Jamaican poet Jason Allen Besant was keen to announce his position rejecting the Israeli war on Gaza strip While receiving the T. S. Eliot Award – one of the most prestigious British awards – at the ceremony held in the capital, London.
According to the award page published on the “X” platform on Monday, “Jason announced in his speech while receiving the award his rejection of the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip, which has occupied him and many of us over the past few months.”
Jason accepted the prize by reading from his book, and by speaking against the war in Gaza, which has preoccupied him and many of us over these last few months.
— T. S. Eliot Prize (@tseliotprize) January 15, 2024
The Jamaican poet’s position during what is described as the largest annual poetry event in the United Kingdom was not the first in which he expressed his solidarity with Palestine. Rather, he had previously announced his support for the lawsuit filed by South Africa Before international justice Court In The Hague regarding Israel’s practiceGenocide” in Gaza.
On January 11, he wrote on his page on the X platform, “The South African government is giving people so much hope and life now through its courage. History will look at it very positively.”
The South African government is giving people so much hope and life now through their courage. History will look so favourably on them. https://t.co/U4di6UvXyM
— Jason Allen-Paisant (@jallenpaisant) January 11, 2024
On the same day, Allen Besant reposted a tweet by a Palestinian activist calling herself “The Voice of Gaza,” in which she wrote, “I have grown 20 years older…in the past 97 days! I have seen all the horrors of this world. If I had read in books about what is happening to us, I would not have believed it.” “This is true.”
I have grown up twenty years.. over the past 97 days!
I have seen all the horrors of this world.
If I had read in books about what is happening to us, I would not have believed it to be true. @wizardbisan pic.twitter.com/PJaJBQhzF5— GaZa Voice (@GaZaVoice7th) January 11, 2024
On January 12, the poet announced his solidarity with an activist named Mark Hebdan, a critic of BBC News for its bias towards Israel. Allen Besant re-published his tweet saying, “I just turned on BBC News and it is broadcasting Israeli defense in The Hague on “Live. Not a single minute of the prosecution’s case was broadcast live yesterday. You are unilaterally supporting apartheid in disgrace.”
Just turned on BBC News and they’re showing the Israeli defence at the Hague live. They didn’t show a single minute of the prosecution case live yesterday. You are a one sided, apartheid supporting disgrace @BBCNews
— Mark Hebden💙 (@unionlib) January 12, 2024
On January 7, after Hamza al-Dahdouh, the son of Wael al-Dahdouh, the director of Al Jazeera’s bureau in the Gaza Strip, was martyred in an Israeli bombing, Allen Besant wrote, “The slaughter of this man’s family in stages is just one facet of the barbaric violence practiced by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people.” “I cannot see how major academics in the fields of ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘decolonization’ can remain silent in the face of this.”
The slaughter of this man’s family by stages is just one face of the State of Israel’s barbaric violence against the Palestinian people. I can’t see how academics big on ‘postcolonial’ and ‘decolonial’ this and that can remain silent in the face of this. https://t.co/4b5mgCrsbD
— Jason Allen-Paisant (@jallenpaisant) January 7, 2024
Jason Allen Besant…Jamaican poet
Jamaican poet Jason Allen Besant won this year’s British TS Eliot Prize for his second poetry collection, Self-Portrait as Othello, a collection that explores black masculinity and immigrant identity.
The winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 is Jason Allen-Paisant, for Self-Portrait as Othello! pic.twitter.com/goIv7JUTvP
— T. S. Eliot Prize (@tseliotprize) January 15, 2024
The 43-year-old writer and academic was announced as the winner of a prize of 25,000 pounds sterling during a ceremony held at the Wallace Collection in the British capital, London.
The judging panel, consisting of poets Paul Muldoon, Sasha Dugdale and Dennis Soule, said: “A Self-Portrait as Othello” is a book with great ambitions matched by great imaginative ability, freshness and artistic flair.
The jury added, “As the title of the poetry collection suggests, poetry is presented theatrically and with a range of voices and registers across geographies and eras. It takes real courage to accomplish a work like this with such style and integrity. We are confident that ‘A Self-Portrait Like Othello’ is a book that will make a comeback.” Readers for many years.
In “Self-Portrait as Othello,” Allen Besant connects Shakespeare’s Othello—a Moorish general often treated as an outsider in Venice—with the experiences of black immigrants today.
His poems move between Jamaica, Prague, Paris and Oxford, among other places, and he weaves together lines of French, Jamaican vernacular, Italian and German.
Allen Besant lives in Leeds with his wife and two children, and teaches critical theory and creative writing at the University of Manchester. His first collection, “Thinking in Trees,” was published in 2021, and his book, “Surveying the Jungle,” will be published this year.
The judges said they received a total of 186 submissions from British and Irish publishers. Other poets to make the 10-poet shortlist for this year’s prize include: Kate Vann for Ink Cloud Reader, Jane Clarke for A Change in the Air and Sharon Olds for Ballads.
The TS Eliot Prize was established in 1993, and past winners include Ted Hughes, Don Patterson, Carol Ann Duffy and Ocean Fong. The winner of the award for 2022 is Anthony Joseph for his collection “Sonnets by Albert.”
T. S. Eliot…poet of “The Waste Land”
As for the recipient of the award, Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot) lived from 1888 to 1965 in St. Louis, Missouri. He was an English poet, critic, and playwright of American origin.
T. S. Eliot graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, then entered Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1910. He then moved to Paris and studied French literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne.
He then returned to Harvard University for graduate study in philosophy and psychology, then joined the German University of Mahberg on the eve of World War I, and soon moved to Oxford University to study Greek philosophy.
Eliot’s poems were very few, which is inconsistent with his international stature. It is clear that he was focusing on quality, as he built his international fame on a few poems, and he wrote two or three poems a year, but these poems were amazing and distinctive, and each one was considered an integrated poetic world and a unique literary system in itself.
In 1915, his first poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” appeared in the American magazine “Poetry.” In the same year, he married an English girl named Vivien Hague. He worked as a teacher for a year, then moved to work at Lloyd Bank in London in 1917.
In 1927, he became a follower of the Evangelical Church and obtained British citizenship. In 1932, he became a professor of poetry at Harvard University. His wife died in 1947, and a year later he received the Legion of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1948).
Eliot published his first collection of poetry, Prufrock and Other Notes, in 1917. In this collection, the influences of French Symbolism are evident.
In 1922, Eliot published “The Waste Land”, which is widely considered his greatest poetic work ever, and the poem that brought him international fame.
The poem was written during the collapse of Eliot’s marriage, and it expresses the disappointment of the post-World War I generation (1914-1918), its spiritual collapse, and its material collapse, and it depicts a nightmarish world full of fear, loss, and death.
Source : Al Jazeera + British press + social media sites
