Lauren K. Alleyne hails from the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have been widely published, and she is currently the Poet-in-Residence and an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Dubuque in Iowa.

Books by Lauren K. Alleyne:

Other poems on the web by Lauren K. Alleyne:
Three poems
Three poems
Two poems
Three poems
"18"

About Difficult Fruit:

"To go back 'is a verb conjugated in dreams,' Lauren K. Alleyne writes in her debut volume Difficult Fruit, inscribing the governing mystery of this work, the secret knowledge of the dead. In anaphoric bursts of incantatory disclosure, in ghazals of love and survival, eros and the infinite, she does, indeed, go back, past all griefs and illuminations, 'to the song beneath the song.' There is uncommon spiritual knowledge here as well as political discernment. There is much to learn while accompanying Alleyne on her 'raft of language,' through a troubled world and an imagined heaven, to the place 'from which comes all singing.' I have gone with her and would do so again and again."
—Carolyn Forché

"Lauren Alleyne’s voice is a revelatory and formidable fusion of irrepressible music and uncompromising craft. Like snippets of cinema, these poems arrest the senses and challenge what’s known. Every door this exceptional work opens onto a larger light."
—Patricia Smith