Mordecai, Pamela

Pamela Mordecai is a poet, novelist, storyteller, playwright, and children’s writer. Born and raised in Jamaica, her family immigrated to Canada in 1994. She has published eight collections of poetry, five children’s books, and a collection of short fiction, Pink Icing. Her debut novel, Red Jacket, was shortlisted for one of Canada’s top prizes for literary fiction. Her previous poetry collection, de book of Joseph, completes her New Testament trilogy in Jamaican patois. She also has written a play for children, El Numero Uno or the Pig from Lopinot. A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems (New Directions) brings together 30-plus years of Mordecai’s work. It’s a voice that speaks in a vibrant mix of Jamaican Creole with standard English, profanity, and reverence with dub and blues, the oral and vernacular, with metrical virtuosity. The collection draws from her acclaimed first collection Journey Poem published in 1989, and includes the moving elegy for her murdered brother in the true blue of islands, the stories of freed slaves in subversive sonnets, and her dazzling reimaginings of biblical stories.