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
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
the cause
of
the more anxious
twain
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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