Coco Island

Christine Roseeta Walker's first book is set entirely in Negril, Jamaica. Coco Island presents a compelling cycle of poems, attentive to the undertow and hidden forces that shape a place and its people. In narrative poems, in songs, in fables, in comic scenes, ghost stories and vivid character sketches – especially of girls and women – Walker artfully lays bare how economic necessity, religious belief, illness and addiction reach far into the structures of family life and community. Piecing together the isolated lives of those left behind as the island modernises, her fearless, memorable poems chart the devastation of a world.

Christine Roseeta Walker is a Jamaican poet and novelist living on the outskirts of Manchester, England. She studied Creative Writing at the University of Salford and the University of Manchester. Her debut novel, The Grass is Weeping, is a revenge tragedy set in Jamaica. She also works as a commissioned poet with an archaeologist working in the Peak District, and she spends her time writing and organising poetry reading workshops in care homes for people living with dementia.