What Noise Against the Cane

Not since Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal have I been so specifically ensorcelled by the poems of a Caribbean sistren, and Desiree C. Bailey’s voice, echoing from a sea-brined conch shell, carried a resonance so particularly its own that you can’t help but perk your ears at the sound. Revolution, name-re......more

What Noise Against the Cane was a powerful, lyrical collection of poetry that touched on everything from the Haitian Revolution to what it's like to be a Black woman in America. Bailey's verses beg to be read aloud. The voice of the ocean runs through the collection through a narrative along the bot......more

This collection really had me thinking, picking apart, and evaluating life. Bailey has a way with words that really grip you and pierce your emotions and thoughts. My personal favourites from this collection are: 'Accent', 'Guesswork', 'First American Years', 'A Retrograde' , and 'Extra Virgin Olive......more

What Noise Against the Cane is a collection of healing elixir like no other. The poems grab you with their subject matter and hold you firmly as you open up to receive the unfiltered realities that black women face. Desiree C. Bailey has collected experiences and painted them onto a ship of history......more

Bailey unearths, scratches out identity and direction, boils and pours. To describe the substance of her poetry requires us to eschew the trite. The book is brief, but viscous with history and myth, music and oppressions. The works do for Haiti, for the black diaspora, what chronicles cannot: they s......more