Grace Nichols – Beauty

By
Grace Nichols
181
Illustration by Sujith Vasudevan

Beauty 
is a fat black woman 
walking the fields 
pressing a breezed 
hibiscus 
to her cheek 
while the sun lights up  
her feet 
 
Beauty 
is a fat black woman 
riding the waves 
drifting in happy oblivion 
while the sea turns back 
to hug her shape 

from The Fat Black Woman Poems, 1984 
Published with courtesy of Poetry Publishing Bloodaxe Books:
https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/

Illustration by G. Gopikrishnan for the italian edition
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Grace Nichols
Grace Nichols
Grace Nichols was born in Guyana but has lived in Britain since 1977. Her first book of poems ‘I is a long-memoried Woman’ won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Other collections include, ‘The Fat Black Woman’s Poems’, ‘Sunris’ which won the Guyana Poetry Prize, ‘The Insomnia Poems' and ‘Picasso I Want My Face Back’ which resulted from her residency at the Tate Gallery London. She received a Cholmondeley Award for her work in 2001 and is among the poets studied on the GCSE syllabus. She has also written several collections for younger readers. Her latest adult collection, the ninth published and her fourth with Bloodaxe Books is ‘Passport to Here and There’. She is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.

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