Andre Bagoo
Poet, writer, critic, author of
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
WHAT TOWN SAY
“
You will find that you have to read it again; and then, that you want to read it again. Once you have dipped in, it will stick to you, and you will catch fire.
VAHNI CAPILDEO, REVIEWING PITCH LAKE FOR NEWSDAY
“
A manifesto, a literary criticism, a personal chronicle of literary life, a book of days, a stage wherein famous writers such as Walcott, Thomas, Gunn, Espada, and others become actors, The Undiscovered Country discovers many things, but one thing for sure: Andre Bagoo is a fearless, brilliant mind. He can take us from the formal critical perspective to new futurist "visual essay", to verse essay, to sweeping historical account that is unafraid to go as far in time as Columbus and as urgently-of-our moment as Brexit—all of it with precision and attentiveness to detail that is as brilliant as it is startling. Bravo.
ILYA KAMINSKY ON THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY - ESSAYS
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Bagoo’s understated music combines with striking imagery; subtle and various, he explores attachments, delusions, obsessions, hauntings, rituals, griefs and dreams.
MICHAEL LOVEDAY REVIEWS BURN IN MAGMA
Andre Bagoo is an award-winning poet and writer from Trinidad, the author of several books of poetry including Trick Vessels (2012), BURN (Shearsman, 2015) and Pitch Lake (Peepal Tree Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in journals such as Boston Review, Cincinnati Review, St Petersburg Review, POETRY, and The Poetry Review. He was awarded The Charlotte and Isidor Paiewonsky Prize in 2017.
His essay collection, The Undiscovered Country, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2020 and won the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction.
For publishing and rights inquiries, please contact Akin Akinwumi at Willenfield Literary Agency.
Photo by Justin Ramcharan
POETRY
'Carnival'
Boston Review
November 2009
'White Street'
The Cincinnati Review
May 2013
'Three Poems'
The Miami Rail
Spring 2018
'Two Poems'
Caribbean Review of Books
September 2011
'Love'
Visual Verse
September 2016
'Jubilee'
Blackbox Manifold
December 2014
'Translating...'
Magma
Spring 2020
'Flying'
Cordite Poetry Review
May 2017
from 'Ibis'
Poetry
July/August 2019
'Not all...'
The Poetry Review
Winter 2016
'Cherry'
Hawai'i Review
February 2018
from 'Ibis'
The Poetry Review
Summer 2018
NEWS AND EVENTS
•I was asked to select one poem from The Poetry Review’s archives and write a close reading of it. I chose Seán Hewitt’s ‘Epithalamium’. Here’s what I wrote.
•It gives me great pleasure to say I've been shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for my story 'Hunger'.
•THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY has won the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Non-fiction category
•An extract from THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY appears in the Winter 2020 issue of The Poetry Review.
•Poet and novelist Tishani Doshi names THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY one of her Best Books of 2020.
•THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY makes Rajiv Mohabir's Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2020 reading list!
•I review Peter Gizzi, Astra Papachristodoulou and Kenneth Goldsmith's massive book on Wittgenstein in the latest and final issue of Colin Lee Marshall’s Erotoplasty, published out of Seoul. The review format here is micro, but the voyages nonetheless epic.
•My short story, 'The Sea', is published by the Ernest Hemingway Foundation in Hemingway Shorts Vol. 5, among other finalists of their annual short-fiction prize.
•Read my reviews of Roger Robinson and Richard Georges in Newsday, as well as reviews of Marvin Thompson and John Robert Lee.
•Listen to me reading new poetry over at MAGMA where I've two poems in the latest issue.
•An essay from THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY appears over at ELECTRIC LITERATURE.
•An extract from my poem 'Ibis' appears in the July/August issue of POETRY.
•For World Poetry Day 2019, I was asked by Dazed and Confused to say what political poetry means to me. Here’s what I said.
•My 'Behind the Poem' feature for The Poetry Review is up.
•A recording of my poem ‘The Tourist’ is featured in episode 2 of ChapelFM’s overview of Caribbean poetry selected by Juleus Ghunta. Starts at 08:25. Listen here.
•Interviewed by Paul Brookes as part of The Wombwell Rainbow interview series. The full interview is here.
•Interviewed by Breanne Mc Ivor about Robert Lax, the writing life, my latest book and more in Maco People.
•I interview poet Ishion Hutchinson for the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, coinciding with the inaugural Derek Walcott Festival. Find out more here.
