"Courtney Conrad is one of the most promising voices to emerge in the British literary world. A voice of affirmation, testimony, survival and revival. The Jamaican spirit of remixing and mashing up English into new and deeper coherences. These poems are evidence of a truth-telling lyrical arrival."—Raymond Antrobus

"Courtney Conrad is an important voice to watch. Her book I Am Evidence feels like a new shot in the Caribbean Artist Movement. Throughout the book her identity and culture resonate in the fresh use of national language which enables a nuanced unspooling of hidden Caribbean narratives exploring the micro of Jamaica’s underclass as it alludes to the macro of Jamaican politics."—Roger Robinson

"Conrad is forging her own distinctive Jamaican poetic seeped in a literary orality, which enables the witness bearing of: the persevered, the forsaken, the rock bottom, the hold on better must come, all speaking to a fragile existence. Yet these are not downtrodden but celebrated as resilient. Conrad continues the tradition of Jamaican poets like Louise Bennett, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze and Olive Senior who unapologetically empowered the working-class voice.’"—Malika Booker

‘For me the voice is so powerful and individual, it leaps off the page … The poems in this pamphlet speak from a visceral place in the face of political and personal violence.  But what Conrad does is make the language itself the means of defiance.  This is English remade, remashed. It hacks out a route to survival through its agility and its music and is unstoppable.  So, I expect, is this poet.’ – Imtiaz Dharker, judge of the Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2022

'One pamphlet stood out for us for its sheer nerve and its virtuosic use of the pamphlet form: Courtney Conrad's I Am Evidence.  These are startling poems of personal, social and political resonance. It has the reach and impact of a long novel, and each poem explodes on the page.' - Fiona Benson, co-judge, Michael Marks Poetry Award

‘The title of Courtney Conrad’s I Am Evidence immediately makes clear the documentary nature of its contents. Its exploration of the dual “vibrancy and violence” of Caribbean diasporic experiences, both in Jamaica and in the UK, is admirably confident; Conrad’s language embodies multiple interlocking voices with a hypermobile fluidity … The forms Conrad employs are expansive and original…’ – Imogen Cassels, The Times Literary Supplement

'Each poem in Courtney Conrad’s I Am Evidence has breathtaking individual force, and collectively they form a sweeping and viscerally personal montage of belonging and inequality across the UK and Jamaica. The voice threading through the poems is clear, warm and resolute, guiding the reader through explorations of cultural identity, violence and political corruption. [...] The poems act as bridges, occupying a rich in-between space by using cinematic imagery and vibrant linguistic interweaving of English with Jamaican patois. Conrad’s skill as a storyteller gives these poems a flesh-and-blood quality of witness bearing. [...] This pamphlet speaks with both grit and sensitivity for the persevering, for those holding on.' – S.C. O’Reilly, The Poetry Review

Courtney Conrad is a Jamaican poet who now lives in London. Her debut pamphlet I Am Evidence (Bloodaxe Books/Mslexia, 2023) was the winner of the 2022 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Pamphlet Competition judged by Imtiaz Dharker. It was also the winner of the 2023 Michael Marks Poetry Award and includes some work which won her an Eric Gregory Award in 2022.  She received a Bridport Prize Young Writer Award in 2021. She was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize, Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and Aesthetica Creative Writing Award’s Poetry Prize, and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her poems have appeared in Magma Poetry, The White Review, Poetry Review, Bath Magg and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. She is an alumna of the London Library Emerging Writers Programme, MPK, Obsidian, Griots Well Collective, Roundhouse Poetry Collective, and Barbican Young Poets.

9 Mommy Carry Mi Guh Coronation Market 10 Classifieds: Brute Neighbour 11 Inna Di Trenches 12 Tief like Puss 13 When Yuh Point Finga, Three Point Back 14 Kibba Yuh Mouth 15 If Wi Neva Block Di Road, Wi Wouldn’t Find Her 16 Community Breeds Miracle 17 Snapper 18 Shhh… Gunshot Can Pick Padlock 20 Water Polo Sessions Before Coke 21 Extradition of Drug Lord Dudus Coke: Barbican Girl Dash Weh Tivoli Boy 23 Morning after Coke 24 Puss and Dog Nuh Have Di Same Luck 25 the path of no papers 26 Motherland Nuh Wah Wi Again 27 Babylon Wah Tun Us Inna Rasta Mouse 29 Acknowledgements 32 Biographical note