The Fat Black Woman's Poems

'Beneath the folk rhythms and the lyrical simplicities, Nichols's poems preach disquiet' OBSERVER

'Not only rich music, an easy lyricism, but also grit, and earthy honesty, a willingness to be vulnerable and clean' GWENDOLYN BROOKS

'Grace Nichols has wit, acidity, tenderness, any number of gifts at her disposal' JEANETTE WINTERSON

Celebrating five decades of the feminist publisher, each of the Five Gold Reads represents an iconic moment in Virago's history, from the 1970s to today.

A stunning collection of poems from Grace Nicholas, winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2021

Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors. In other sequences of this collection, Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures and sadnesses of memory, of loving, of 'the power to be what I am, a woman, charting my own futures'.

Deliciously inert and self contented, the fat black woman mocks oppression by the scandal of being herself...--INDEPENDENT on Sunday
Run naturally and economically off the tongue. Beneath the folk rhythms and the lyrical simplicities, Nichols's poems preach disquiet--OBSERVER

Born in 1950 in Guyana, where she grew up, Grace Nichols worked as a journalist and reporter. She came to Britain in 1977 and has published several children's books. Her cycle of poems, I Is a Long Memoried Woman, won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize.

Beauty is a fat black woman walking the fields pressing a breezed hibiscus to her cheek while the sun lights up her feet Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors, to a white world that still turns its back. Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures and sadnesses of memory, of loving, of 'the power to be what I am, a woman, charting my own futures'.

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