For the Unnamed was originally entitled ‘For the Unnamed Black Jockey Who Rode the Winning Steed in the Race Between Pico’s Sarco and Sepulveda’s Black Swan in Los Angeles, in 1852′. That title provided the full narrative in a nutshell: we know the names of the owners of the two horses, we know the horses’ names, the place and date of the race. But apart from his colour, and his victory, we know nothing about the jockey who made the whole thing happen.
Fred D’Aguiar’s new book recovers and re-imagines his story. It was the most publicised race of its era with numerous press notices but he remained unnamed. We are given several perspectives on the action – owner’s, trainer’s, the horse Black Swan’s, the jockey’s lover, the jockey himself. But one crucial element of identity is forgotten, and that forgetfulness speaks eloquently about the time and the freed man’s circumstances in the mid-nineteenth century.
Fred D’Aguiar’s previous collection, Letters to America (2020), was a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice and a White Review Book of the Year.
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Fred D’Aguiar was born in London of Guyanese parents, and grew up in Guyana before returning to London for his secondary and tertiary education. He has lived in the US since the mid-1990s and currently he is Professor of English at UCLA. He trained as a psychiatric nurse before reading African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He was Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Cambridge University and has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. For the Unnamed (2023) is Fred D’Aguiar’s fifth collection with Carcanet. His previous poetry book, Letters to America was a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice in 2020. Carcanet also published his nonfiction, Year of Plagues (2021).
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