Self-Portrait as Othello

“A book with large ambitions that are met with great imaginative capacity.”—Paul Muldoon

In the centuries since Shakespeare’s Othello first hit the stage, the eponymous character has been subject to reinterpretation by countless artists around the world. Widely regarded as Shakespeare’s most famous Black character, Othello is also arguably the first Black hero in Western literature. Even so, the Bard’s Othello is acted upon by the forces around him far more than he wields them.

Assuming multiple masks as Othello in contemporary landscapes, celebrated Jamaican poet Jason Allen-Paisant invents the kinds of narrative he might tell about his own intersecting identities—as immigrant, as a Black man, as masculine. A polyglot, Allen-Paisant expands the boundaries of ekphrasis in the urban landscapes of London, Paris, and Venice, and considers the Black male body, its hyper(in)visibility, transgressiveness, and vulnerabilities. Crossing liminal spaces of language and borders, the poet represents contradictory xenophobic tensions that were emerging in seventeenth century Venice and still reside with us today. Allen-Paisant’s method is to know language, remake it, and call it out.

An act of glorious resistance and lyrical reinvention, Self-Portrait as Othello commands large ambitions with sweeping theatricality and verve.