Bessie Smith

In the absence of any black people around her while she was growing up in Scotland, JK invented fantasy relationships with well-known black people from around the world such as Nelson Mandela , Ella Fitzgerald

In the year leading up to this publication, UM was reading (mostly male) African-American writers—Booker T. Washington , James Weldon Johnson , and W. E. B. Du Bois—and taking an intense interest in...

The lovers here include parents and children. The volume includes a sequence of poems about blues singer Bessie Smith , set in the American South. The significance of the blues modifies according to its...

They had help from Vyvyan Richards (who had formerly planned to set up a printing press with his close friend T. E. Lawrence ), which was needed since neither had much experience with hand-presses. They...

Several of the poems had been broadcast on various BBC radio and television programmes, including When You Move Out on BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour, and JK 's BBC 2 poetry documentary, Twice Through...

JK 's poetry, plays, and fiction explore issues of divided, displaced, or mixed identity. Her writings probe and challenge assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality with a mixture of pain and humour. She often draws...

JK published a biography, Bessie Smith, with Absolute in Bath and New York. It was re-issued in early 2021.

EF contributed to the Penguin series Lives of Modern Women her short biography Bessie Smith.