American poets and artists The book ends with quotAnother Burningquot a mournful elegy for the victims of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London and stirring rebuke of the structural racism of contemporary UK societyamp8220In Before Whiteness Marriott inhabits the names we remember such as Lester Young and Dambudzo Marechera and victims of the Grenfell Tower fire names we never knew All of them people who have no place at the table where the Human family feasts amp8216Blackness Marriott reminds us amp8216wasnamp8217t in the languagewe saw it being evacuated but we still inhabited the ashesamp8217 These are not poems for the faint of heart...
