Data Trace: (Salt Modern Poets)

The Basquiat of contemporary writing, Ronnie McGrath’s DATA TRACE is a collection of innovative poetry that sheds light on the changing nature of a poet’s identity and his experience of growing up in Britain. It is an earnest look at the `self’ as raced and un-raced, sexualised and un-sexualised, gendered and yet stripped to the bone of an impossibility to define `self’ in a fast and forever changing world. A celebration of the new, DATA TRACE is a peek into the fecund mind of a poet whose work is complex and yet accessible, welcomingly fresh and stubbornly vibrant in its attempt to capture the sensibility of contemporary Britain. The connoisseur of innovative writing will note the rich and varied palette of a writer who is informed by such literary movements as DADA, Surrealism, Afro-Futurism, Speculative Fiction and experimentation. Reminiscent of the writings of such poets as Clarence Major, Jayne Cortez, Bob Kaufman, The Last Poets, Cecil Taylor and Gil-Scot Heron, to mention but a few, DATA TRACE is best described as Benjamin Zephaniah and Linton Kwesi Johnson infused with a post-Caribbean, postmodern and post Black British sensibility. Undoubtedly this is tomorrow’s poetry for the lover of contemporary writing.

Table of Contents:
On Becoming A Poet Diasfrican The Catalyst: Ode to Sun Ra Black Orchid Milk Satchmo’s Lips Poem for Ani-Difranco Elocutionary Tongues in Obedience of Language Perfect One Extract From A Charlie Parker Solo How Di Body? Milford’s Paradiddle Acoustic Avant-Gardism Streams of consciousness poems for neo-surrealists Blood Mingus Music Act I Hi-koo Mingus Music Act II Dear Poet Dear Reader Her ankhles on a slipperless shoe/ version I–one Her ankhles on a slipperless shu/ version II–2 Her ankhles on a slipperless shoe/ version III–3 Poem That Gets Up Nose & Into Arse-Crack Phunke Apertures Of The Soul In Sneak Preview blk brother blk british brother The DNA of an Other’s Wig Barber-shop man Untitled Creationation I Jig Philosophy, Religion, Race, Death, Our Father, In Laws, School, Big Brother, Mother, Ex-Girlfriend, Poetry, Black Publisher, The Black Playwright, bredrin Her Patois is Montage I slip into the solitude of a blank page Brass Fantasy Perpendicularities in Fetishes of Rubber and Brass Spiral Beauty Out of Control The Rainbow of Her Beauty The Theory Of Everything A Poem For Literary Critics Who Like Their Whisky Neat Sez Dark Countries In Canon Fire Is A Blind Institution In The Neon Signs Of ... Circles of Polysemy

About the Author :
Ronnie McGrath is a Creative Writing Lecturer at Imperial College London and the University of The Arts, London College of Communication. A former musician, he was a founding member of the defunct musical group the London Afro Blok, who toured Europe, performed for the Queen and opened the 1994 Commonwealth Games in British Columbia, Canada. In 1993, he was commended for his writing by ACER, who later published and awarded 1st place for his writing in 1994. As a contemporary artist, he has exhibited his work throughout London.