Jason Allen-Paisant: You cannot speak about nature without speaking about yourself

Jason Allen-Paisant’s poetry looks for beauty and tenderness inside the violent world of the plantation. “I wanted to show that even within the plantation’s violent world, beauty and strength existed, and, of course, tenderness,” the Jamaican poet says.

Allen-Paisant, who lives in Britain, was among the international poetic voices brought to Slovenian readers in translation during the first Versia international poetry festival, which concluded in Ptuj at the end of August.

His work grows from memories of coming of age in the Jamaican countryside. From that experience, it expands into a reflection on colonialism’s legacy, the relationship between people and land, and different, more careful ways of living.

His poetry collection Thinking with Trees, translated by Miljana Cunta, has been published by Družina. His collection Self-Portrait as Othello, published in 2023, received the Forward Prize and the prestigious T. S. Eliot Prize.

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I wanted to show that even within the plantation’s violent world, beauty and strength existed, and, of course, tenderness.