Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian fiction and non-fiction writer and poet born in Sydney in 1979 to black British parents of Guyanese and Jamaican heritage who emigrated to Australia as newlyweds. She has a Bachelor of Creative Arts and Law majoring in Creative Writing, Anti Discrimination Law and Human Rights, all of which are topics she explores in all of her published works. Carrying the World is Clarke’s third collection of poetry and was awarded the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in 2017.
Carrying the World is a collection of 38 poems; all of which are present in alphabetical order by title. Some of the poems included have been published in a variety of poetry journals and publications, while others were presented as spoken word poems before being compiled into this book. Since Clarke is a spoken-word poet, the great majority of the poems presented in the book have been stylized with dashes (/) in-between the lines, indicating a breath or a spoken line break that would be used in spoken word but not necessarily in its written form. This stylization shows Clarke’s versatility as a poet which is a blessing and curse all in one.
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The simple language makes the powerfulness of what is being said shine brighter. The simple language also makes the collection much more accessible to readers who are not usually drawn to poetry. It breaks the stigma of poetry as being part of a high culture or high art. The biggest advantage of her style of writing is that it breaks down the very common us vs them mentality and makes the reader consider the stories told in the collection as all of