These poems grow out of the persistence of Brown's memories of childhood in rural Jamaica - the twilight world of duppies and rolling calf and minds inhabiting both Protestantism and obeah. After thirty years in North America, the stubborn endurance of these haunting presences, an apparent maladjustment to the present, comes to signify a complex sense of ancestry and spiritual continuity. They represent, too, a last line of defence against the homogenising sweep of American cultural imperialism. Whilst 'belonging is yesterday's faint memory', these poems are intensely alive, sometimes meditative, sometimes angry.

Lloyd W. Brown graduated from UWI, Mona in 1961. Since then he has taught in Canada and the USA. He is the author of the study West Indian Poetry, amongst other critical titles.