Wednesday, April 13, 2016

'The Guardy and the Shame' by Kwame Dawes

In late 2013 and early 2014, in collaboration with documentary photographer Andre Lambertson, poet and writer Kwame Dawes visited Jamaica to report on how people with HIV/AIDS live and cope with the disease in a homophobic culture. Together, they produced To Disclose or Not? and eight videopoems. Dawes's essay, "The Guardy and the Shame", and his poems appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review (Winter 2015, Vol. 91, No. 1).

The project was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and it is there that all of the project videopoems may be seen. (Click on the word "videopoems" in this post. When the interactive video comes up, select the particular videopoem you wish to see: "Sound", "Faith Healing", "When We Pray", "Elegy for the Candle Maker", "The Body", "The Burning", "Baptism of Dust", and "The 1.7 Percent Remnant". To Disclose or Not? also may be viewed there.)

Also see the interactive Live Love Hope site and Moving Poems, where four poems by Dawes are featured: "Altar", "Nichol", "Portmore", and "Hope's Hospice". The latter is shown below.



Kwame Dawes Website

Andre Lambertson Website

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