ISBN 978-1-9990389-0-8
What does it mean to self-recover? How do we decolonize our bodies?
Where do we turn for spiritual guidance? When is it right to fight for what you believe in? From whom do we learn how to love?
How do we hold ourselves accountable for the harm we cause?
Is it our responsibility to create new systems of emancipation as we tear down old oppressive ones?
d’bi.young asks us to consider these urgent questions in her new book dubbin poetry: the collected poems of d’bi.young anitafrika; continuing Dub poetry’s legacy of connecting the dots between self-development, artistic activism and social change. The first of three volumes focused on the theme of dub, the collection features three of her previously published books: art on black (Women’s Press, 2005), rivers & other blackness between us (Women’s Press, 2007) and OYA (Spolrusie, 2015). It also includes a new title, black love matters, (only available in this collection), featuring dub poems, monologues and scenes from her most celebrated theatrical productions. David Austin - independent scholar and author of the recently published Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution (Pluto, 2018) - authors the Foreword. Other volumes in the dub series include: dubbin monodrama: solo performance works by artists from the african diaspora (fall 2019), dubbin theatre: the collected plays of d’bi.young anitafrika (spring 2020) and dubbin praxis: the anitafrika method (summer 2020).
As a queer Black feminist performance artist, educator, and mother, d’bi.young possesses a unique voice that crosses cultural boundaries and transcends artistic disciplines. Her work fiercely and compassionately navigates the personal within the political; the micro within the macro. Her poetry, theatre and Anitafrika Method have been challenging and inspiring global audiences for over two decades. d’bi.young’s new volume of collected dub poems chronicles the continued evolution of her Dub poetics.
d’bi.young’s poems propose words... raucous, reverberating as both weapons and redeeming instruments… Pamela Mordecai
d’bi’s poetry courses along its own path…delightful and disturbing...raw power and boundless revelation…Blakka Ellis
d’bi.young is the first true child of Dub poetry... Lillian Allen
d’bi is an electric wire and a grounded soul...Sheri-D Wilson
d’bi is the Dub Schola…Motiond’bi.young anitafrika’s performances and writings remember, celebrate, and interrogate enduring and plural Black and Caribbean radical traditions, while also dramatising a quest for courage and the strength to survive, love, struggle, and hold space in the midst of extraordinary violence. Her work seeks out what is incomplete in past emancipation projects and rehearses ways of extending these - telling stories, amending experiences and inserting questions into the gaps and fissures of past struggles.
Honor Ford Smith PhD. (2018). ‘Performing Queer Marronage: The Work of d’bi.young anitafrika’, in Gatchalian, C.E. et al (eds). Q2Q: Queer Canadian Performance Texts. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, pp. 239-243.
The collection broaches a wide range of themes and theories including Anti-Black Racism, Biomythography, Black Feminist Thought, Childhood Sexual Trauma, Critical Race Theory, Depression, Dub Theatre, Emancipation, Gender and Sexuality, Homophobia, Jamaican Diaspora Experience, Love, the Maroons, Motherhood, Misogyny, Pan Africanism, Post-Colonial Theory, Post-Traumatic Stress, Queer Theory, Social Change, Revolution, Self-Love, Self-Recovery, Spirituality, and Suicide.
Author Bio
d’bi.young anitafrika is a queer Black feminist artist. Canadian Poet of Honor and YWCA Woman of Distinction in the Arts, she is an internationally celebrated African Jamaican Dub poet, writer, arts-educator and three time Dora Award winning theatre practitioner, whose trans-disciplinary work explores themes of identity, gender, sexuality, divinity, the erotic, race, class and the human experience. She is the originator of the intersectional creative leadership praxis – the Anitafrika Method – which has been employed by The Stephen Lewis Foundation, The Banff Centre, U of T, MaRS, and other institutions globally. For the last two decades d’bi.young has mentored countless artists in North America, the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, South America and Europe through her world-wide performances, speaking engagements and arts-education projects. Her latest projects include her newly published dubbin poetry: the collected poems of d’bi.young anitafrika, Concrete Jungle - a new monodrama exploring imprisonment and mourning, and an online educational platform called The Anitafrika School of The Arts.
Foreword Author Bio
David Austin is the author of Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution (Pluto, 2018) and the editor of Moving Against the System, The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Making of Global Consciousness (Pluto, 2018). He is the winner of the 2014 Casa de las Americas Prize. In Dread Poetry and Freedom - the first book dedicated to the work of this 'political poet par excellence' - David Austin explores the themes of poetry, political consciousness and social transformation through the prism of Johnson's work. Drawing from the Bible, reggae and Rastafari, and surrealism, socialism and feminism, and in dialogue with Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James and Walter Rodney, and W.E.B. Du Bois and the poetry of d'bi young anitafrika, Johnson's work becomes a crucial point of reflection on the meaning of freedom in this masterful and rich study.
Spolrusie Publishing is a micropress based in Toronto, Canada, specializing in feminist and bqtipoc works.
dubbin poetry: the collected poems of d’bi.young anitafrika
Spolrusie Publishing, Toronto, ON, Canada | ISBN 978-1-9990389-0-8