I Have Crossed an Ocean

Born in Guyana, Grace Nichols has lived in Britain since 1977. Her first collection, I is a Long Memoried Woman (1983) won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Most of that book is included in her later retrospective, I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010). Four subsequent poetry collections were published by Virago: The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984), Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (1989), Sunris (1996), winner of the Guyana Prize, and Startling the Flying Fish (2006), poems which tell the story of the Caribbean. She has published four books with Bloodaxe, Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009), I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010), The Insomnia Poems (2017), and Passport to Here and There (2020), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. She has also published several poetry books for younger readers, including Come on into My Tropical Garden (1988), Give Yourself a Hug (1994), Everybody Got a Gift (2005) and Cosmic Disco (2013). She lives in Sussex with the poet John Agard and their family. She was made a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020.

from I Is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983)
13 from One Continent to Another
14 Days That Fell
15 Waterpot
16 Each Time They Came
17 Taint
18 Sacred Flame
19 Without Song
20 Ala
22 Sugar Cane
26 Like a Flame
27 Up My Spine
28 I Coming Back
29 Night Is Her Robe
30 Skin-Teeth
31 Love Act
32 In My Name
34 Yemanji
35 Like Anansi
36 Of Golden Gods
37 I Will Enter
39 This Kingdom
41 Wind a Change
42 Omen
43 Holding My Beads
44 Epilogue

from The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984)
47 Price We Pay for the Sun
48 Those Women
49 The candlefly
50 Iguana Memory
51 Star-apple
52 Be a Butterfly
53 Back Home Contemplation
54 Praise Song for My Mother
55 Like a Beacon
56 Island Man
57 Spring
58 Waiting for Thelma’s laughter
59 Winter Thoughts
56 Two Old Black Men on a Leicester Square Park Bench

The Fat Black Woman’s Cycle
63 The Assertion
64 The Fat Black Woman’s Motto On Her Bedroom Door
65 The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping
66 A Fat Poem
67 Tropical Death
68 Invitation
70 Thoughts Drifting Through the Fat Black Woman’s Head While Having a Full Bubble Bath
71 The Fat Black Woman’s Instructions to a Suitor
72 Small Questions Asked By the Fat Black Woman

from Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (1989)
75 Dust
76 Grease
77 With Apologies To Hamlet
78 In Spite of Me
80 Wherever I Hang
81 My Black Triangle
82 Even Tho
83 Configurations
84 Abra-Cadabra
85 Out of Africa

from Sunris (1996)
89 Introduction to Sunris
92 Sunris
110 To the Running of My River
111 Timehri Airport to Georgetown
112 Blackout
113 First Generation Monologue
115 Long Man
118 My Northern Sister
119 Against the Planets
120 Black
121 White
122 Wings
124 Icons
125 Hurricane Hits England

from Startling the Flying Fish (2006)
129 My Children Are Movers
131 To My Coral Bones
132 I, Cariwoma Watched History
133 Other Ships
134 In My Sea-House
135 Palm-Tree Seductions
136 Facing Atlantic
137 Startling the Flying Fish
138 Is That You Columbus?
140 Our Cassandra
141 The People Could Fly
142 Many an Aztec Eye
143 Gold
145 Mother of the Mestizo
146 You There, Hummingbird
147 Old Canecutter at Airport
148 Cane Still Dancing
149 Hibiscus
150 Sly Anansi
152 Why Shouldn’t I
153 Not the Kind of Tree
154 Rain Music
155 For the Life of This Planet
156 Follow That Painting Back
157 Ink of Exile
158 The Children of Las Margaritas
159 Lip Shore
160 Footprints of My Arrival

Poems for Younger Readers
163 Sun Is Laughing
164 Headmistress Moon
165 In the Great Womb-Moon
166 Baby-K Rap Rhyme
168 Give Yourself a Hug
169 Cat Shots
170 Cat-Rap
171 Sleeping Out
172 Me and Mister Polite
173 Turner to His Critic
174 Come On into My Tropical Garden
175 Mama-Wata
176 For Forest
177 Wha Me Mudder Do
178 Granny, Granny Please Comb My Hair
179 Don’t Cry Caterpillar
180 Ar-a-rat
181 Teenage Earthbirds
184 Book-heart

183 Glossary