ABSTRACT
David Dabydeen first became known for his prize-winning collection of
Creole poems, Slave Song (1984), which he had written as a student in
Cambridge. He has since made his name not only as a poet but also as a
novelist and author of many academic books. Dabydeen belongs to a
generation of writers such as Grace Nichols, Fred D’Aguiar and Caryl
Phillips who were born in the Caribbean but have spent the greater part
of their lives abroad, writers who come between the generation of George
Lamming, Wilson Harris and V. S. Naipaul, and younger British-born
writers such as Zadie Smith and Diran Adebayo. His long poem Turner
(1994) revisits J. M. W. Turner’s painting The Slave Ship, and A
Harlot’s Progress (1999), his third novel, is in dialogue with Hogarth’s
title-giving series of prints. His books therefore write across time and genre,
but they also cross geographies, as does his most recent novel Our Lady
of Demerara, which is set in Ireland, Coventry and Guyana. Currently
Dabydeen is co-editing the Oxford Companion to Black British
History.
