Saturday 25 February 2023

Bobba Cass, "naked"

 


Bobba Cass is a gay man, father and grandad. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. where he benefitted from education for all, not just the selected. He now lives in Leicester. He has a liberal arts degree from Willamette University, and advanced degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and De Montfort University. Transformative was Peace Corps and subsequent life in Nigeria, 1963-1967. In addition to travelling along the cadences of poetry, he has written a collection of creature fables for children in the series, From Gramps with Love, as part of Creatures Creatives Collective. He has completed three semi-autobiographical novels taking himself from childhood in Seattle to being evacuated from Nsukka, Nigeria at the beginning of the Biafran War. His new collection of poems is one of a series of limited editions of poems including four and twenty, fourteen and Leicester Skies. Websites are here and here



About naked, by Bobba Cass

naked is a collection of fifteen poems interspersed with images by four artists. The book is designed to be held and the poems reflected on juxtaposed with the images, each poem opening onto a page of its own. It is naked because it celebrates vulnerability, it signals revelation, it configures an innocence and lessens the liability to deceit, it balances with sexual energy, and it dresses us in humility and mystery.  And yet we can be naked and still not seen.


From naked 

the twine is two

the twine
    is two
which barely can sustain
the one
    without
the other
    being
where it has shortly lain

your palm
            lies
            soft
        inviting
            with its grain

my hand
            to sate
            love’s
            innocence
            again

but
        I
        would one
        and
        be
        in you
        domained

not grieve
        the cause
        of
        the more anxious
            twain


1 comment:

  1. The launch of Naked was a beautiful evening, so delighted to have been part of it. Big up Bobba and his sustained creative vision, it's beauty, honesty and grace.

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