Life, love, words and spaces.
Maggie Harris is a poet, prose writer, and visual artist. Originally from Guyana, South America, she recently re-located to Kent after 10 years in Wales. She attended Kent University as a mature student, achieving a BA and MA, and started her career performing, running workshops and teaching creative writing. She has worked for Kent Arts & Libraries, represented Kent in Europe and was International Teaching Fellow at Southampton University.
“Mix in some magical machine of cauldron, the pandemonium of Guyana’s rainforest blazing with tropical flowers, the more muted Garden of England with its migrant Chinese fuschia and Welsh poppies, spice it with echoes of ancestral Senegal and Portugal, don’t forget to add the screeching parakeets and the songs of Marley and the unbearable human sobbing gor the loss of loved ones, then sprinkle in some Pre-Raphaelite colour, spit in the best creole from your Guyanese mouth, then sweeten everything with tamarind and tropical fruits, then, when you’re done with your alchemy, name your original aboriginal inventive lavish crazy fleshy fuck-filled marvellous soulful beautifully crafted concoction ‘The Poems by Maggie Harris’.”
Professor David Dabydeen, Ambassador, Republic of Guyana
Awards
The Guyana Prize for Literature
Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Caribbean Winner
Kent University TS Eliot Poetry Prize
Kent Outstanding Adult Learner
A Leverhulme Research Abroad Scholarship to UWI, Barbados
‘Harris’s voice is attuned to that of the Wild Woman archetype with poems that spring from the place of tension between the vibrant, instinctual nature, and the strictures imposed by society. From the fluid song rhythms of the opening section to the finely crafted later sonnet sequence, these poems ignite both the intellect and the heart.’
Eileen Sheehan
Maggie Harris 