My Work as a writer and a scholar

My work spans both scholarly research and creative writing, reflecting my deep engagement with embodied experience in the context of Afro-diasporic history. My critically acclaimed collection, Thinking with Trees __was a 2021 Irish Times Poetry Book of the Year and won the Poetry category of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Self-Portrait as Othello, my sophomore book of poems, won the UK’s two most prestigious poetry awards for 2023 — the Forward Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize; it’s one of the rare books to have accomplished this feat. I have been the recipient of a prestigious Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for my research on poetry and theatre. I hold a Doctorate in Medieval and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford and am currently Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory and Creative Writing in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. My creative non-fiction book titled The Possibility of Tenderness will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann in 2024. My work is represented by Harriet Moore at Aitken Alexander Associates.

Literary Works

Books

Thinking with Trees

Carcanet Press, 2021

  • Shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2023
  • Winner of the Poetry Category OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature 2022
  • An Irish Times Best Poetry Books of 2021
  • A White Review Book of the Year 2021

Self-Portrait as Othello

Carcanet Press, 2023

  • Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023
  • Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023
  • Shortlisted for the Writer’s Prize 2023
  • The Poetry Book Society Spring Choice 2023

The Possibility of Tenderness

Nonfiction. Forthcoming with Hutchinson Heinemann

  • Expected publication: March 2025

Scholarly Works Section

Books

Engagements with Aimé Césaire: Thinking with Spirits (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Face à l'histoire coloniale (co-edited with Clare Finburgh Delijani, Théâtre/Public no. 246, 2022)

Performing Black Futures (special issue of parallax, Vol. 27.4, 2021)

Engagements with Aimé Césaire:

Thinking with Spirits (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Théâtre dialectique postcolonial: Aimé Césaire et Derek Walcott (Paris: Editions Classiques Garnier, 2017)

Peer Reviewed Articles

Allen-Paisant J. 2022. Theater of Ancestral Mediation: Vodou in the Performance Aesthetics of Miracson Saint-Val. The New Centennial Review. 22(3), pp. 79-101.

Allen-Paisant J. 2022. Thinking with Spirits; or Dwelling and Knowing in the Work of Aimé Césaire. French Studies. 76(4), pp. 576-590.

Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Animist Time and the White Anthropocene. New Formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics Durrant S; Dickinson P (eds.). 104/105, pp. 30-49

Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Pour sauver le monde, il nous faut l’invisible: Entretien avec Frankétienne. Africultures.

Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Body and Gesture in Derek Walcott’s Theatre. New Theatre Quarterly. 37(1), pp. 42-57

Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Reclaiming Time: On Blackness and Landscape. PN Review. 47(3), pp. 31-34)

Allen-Paisant J. 2021. Silence, Sound, Ceremony: The Poetry of NourbeSe Philip. The Poetry Review. 111(1), pp. 78-87

Allen-Paisant J. 2020. Vers un théâtre du corps habité : Actualisation scénique du corps et de la guerre dans Chemin de der de Julien Mabiala Bissila. Nouvelles Études Francophones. 35(1), pp. 138-152

Invited Talks And Essays

Reclaiming Time: On Blackness and Landscape" (Prospections Journal and PN Review, 2021)

Joy and Insecurity in Port-au-Prince" (Granta, 2022)