Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. At an investiture ceremony held at King’s House on January 22, 2025, acting Governor-General Steadman Fuller successfully pinned Professor Dawes as the most recently appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica serving between the years of 2025-2028.
In his acceptance address, Dawes, began with a poem, “because we are, as it happens, celebrating poetry.”
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Neville Dawes is the author of the poem Acceptance, which is “written by a great Jamaican poet … a poem of great skill and beauty and a poem that I have considered my lodestar as a poet.”
As the son of the late Neville Dawes, Kwame’s poetry invokes his presence at King’s House, which is a fitting approach to honor the man he chose to honor.
The poem was undoubtedly “poeming,” as Gen Z would say, as it celebrated the pleasures of rural living in a language that only poets could create.
“At the heart of this poem is praise and praise is the gesture of the poet [who] I want to honor this morning,” the professor said.
Dawes, who has the highest literary title in the country, went poetic in his succinct and passionate address. He guided listeners through the complexities of being named Jamaica’s Poet Laureate while reaffirming poets’ status as “chroniclers of their time” and the custodians of memories that some people would want to forget.
Daws remarked in his address, “They [poets] are not historians in the strictest term but do something even more critical, they leave evidence of the human feeling … the human imagination … the quotidian human life in the world and if they allow themselves to do so they chronicle the natural world that has shaped them.”
Dawes said that his talent to transform prose into poetry, “We know that society can conspire to silence and even erase the voices of whole swathes of humanity. We know that it is possible to leave a people bereft of their knowledge of who they are and where they have come from. To silence poets … to deprive poets of the freedom and the means to make and share poems is, in essence, to deprive society of the memory of its most intimate selves … its most vital self.”
He went on to say, “And I consider my role one of affirming this nation’s desire to resist that erasure, to facilitate and make possible room in which anyone caught in the dream and desire and compulsion to talk dem talk, to articulate experience with the beautiful execution of language to remain available to them.”
“Stimulate a greater appreciation for Jamaican poetry while aiming to develop mass appeal for poetry as an art and a medium for disseminating our cultural heritage” is the main goal of the Poet Laureate Program. The most renowned and successful poets in a nation are often chosen to serve as the Poet Laureate. Public votes provided on a predetermined form are used to make nominations. A nine-member committee then evaluates those who fit the specified requirements, and a secret ballot is used to choose the winner. Following independence, Mervyn Morris, Lorna Goodison, and Olive Senior were the previous Poet Laureates.
In a recent interview with a local newspaper, Dawes stated, “I think this is very exciting, but most of all I am looking forward to the work that we are going to do. And we are going to do really exciting work … and we have three years to make it happen. Most of what we want to do is solidify opportunities for writers in Jamaica for poets and to create institutions that will have a long-lasting impact on preserving writing and celebrating writings. And I have some plans in that direction.”
Born to Jamaican parents in Ghana and raised in Jamaica, Dawes is presently a professor of literary arts at Brown University in the United States and a lecturer in Pacific University’s Master of Fines Arts program. He stated that although he is not based in Jamaica, he “will be here very often, back and forth.”
He was taken aback by the presence of his alma mater at the event, having previously attended Jamaica College (JC). He concluded by asking his listeners to “give thanks to di JC man dem.”
A branch of the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment, and Sport, the National Library of Jamaica, organized the event. Olivia Grange, the portfolio minister, was among the presenters. NLJ officials, including national librarian Beverley Lashley, gave remarks.
