Overview

Anansi, the trickster god and Spiderhero of West African folktales, is the spinning voice at the hub of Come Down Nansi. Here the eight-legged one pits wits against larger creatures, and in the guise of uncle and auntie, leaves the ceiling to engage with mythic beginnings, trans-atlantic trade, migration and metropolitan life. Along the way Anansi goes walkies with eight dogs in Hyde Park, cops the lead role in Swan Lake and reshuffles the books of Prospero. With Man to Pan and Limbo Dancer in Dark Glasses, this new cycle forms an orchestrated trilogy, Weblines, where Agard explores what he sees as three powerful Caribbean metaphors of transfiguration: the steeldrum (spider-pan with its webbed concave belly), the limbo dancer, as spider-limbed god spinning cosmic bridges; and Anansi, the transforming Spider, weaving old continents in mythopoetic webs.

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The weblines Agard refers to are those spun by the West African trickster spider-god Anansi rather than those of the Internet, but in the constant playfulness that runs through the first third of his latest collection, Agard has no qualms about giving Anansi her own website in the more contemporary parlance as well. Anansi, whose name is given in just about every variant spelling imaginable (a sign of the spider-god's shape-shifting prowess and the mutability of ancient folklore in modern times), is the central figure of the new poems in this volume, which also includes selections from previous Agard works, Limbo Dancer in Dark Glasses (1983) and Man to Pan (1982)-collections that are thematically linked to the new poems by their concern with the pains of the black Caribbean experience and the folk cultures of resistance that this history of oppression engendered. In the new poems Agard (a Guyanese who has lived in London since 1977) performs an entertaining balancing act that melds the naivete of folk form with a more sophisticated language of modern urban man, juggling his own self-conscious wordplay with the trickery of his folk hero. The earliest poems, while attempting something similar, too often drift into mere doggerel and agitprop. But the new work (and some of the better verse from Limbo Dancer ) finds a fulcrum that enables him to make political comments that are every bit as mordant and pointed as those of the earlier ones but that also have a vitality and prosodic music that is often thrilling to read and hear. A mixed bag, but a good introduction for newcomers to Agard's work. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Poet, performer, anthologist, John Agard was born in Guyana and came to Britain in 1977. His many books include eight from Bloodaxe, From the Devil’s Pulpit (1997), Weblines (2000), We Brits (2006), Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems (2009), Clever Backbone (2009), Travel Light Travel Dark (2013), Playing the Ghost of Maimonides (2016) and The Coming of the Little Green Man (2018). He is the winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for 2012, presented to him by The Queen on 12 March 2013. He won the Casa de las Américas Prize in 1982, a Paul Hamlyn Award in 1997, and a Cholmondeley Award in 2004. We Brits was shortlisted for the 2007 Decibel Writer of the Year Award, and he has won the Guyana Prize twice, for his From the Devil's Pulpit and Weblines. The Coming of the Little Green Man is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. He lives with the poet Grace Nichols and family in Sussex; they received the CLPE Poetry Award 2003 for their children’s anthology Under the Moon and Over the Sea (Walker Books).

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