Beautiful Fire

Description

In this volume, the poet Joyce Ash invites the reader to the Beautiful Fire, that passionate space of creativity where ideas transform into vivid images. The collection of poems is divided into three sections titled, “Call Me Woman,” “Nuggets of Passion,” and “Politics of Being.”  Whether she is confronting womanhood, love relationships or daily acts of living, Joyce Ash skilfully challenges stereotypes and forces the reader into new ways of seeing in a language that is at once sophisticated and effortless.  In the end, these poems are about the desire for freedom, the freedom to be, to do and to dream, in a world that often holds the best of us in subliminal cages!

Praise for Beautiful Fire

The inspired and well crafted poetry of Joyce Ash is a feast of life deepened and intensified through her poetic search for meaning. Here is a poet whose every movement into language challenges us out of our sentimental approaches to living.  Her merciless insights translate reality into what it used to be, taking us to the long forgotten world where language, cultural roots, womanhood,  and nature itself are  experienced as vital parts of the republic of the self.  Beautiful Fire  is a book that shows us what poetry can be, a book  that stays with you long after you have finished reading it.

— Amir Or, author of Wings.

Beautiful Fire radiates intimacy, passion, and sensitivity. This poetry touches us to our deepest core and awakens the warm emotions and humanity we can’t ignore. Joyce Ash gathers images into a honeycomb that the reader tastes and keeps on devouring its sweetness. The highly imagistic poems proffer an enduring message that resonates with our private and public selves.

—Tanure Ojaide, Poet and Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

In this three-part collection of poems, Beautiful Fire, unvoiced, even silenced womanhood, passionate desire and politics of being abound.  The poetess, Joyce Ash, artfully employing form, diction and images, fans embers of the fiery beauty of recognition, identification and connection into the reader, both immediately and mediately.

— Ada Uzoamaka Azodo, author of Gender and Sexuality in African Literature and Film. 

“…By negotiating language within and between cultural spaces, Joyce Ash has succeeded in enhancing the beauty and efficacy of poetry, reaching out even to readers that may have no interest in the genre, giving them passionate reasons to savor the scintillating and edifying content of Beautiful Fire with great appetite.”

— Ekpe Inyang, author of Death of Hardship

Joyce’s poetry travels the world, seeking out unnecessary deaths and injustice, the flash-flame of racism, White supremacy, greed, and the poverty of corruption going beyond boundaries and petty desires.  She pinpoints what she sees with visceral exactitude, highlighting inequality with pin-sharp observation and bracing language.  It’s not a relaxing read; the things Joyce writes about are often far from cosy and comfortable. They are fierce poems of conscience and compassion, tasking us to come out of our own individual ‘comfort zones’ to take a closer look at the world with all its tragedies and joys with eyes that are more aware.

‘Beautiful Fire’ is an extraordinary collection that will take you far beyond the boundaries of what you know and are familiar with.  A ‘must read’ for any writer who cares, and for those who don’t, perhaps it will ignite a more empathetic worldview.

— Agnes Meadows, author of This One Is for You