The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay

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The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay

The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay

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The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay

'Jackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother and the daughter. This unique and honest volume of poems has been adapted for radio. Also included in the book are new poems reflecting issues of sexuality, Scottishness and being working-class' - Spare Rib.

'Jackie Kay has been gathering a reputation for a few years as an outstanding young talent in British poetry and playwriting... The Adoption Papers could well become a key work of feminism in action... a wonderfully spirited, tender and crafted contribution to Scottish writing, to black writing, and to the poetry of our time. It is a work of the utmost generosity and truth' - Alastair Niven, Poetry Review.

'These are brave, honest, unsentimental poems... Kay's poetry can be loud with pain and rage, but sometimes it's as though she whispers too, entering dreams, allowing herself a delicate imagery... This book is full of fresh, remarkable poetry; its rhythms sing from the page, demanding to be heard' - Elizabeth Burns, The Scotsman

'This poet's history - a black child adopted and reared in Scotland - and the personae that have shone from her previous books in many genres since her first collection, The Adoption Papers, make reforging this particular identity an unusually complex matter. In different forms, tones and voices, these poems flicker fascinatingly between oppositions... The poems explore authenticity, allegiance, origins and memory through multiple masks' - Ruth Padel, The Independent.

'Warm, tough, painful and often very funny poems' - Fleur Adcock, Sunday Times.

Jackie Kay was an adopted child of Scottish/Nigerian descent brought up by white parents in Glasgow. She is one of Britain's best-known poets, appearing frequently on radio and TV programmes on poetry and culture. In 2007 Bloodaxe published Darling: New & Selected Poems, which included almost all of her four previous books of poetry from Bloodaxe, The Adoption Papers (1991), Other Lovers (1993), Off Colour (1998) and Life Mask (2005). Her epic poem The Lamplighter, adapted for both radio and stage, was published by Bloodaxe in 2008, was followed by Fiere from Picador in 2011.

Jackie Kay's fiction and non-fiction (from Picador) has been massively popular: her novel Trumpet (1998), two collections of short stories, Why Don't You Stop Talking? (2002) and Wish I Was Here (2006), and her memoir Red Dust Road (2010), which won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011. She won the Somerset Maugham Award with Other Lovers, the Guardian Fiction Prize for Trumpet, Decibel Writer of the Year for Wish I Was Here and has twice won the Signal Poetry Award for her children's poetry. Her fourth book of poetry for children, Red Cherry, Red, was published by Bloomsbury in 2007. The Adoption Papers is a set text on numerous school and university courses. She lives in Manchester, and was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2006.

She is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and co-edited the anthology Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe Books / Newcastle University, 2012) with James Procter and Gemma Robinson.

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