The Butterfly Hotel

Writing from a place somewhere between Trinidad and Brixton, from a vantage point that is at once insider and outsider, these poems from acclaimed poet Roger Robinson lead to a state of alienation and unbelonging in black British London. Such a changing reality is all too evident to the periodic returnee, who is conscious of both his growing difference and the fragility of his memories of the world he has known. But these are far from bleak and alienated poems as the very fear of loss generates a drive to re-create the remembered world in all its richness, humor, and sensuality. Displaying a faith in a human capacity for regeneration, these stirring works shape new concepts of home by the very rewarding act of re-creating memory through stories that are gracefully and elegantly rendered.