Information about Merle Collins

Rojas, Christopher K. Merle Collins Website. 27 Nov. 2002 http://www.geocities.com/merlecollins/

I rather timidly include this site selection because the site is old and most of the links are disabled or outdated. The reason I do include it is for the links to information about Grenada more than anything. I think to know about an author and their work one must know about where the author came from; these links do give on overview of Grenadian history. Other redeeming qualities of this site include interpretations of Collins’s work, and an interview with Collins. In this interview Collins describes the source of her poem No Dialects Please. She also gives her take on why it is important to write. If you would like to contact Merle Collins this site also has her email address at the University of Maryland.

Merle Collins.  30 May 2002. Comparative Literature Program, U of Maryland. 27 Nov. 2002 http://www.inform.umd.edu/ARHU/Depts/CompLit/Bios/collins.html

This site offers a brief biography of Merle Collins posted through the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Maryland. The site sums up her education and written achievements. It also includes her email address.

Works by Merle Collins

Collins, Merle. Because the Dawn Breaks. 28 Nov. 2002. North Carolina SU http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/dawnbr~1.htm

An instructor at NCSU posted this poem by Merle Collins for her class. The poem talks about dreams, what they are and who has them.

Collins, Merle. Free. 27 Nov. 2002 . The Poetry Society. http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/education/undpost5.htm

Eighth in a series of nine, these poems took up residence in London Underground carriages in June and July of 2002.  Collins’s work forms part of the collection Commonwealth Poems. This collection includes authors from countries formerly part of the British Empire.

Hastings & Teresa. English Resources Page.  27 Nov. 2002. http://www.englishresources.co.uk/workunits/alevel/poetry/contblkwomen/merle.html

This page presents the Collins poem No Dialects Please. She describes the source for this poem in an interview with Tamika Jackson on Christopher Rojas’s  Merle Collins Website.

Morris, Jeffrey. Windrush.  27 Nov. 2002 http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/windrush/long_memoried.shtml

This site contains an example of Collins’s critical work; Collins takes a look at Grace Nichols’s collection of poems I is a long-memoried woman.

Sights and Sounds of Merle Collins

Quicktime video.  Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). 27, Nov. 2002  http://www.mith2.umd.edu/hughes/quicktime/mcollins.html

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/hughes/quicktime/mcollins2.mov

Hear and watch Merle Collins read a poem for the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities as a part of its celebration of Langston Hughes’s 100th birthday in February 2002.

Audio. 20 Nov. 2002. Women’s Literacy Project. 27 Nov. 2002 http://www.learningpartnership.org/events/lifelines.phtml

Collins spoke in participation with the Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP) as part of their annual series: Life Lines: The Literature of Women’s Human Rights. The other readers at the March 25, 2002 event were Elizabeth Alexander from the United States, Collins from Grenada, Fatema Mernissi from Morocco, and Goli Taraghi from Iran.

The poems she read include Somedays Mother, Images, and When Night Falls. Hearing Collins read her work helped me understand what she wanted to say.

Some of the sound of this 21 minute recording is distorted, making it difficult at times to understand Collins, but the distortion is minor and infrequent.

Information about Grenada

Deena, Dr. S. F. H. Link from Home Page. Dept. of English, East Carolina University. 27 Nov. 2002  http://core.ecu.edu/engl/deenas/international/Grenada.htm

A site with information about Grenada.

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