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Resources:

Fractured Circles (1979)
Lucy’s Letters and Loving (1982)
Chain of Days (1985)
Hot Earth Cold Earth (1995)
Windrush Songs (2007)
A Story I Am In: Selected Poems
When I Dance (1988)
Playing a Dazzler (1996)
Everywhere Faces Everywhere (1997)
A Nest Full of Stars (2002)
Only One of Me: Selected Poems (2004)
Bluefoot Traveller: Poetry by West Indians in Britain (1976)
News for Babylon: The Chatto Book of West Indian British Poetry (1984)
Classic Poems to Read Aloud (1995) and Around the World in Eighty Poems (2001)

James Berry

James Berry was born in 1924 in Jamaica and after working in the US for a time, settled in Britain in 1948. He is a poet and author of several books for adults and for children.

His adult poetry collections are: Fractured Circles (1979); Lucy’s Letters and Loving (1982); Chain of Days (1985); Hot Earth Cold Earth (1995); and Windrush Songs (2007). A Story I Am In: Selected Poems was published in 2011.

He has also written collections for children, including When I Dance (1988), winner of the 1989 Signal Poetry Award; Playing a Dazzler (1996); Everywhere Faces Everywhere (1997); A Nest Full of Stars (2002) and Only One of Me: Selected Poems (2004).

He is also the editor of four poetry anthologies: Bluefoot Traveller: Poetry by West Indians in Britain (1976) and News for Babylon: The Chatto Book of West Indian British Poetry (1984); and for children, Classic Poems to Read Aloud (1995) and Around the World in Eighty Poems (2001).

James Berry is a champion of West Indian British writing and and uses a mixture of West Indian dialect and standard English in his own work. He has given many performances and workshops and lives in London. In 1981 he won the National Poetry Competition with his poem ‘Fantasy of an African Boy’.
In 1990, he was awarded an OBE and in 1991, received a Cholmondeley Award. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University and is an Honorary Fellow at Birkbeck College.

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