Self Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant
#SelfPortraitAsOthello by @jallenpaisant – a gloriously ambitious, illuminating poetry collection is shortlisted for Jhalak Prize 24.
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Shortlisted for the Writers’ Prize 2024
Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2024
Longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature 2024
Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023
Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023
The Poetry Book Society Spring Choice 2023
A Guardian and The Irish Times Book of the Year
Jason Allen-Paisant’s first collection, Thinking With Trees, won the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for poetry. It was also recognized as a notable book by The Irish Times and The White Review in 2021. In Poetry London, Maryam Hessavi praised his work, saying he explores the layers of imperialist history while planting new narratives in the same soil.
His second collection, Self-Portrait as Othello, features interwoven poems. These poems reimagine Othello in modern London, Paris, and Venice. They create narratives that reflect his complex identities. This collection combines poetic memoir with ekphrastic elements. It delves into a character that is both fictional and real. Othello embodies an emotional framework that began in seventeenth-century Venice and still exists today.
Through Othello, Allen-Paisant reflects on his travels across Europe. He examines the Black male body and its multifaceted presence, defiance, and vulnerabilities. Othello’s dual identities as ‘immigrant’ and ‘Black’ often intersect and resonate within twenty-first-century Europe.
