Dub

Alexis Pauline Gumbs has a beautiful way of allowing words to wash together, rhythmically like the ocean, or rapidly like a river. The popping, start-stopping poetry of Dub is a tour through a history of colonialism, semi-autobiographical storytelling and suggested futures. The structure is poetry and narrative, swift and untethered to typical rules of writing. There is a message in that lack denial of (western) structure, I think, just as with Sylvia Winter's writing, who Gumbs references. The poems move through a slave's history to a philosophical positioning on unlearning and interconnectedness as postcolonial practice. This isn't a book for one sitting, but one to dip in and out of, to appreciate, mull over, and enjoy, and it is immaculately written and presented.