Additional information
by Jean 'binta' Breeze (Author)
Jean 'Binta' Breeze was a popular Jamaican Dub poet and storyteller
whose performances were so powerful she has been called a 'one-woman
festival'. The Fifth Figure is a book-length sequence mixing
poetry and prose which chronicles the lives of five generations of
Caribbean and Black British women of mixed ancestry.
Part novel, part poem, part family memoir, its structure is based on
the Jamaican quadrille, a hybrid version of the dance brought from
Europe by the island's former colonial masters. Beginning in the late
19th century with her great-great grandmother's first quadrille, Breeze
tells a many-layered tale of love and betrayal, innocence and suffering,
hardship and joy over a hundred years as each mother sees her daughter
join a dance that shapes her life.
The Fifth Figure was her sixth book, and saw Breeze breathing
new life into the dramatic monologue. Steeped in the history of Jamaica,
the book develops the possibilities of narrative, voice and rhythm,
offering an eloquent and empowering vision of Caribbean lives and
culture.
In 2011 Bloodaxe published Jean 'Binta' Breeze's Third World Girl: Selected Poems, a DVD-book selection of new and previously published work with live performances on the accompanying DVD. This does include work from The Fifth Figure, which remains available as a separate edition, nor the later collection, The Verandah Poems (2016).
Author Biography
Jean
'Binta' Breeze (1956-2021) was an internationally-renowned poet. Born
in Hanover, Jamaica, she first visited London in 1985 to take part in
the International Book Fair of Radical and Third World Books, and she
continued to write, perform and teach until a collapsed lung resulted in
early retirement to Jamaica. She published eight books of poetry and
stories. Answers (Jamaica, 1982), Riddym Ravings (Race Today, UK, 1988),
Spring Cleaning (Virago, 1992) were followed by On the Edge of an
Island (1997), The Arrival of Brighteye (2000), The Fifth Figure (2006),
Third World Girl: Selected Poems (2011, with DVD) and The Verandah
Poems (2016) from Bloodaxe. She also released several records, cassettes
and CDs, including Tracks and Eena Me Corner with the Dennis Bovell Dub
Band and Riding On De Riddym: selected spoken works (57 Productions).
She performed her work throughout the world, including tours of the
Caribbean, Britain, North America, Europe, South East Asia and Africa,
and latterly divided her time between Jamaica and England. She received a
NESTA Award in 2003, and an MBE in 2012 for services to literature.
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