Poet Jason Allen-Paisant: ‘We belong in the picture'

The Guardian

22-03-2025

Jason Allen-Paisant, born in Jamaica in 1980, is a poet, writer and academic. Currently a professor of critical theory and creative writing at Manchester University, he released his debut poetry collection, Thinking With Trees, in 2021. His second collection, Self-Portrait as Othello, (2023) won the TS Eliot and the Forward prize. Through time spent in the north of England and Jamaica's rural Coffee Grove district, his debut in nonfiction, The Possibility of Tenderness (Penguin), intimately explores ideas around class, leisure, economics and self-discovery, looking closely at the life of his farmer grandmother, as well as the plants and people that shaped who he is today. Allen-Paisant lives in Leeds with his wife and two children.
The Possibility of Tenderness is a departure from your work in poetry. How did you go about writing it?I started with a mix of poetry and prose. Then I thought to write a series of essays [and] hammer out some of these big questions around leisure and class within nature but I remember thinking: 'All of the ideas that I'm talking about in a theoretical way, I can bring them all out if I just tell a story.' My grandma, 'Mama', she's the protagonist outside myself. I can use the story of her life to talk about planting, food independence, food sovereignty, living with plants, plants as medicine, globalisation and its effects and kinship with the land.
What do you want the book to communicate?
Living between two different landscapes. I wrote this book to understand how the place I grew up, which is so far away from where I am now both socially and class-wise, shaped me as a writer. I've taken a journey… I needed to write to understand where I am now in relation to where I came from.
When did that desire to look back at your life in this way begin?I was walking one night [home through Roundhay Park], I cut across a field and, perhaps it was the silence of it all, it suddenly hit me – that I'm living here in this place [with all of this] space and nature. A place where you can roam, where there's a sense of freedom, of openness. But how did I get here? How come somebody like me is here? I felt for the first time that I had become a different person. We didn't plan to live here. It's a very affluent area. Walking across that field in the dead of night unlocked a door and I started to think about nature, trees, birds, big spaces. [Living here] is a kind of privilege on the face of it. But why couldn't I think about Coffee Grove as a privilege? Was it that bad? I grew up in nature. I grew up among a wholesome green with equality, kinship, exchange, social solidarity. I had all of that. But I had blocked out my background. I think a lot of migrants from the Caribbean do block out our background when you think it's associated with poverty.
What emotions did thinking about your early life bring up?There was that sense of loss and wanting to retrieve something. A part of that was wanting to retrieve the people. But there was also a feeling of euphoria. I found something that brings me meaning.
You have written about nature before in your poetry…My first book of poems, Thinking With Trees, came from going on walks, but [before then] I had shied away from nature poetry. I always had in the back of my mind, as a black poet, that you need to talk about more pressing things. A lot of The Possibility of Tenderness was driven by this impetus: 'Who said natural writing can't look like this?' Me talking about class, a non-romanticised version of nature, about people working hard, having dirt under their fingernails.
There is a set of concerns in nature writing that doesn't easily imagine black bodies and lives, but when you consider the history of black people in Britain, it's critical to situate our identities and our histories within [nature] because we are connected to that history. My little hillside district of Coffee Grove is deeply connected [to the UK]. It was a coffee plantation using enslaved labour from the 18th century founded by a Scottish planter. I wanted to write about these entangled issues, but at the same time, write about joy and the sense of belonging we find in the natural world. We belong in the picture.
How did you find writing intimately about the lives of people you care about?There's a responsibility that I feel towards my people. A big part of the premise of the book is dignity. So often, my kind of environment is portrayed in a lowly light. I wanted to tell a different story. That informed the characterisation. I even had to change my language in certain aspects. I remember my friend, the writer Jacob Ross, read an early version where I was talking about [the local Rasta herbalist] Congolin and his ideas about plants. Jacob was saying: 'You need to not overexplain. You need to assume [Congolin's] vantage point.' I had to be careful of not speaking to a western gaze.
What books are on your bedside table?The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. Jacqueline Crooks's Fire Rush. We Were There by Lanre Bakare. W, Or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec.
What's your typical writing process?I'm a chaotic, unstructured writer. I write when I get the time. I have two young kids and life is very demanding.
It's been more than a year since you won the TS Eliot and the Forward prize for poetry. What have those wins done for you as a writer?Those wins have been mind-blowing. Unexpected, extraordinary gifts. When it comes to the TS Eliot, I'm still getting used to the fact that I won that. It is surreal. Concretely speaking, it's transformed my life. It's brought more opportunities my way. It's hard to think of a stronger type of affirmation, [although writers] shouldn't need validation. We have to know how to work without it.
The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican Memoir of Plants and Dreams by Jason Allen-Paisant is published by Penguin (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply