The Possibility of Tenderness

A Jamaican memoir of plants and dreams

Jason Allen-Paisant

$39.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Hutchinson
01 July 2025

Biography; Memoirs; Social & cultural history; Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies; Environmentalist thought & ideology; Trees, wildflowers & plants

The first work of non-fiction from an award-winning poet - a fierce reclamation of a link with the land, roaming from Jamaican hills to the woodlands of Leeds

The Possibility of Tenderness is a personal history narrated through the lens of the 'grung' and plants. It's also a people's history of the land, a family saga, an archival detective story through time. It's the migration tale of a young scholar who arrives in Britain from rural Jamaica to study at Oxford to achieve 'upward social mobility' and who now lives in Roundhay Leeds. Suddenly, amidst his journey of dreams and class aspiration, the plants and people of his native district, Coffee Grove, begin to offer different ways of living, alternative dreams, and the possibility of tenderness and the permission to roam England.

Marrying the local and the familial with global history and unfolding as a timely and immersive tale of land, environment, and the world of plants, The Possibility of Tenderness reveals how the history of a tiny rural village in a mountainous region of Jamaica is interlinked with that of modern Britain. And, also what that rural village can teach us about leisure, land ownership and reclamation today.

Mama, the author's grandmother, is a central protagonist of the story. Alongside her, herbalists, plant workers, farmers, and plant lovers help forge an intimate portrait of Coffee Grove, as do the plants themselves; fever grass, jointa, search mi heart, leaf of life, helping Allen-Paisant revise his sense of self and solidify a new understanding of his place in the world.

The Possibility of Tenderness is a cross-pollinating book about the transformative power of plants, the legacy of dreams, and the lessons they offer for living with the earth.

By: Jason Allen-Paisant
Imprint: Hutchinson
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 224mm, Width: 142mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 362g
ISBN: 9781529153620
ISBN 10: 152915362X
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican writer and multi-award-winning poet. He is the author of two critically acclaimed books of poetry, Thinking with Trees and Self-Portrait as Othello, which won the UK's two most prestigious poetry awards for 2023 - the Forward Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize. He is also a Professor of Critical Theory and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester and Associate Editor of Callaloo Literary Journal. Jason lives in Leeds with his partner and two children.

Reviews for The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican memoir of plants and dreams

The Possibility of Tenderness shows Jason Allen-Paisant embarking on a seemingly new genre of writing, that offers a broader poetics that seeks to embrace and not resist the sometimes porous membrane separating traditional genres. The Possibility of Tenderness is a work rooted in an intimate engagement firstly the history of survival, creativity and resistance in the rural grung, the land of Clarendon, Jamaica, and secondly, with his own body’s relation to this place. Allen-Paisant’s work unfolds with a sense of spirit, sensibility, memory and intellectual acuity to give us what is, no doubt, a beautiful and urgent work of productive experimentation and philosophical reckoning. Lick shot! -- Kwame Dawes, author of STURGE TOWN