“We are Black; we’re at home with that”: British Poetry from Black Power to Black Lives Matter

This study examines mourning, spectrality, and ethics in the work of four black British poets, rethinking hauntology through black British and diasporic literary practice. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, it challenges uses of hauntology that emphasise the past–present relationship while overlooking questions of futurity and justice.

Situating these poets within Paul Gilroy’s black Atlantic, the study develops a “spectral poetics of relation” to analyse works by Jay Bernard, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jackie Kay, and Maud Sulter. It argues that Black British poetry reorients hauntology towards the future-to-come, offering new ways of imagining justice amid the enduring spectres of empire.

The thesis is available through this link to DiVA.