Jamaican poet, writer and academic (born 1980)
Jason Allen-Paisant (born 1980) is a Jamaican poet, writer and academic. His second collection of poems, Self-Portrait as Othello, won the 2023 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection.
Biography
Early years and education
Allen-Paisant grew up in a small village in Manchester Parish,[1] central Jamaica. His mother was a primary school teacher.[2][3] He attended the University of the West Indies (Mona), followed by further study at the École normale supérieure (Paris), and the University of Oxford, where he earned a DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy) in Medieval & Modern Languages.[4]
Writing
His dissertation was on theatre from the French- and English-speaking Caribbean and a monograph on Derek Walcott, Aimé Césaire and Bertolt Brecht, Théâtre dialectique postcolonial (Classiques Garnier),[5] was published in 2017. A second monograph, Engagements with Aimé Césaire: Thinking with Spirits, will be published in February 2024 with Oxford University Press.[6]
Allen-Paisant's first collection of poems, Thinking with Trees,[7] won the poetry category of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.[8] His second collection, Self-Portrait as Othello,[9] uses William Shakespeare's Othello to explore a black male immigrant's search for an identity and masculine role mode.[2] It was a Poetry Book Society Choice in 2023 and went on to win the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection[10] and the 2023 T. S. Eliot Prize.[11] According to the Eliot Prize judging panel (which comprised Paul Muldoon, Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul), Allen-Paisant's collection is "a book with large ambitions that are met with great imaginative capacity, freshness and technical flair."[12]
A work of creative non-fiction by Allen-Paisant, entitled The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican's Search for Freedom in Nature, is due to be published in 2025.[4]
Academic career
Allen-Paisant is currently Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Critical Theory and Creative Writing in the Department of English, American Studies, and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.[4]
References
External links