Jason Allen-Paisant

The Writer

My writing explores embodied experience in the context of Afro-diasporic history. My critically acclaimed collection, Thinking with Trees was a 2021 Irish Times Poetry Book of the Year and won the Poetry category of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. My work has  appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The Poetry Review, Callaloo, New Poetries VIII, The BBC, and is forthcoming in More Fiya: A New Collection of Black British Poetry. I have been the recipient of a prestigious Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. I hold a Doctorate in Medieval and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford and am on faculty in the School of English and the School of Languages, Cultures & Societies at the University of Leeds. I'm currently at work on a non-fiction book titled Primitive Child: On Blackness, Landscape and Reclaiming Time.