Safiya Kamaria, Choreopoet
Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa is a British born Barbadian raised choreopoet and researcher whose exhilarating style of poetics which braids dance and poetry on the page and stage, is a force to be reckoned with . Her debut poetry collection Cane, Corn & Gully (Out-Spoken Press, 2022) explored the narratives of enslaved Barbadian women and their descendants through their dances. It is the first book to feature dance notation of the enslaved. Cane, Corn & Gully was the 2022 Poetry Book Society ‘Winter Choice’. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize and 2023 Felix Dennis Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Safiya is currently a PhD student in Cultural Studies, her research explores how Afro-diasporic improvisational dance techniques can be used to archive the living histories of Afro-diasporic communities.