Equinox

Equinox is an unforgettable and never-before-published masterwork completed by Kamau Brathwaite before his death in 2020. Written in his unique Sycorax typeface and replete with compelling images and photographs, Equinox contains poems written in Brathwaite’s singular Barbadian vernacular and visionary style—poems about the Middle Passage, the natural world, Billie Holiday, Whitney Houston, the Kumina dance in Jamaica, Nelson and Winnie Mandela, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, and Breughel’s painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” among many tidalectic topics. The lyrical poems in Equinox weave together history and culture with the imagery of Brathwaite’s native Barbados, weaving a lush tapestry of injustice, redemption, and hope.