No Ruined Stone - by Shara McCallum (Paperback)

About the Book

"A verse sequence rooted in the life of 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns. In 1786, Burns arranged to migrate to Jamaica to work on a slave plantation, a plan he ultimately abandoned. Voiced by a fictive Burns and his fictional granddaughter, a 'mulatta' passing for white, the book asks: what would have happened had he gone? Historically-based poems explore an alternate past of Robert Burns and the troubling facts about Scottish slavery in Jamaica"--

Book Synopsis

No Ruined Stone is a verse sequence rooted in the life of 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns. In 1786, Burns arranged to migrate to Jamaica to work on a slave plantation, a plan he ultimately abandoned. Voiced by a fictive Burns and his fictional granddaughter, a "mulatta" passing for white, the book asks: what would have happened had he gone?

Review Quotes

Blurbs forthcoming from Evie Shockley, Adrian Matejka, and Mervyn Morris.

About the Author

From Jamaica, Shara McCallum is the author of six books published in the US & UK, her most recent being No Ruined Stone, a speculative account of Scottish poet Robert Burns' planned migration to Jamaica to work on a slave plantation. Her previous book, Madwoman, received the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry and the 2018 Motton Book Prize from the New England Poetry Club. McCallum is a professor of English at Penn State University and on the faculty of the Pacific University Low-Residency MFA Program