Courtney Conrad's powerful work interrogates the tensions within
Caribbean migration, gender-based violence and national politics.
Migrating from Kingston as a teenager, she is unflinching in her
attempts to capture the vibrancy and violence of her experiences in
both the UK and Jamaica. Her poetry draws together subversive
diasporic imagery, national political commentary and shatteringly
personal narrative in its exacting response to the political
corruption and violence she witnessed as a young girl in Jamaica in
the wake of its colonial subjugation under the British Empire. The
themes of her work stretch across state- and gender-based violence,
religion, raw bodily introspection and lush cultural memorabilia that
reimagines the warmth and blood of both her homes.
I
Am Evidence was the winner of the 2022 Mslexia Women's Poetry
Pamphlet Competition judged by Imtiaz Dharker. It was also the winner
of the 2023 Michael Marks Poetry Award and includes some work which
won her an Eric Gregory Award in 2022. It is her debut pamphlet.
