Turner: New and Selected Poems

by David Dabydeen

David Dabydeen’s Turner is a long narrative poem written in response to J. M. W. Turner’s celebrated poem “Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying.” Dabydeen’s poem focuses on what is hidden in Turner’s painting, the submerged head of the drowning African. In inventing a biography and the drowned man’s unspoken desires, the poem brings into confrontation the wish for renewal and the inescapable stains of history, including the meaning of Turner’s painting.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 1994

About the author

David Dabydeen (born 9 December 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer, novelist and academic. Since 2010 he has been Guyana's ambassador to China.

Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon coming on" (1840).

His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004.

Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title.

In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004.

The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007.

In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Hannah Polley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is mostly made up of a long poem that Dabydeen wrote based on Turner's painting 'Slave Ship' which depicts slavers throwing sick slaves overboard which was a common practise at the time. The colours in the painting are amazingly vivid but I think it is a little unfair of Dabydeen to say 'The intensity of Turner's painting is such that I believe the artist in private must have savoured the sadism he publicly denounced'. A copy of the painting is included in the book for anyone unfamiliar with it.

The poem is emotional and it is difficult not to get caught up thinking of the awful slave trade practices while you are reading it. However, I prefer the other shorter poems at the back of the book.

[Lauren Foweraker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a massive fan at first but after writing an essay on it and analysing it properly I changed my mind

[Helena Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Real Turner shade. One of those things people call “difficult but necessary”, like staying up for New Years past the age of 25.

[Zain Ahmed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dabydeen had based his poem 'Turner' on JMW Turner's painting "The Slave Ship", exhibited in 1840. It was really interesting to analyse how a visual representation of an historical event, in this case the slave ship Zong, influenced Dabydeen's writing of the Middle Passage, and how his work highlights the skewed historical presentation slavery in the late 18th to early 19th centuries. To have the poem written from the slave's perspective was greatly fascinating as it brought a whole new dimension to the way slavery is portrayed in post-colonial literature. Dabydeen consistently alludes to the harsh and grotesque treatment of the slaves on the ship, which ultimately did make the poem gripping. Yet, some Cantos were more difficult to understand than others, which is natural with poetry, but did bring the excitement and interest down a bit. But overall, an interesting read.

[Effie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birds I call by their plumage and cry / As these hundred years and more I have made / Names for places dwelt in, people forgotten: / Words are all I have left of my eyes, / Words of my own dreaming and those that Turner / Primed in my mouth. [...] Now I am loosed / Into the sea, I no longer call, / I have even forgotten the words. / Only the moon remains, watchful and loving / Across a vast space.

[Valeddy · Rating 2 out of 5]

As another reviewer has mentioned, it didn't need to be in the form of poetry at all. It seems like a poem gagging to be prose, it doesn't flow like a poem. I also feel that Dabydeen missed the entire purpose of Turner's 'Slave Ship' painting, and based on that misunderstanding wrote a long-form poem. I really think he missed the point.

[Alexias D'Avino · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of post-colonial poetry that reclaims the voice of an entire community, starting from the narrative of white men, changing its course, providing the point of view of the enslaved. Another must-read.

[zainab s · Rating 4 out of 5]

(only read turner but counting it as if i read the whole thing)
phenomenal.
loses a star bc it was so bloomi' long and confusing to read/analyse
outstanding mr dabydeen.
"rape, pregancy, beatings, men, all men:
Turner"

[kp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding collection. The long title poem is abreathtaking exploration of loss, perspective, and the long ghost of the past.

[貝晨珊 · Rating 3 out of 5]

very dramatic and veeery beautiful.

[Abi Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbing imagery - very well written and covers a very sensitive topic.

[Bookish Hound · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting and creative, in my opinion significantly more so than its muse

[Neve · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Remas · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Martha Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

This text portrayed slavery in a way that I can only describe as distraught. It tackles the topic of slavery in a very brutal and honest way, which can be difficult to read. I read this for my Transforming Visions: Text and Image module in my first year.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dabydeen's powers as a poet are considerable. More attuned to textuality's limitations than many other diasporic Guyanese writers, in Turner Dabydeen is able to conjure a vision of the Middle Passage that falls into neither romantic myths nor callous statistics. In other words, he can see clearly that his desire to recover a lost object---the voice of slaves lost to the sea---is always going to be a failure, but is necessary nevertheless. Addressing the poetic construction of a stillborn child floating in the sea represented by J.M.W. Turner's Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon Coming On, Dabydeen's narrator acknowledges that he "wanted to teach it / A redemptive song, fashion new descriptions / Of things [...] / I wanted to begin anew in the sea" (XXV). And yet, inevitably, "the child would not bear the future / Nor its inventions, and my face was rooted / In the grounds of memory" (XXV). Using Turner's painting as a staging ground for his mourning rage (he attempts to pry them loose from the sublime and exoticized vision the canvas inscribes them within), Dabydeen neverthelesss comes to a very similar conclusion about the limitations of his own work: he cannot recover the past voices of the dead. And in that realization---one that Turner never had---an entire new vision of poetic responsibility is born.

[hh · Rating 3 out of 5]

very mixed feelings about this collection. i like dabydeen's use of language and his imagery and his characters. but this doesn't feel like poetry to me. it feels like storytelling maybe. nothing about this seems linked to the poetic form, nothing about the lines seems necessary. the title piece is the best of them. many of the other pieces feel repetitive. and yet, there's something intriguing going on that i can't put my finger on.

[Kaj Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voor mij krijgt het schitterende schilderij van Turner absoluut een nieuwe dimensie door het schitterende taalgebruik van David Dabydeen. Normaal ben ik niet een enorme fan van dichtende academici die hun wetenschappelijke vakgebied incorporeren in hun artistieke uitspattingen, maar hier weet de auteur zeker de juiste balans te vinden tussen intellectualisme en gevoelige associaties.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5