INDIGO DREAMS PUBLISHING LTD
Louisa Adjoa Parker is a writer of English and Ghanaian heritage, who has lived in the west country for most of her life. She writes poetry, fiction, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) history, and articles. Louisa also works as an equality, diversity and inclusion consultant, and is co-director of The Inclusion Agency.
Louisa’s first poetry collection, Salt-sweat and Tears and pamphlet, Blinking in the Light were published by Cinnamon Press. Louisa’s work has appeared in many publications including Wasafari; Ink, Sweat & Tears; Envoi; Under the Radar; Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe); Closure (Peepal Tree Press); and New Daughters of Africa (Myriad Editions). She has been highly commended by the Forward Prize and shortlisted by the Bridport Prize. She has completed her first short story collection and is finishing her first novel.
Louisa has written books/exhibitions exploring BAME history in the south west. During 2018-2019 she was a New Talent Immersion Fellow for South West Creative Technology Network, and produced a podcast and blog telling the stories of BAME people in rural Britain today. Louisa has written for magazines including Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine; Gal-dem; Skin Deep; Black Ballad; and Media Diversified.
Poetry
138 x 216mm
70 pages
£9.99 + P&P UK
ISBN 978-1-910834985
PUB:
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How to wear a skin
Louisa Adjoa Parker
Louisa Adjoa Parker’s latest collection is an exploration of identity. Mostly set in south west England, Parker explores themes including place, race, friendship, motherhood, love, and loss, as well as what’s happening in society today. She takes inspiration from her own story and the imagined stories of others – a boy at a train station; a woman with a tattoo – and weaves them together in her quest to understand our place in a beautiful, yet fractured world.
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How to Wear a Skin asks, what does it mean to grow up mixed-race in a rural English town? As women, how do we raise our children in a hostile environment? Poignant, direct and politically articulate, Louisa Adjoa Parker is that rare poet who writes with simple, bell-like clarity, yet manages to capture the delicate nuance of the complexity around identity and place.
Karen McCarthy Woolf
Beach Huts
Next to bone-white huts
in the half-dark, where red and green lights
strung like necklaces, hang
against the sky, I want to tell the woman
with the little boy who trails behind her,
while she calls out Charlie
every now and then as though the word
will reach out, wrap itself around him
like rope; pull him close, I want to say
I lived here once, I lived here, me.
it ends like this
he wonders why he hadn’t known
but perhaps he did
perhaps the heart of him has always known
it ends like this
him splayed out on the sidewalk like a giant fish
beached on grey sand as a ring of people
watch it flap its tail watch it drowning in the air
it ends like this him face-down on a bed of concrete
his tomb his only view of shoes and legs
listening to the voices of white men hungry for his blood
as they poke their fingers into the soft folds of his flesh
the grandsons of the men who strung
trees with his forebears as though they were lanterns
it ends like this with men pressing the breath from him
an arm wrapped around his throat
like a lover’s final embrace
it ends like this him choking out the words
I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe
