David & Bathsheba: 360° Poetry

by Nneka Edwards

David & 360° Poetry offers a comprehensive poetic perspective of one of the most well-known accounts in the Bible - the precipitous fall of the man whom God declared to be a man after His own heart (said of no other mortal in the Bible). There are forty-six (46) poems in all. This project includes a broad range of perspectives of a single event, with poetic license taken to imaginatively fill in so many of the gaps that the Bible deliberately leaves (for this very reason). This book takes the conventional analysis of this story beyond adultery and murder, but also includes rape. It's painful for most Christians to see David as a rapist but, when we read between the lines (as the Bible invites us to do), we can find the distinct possibility of David's fling with Bathsheba actually also being a tale of sexual assault. So, this collection does not frame Bathsheba as a seductive temptress but as an unwitting and unwilling victim of a horrific abuse of power. Many of the poems are quite intense but there are also sprinklings of humour here and there to lighten the reading experience a bit ( there is nothing at all funny about what happened). The reader is encouraged to do some detective work, search out the scriptures and come to your own conclusions. Given the nature of the content, this book is recommended for adults even though the language is explicit without being overly crude. Please note that some of the poems are in Creole English (specifically, the dialect of Trinidad and Tobago) and some are in Standard English.

115 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 20, 2022