Brandon Wint’s collection,
Divine Animal, showcases his facility with words. Like the work of spoken word artists such as Toronto’s Andrea Thompson, his poetry sings on paper.
Divine Animal is rich with anger, mourning, yearning, celebration, sensuality, and hope. The collection is also a timely and important reflection on the origins of systemic racism and long-time police brutality against Black people in the Western world.
In his prelude to
Divine Animal, “Incantation: Memory of Water,” Wint’s narrator considers the history of his Jamaican and Barbadian ancestors. Wint’s epigraph from Saint Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott sets the tone and evokes the Caribbean setting, “its history,” and the “scars of colonialism.”