André Breton called Césaire's Cahier 'nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time'. It is a seminal text in Surrealist, French and Black literatures - published in full in English for the first time in Bloodaxe’s bilingual Contemporary French Poets series. Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was born in in Basse-Pointe, a village on the north coast of Martinique, a former French colony in the Caribbean (now an overseas département of France). His book Discourse on Colonialism (1950) is a classic of French political literature. Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1956) is the foundation stone of francophone Black literature: it is here that the word Négritude appeared for the first time. Négritude has come to mean the cultural, philosophical and political movement co-founded in Paris in the 1930s by three Black students from French colonies: the poets Léon-Gontran Damas from French Guiana; Léopold Senghor, later President of Senegal; and Aimé Césaire, who became a deputy in the French National Assembly for the Revolutionary Party of Martinique and was repeatedly elected Mayor of Fort-de-France. As a poet, Césaire believed in the revolutionary power of language, and in the Notebook he combined high literary French with Martinican colloquialisms, and archaic turns of phrase with dazzling new coinages. The result is a challenging and deeply moving poem on the theme of the future of the negro race which presents and enacts the poignant search for a Martinican identity. The Notebook opposes the ideology of colonialism by inventing a language that refuses assimilation to a dominant cultural norm, a language that teaches resistance and liberation.

Michael Chaplin was born in 1951 in County Durham to Rene Chaplin and Sid Chaplin; a writer based in North East England. He attended South Weald Infants School in Essex and Sandyford Road Primary School in Newcastle. He later attended Heaton Grammar School in Newcastle where he achieved 10 'O' levels, 3 'A' levels in History, Economics and English, and 1 'S' level in History. In 1970 – 1973 he studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge where he attained a 2.1 BA Honours in History. During this time he also edited the student paper Broadsheet. After graduating, he worked at The Journal in Newcastle as a trainee journalist, and was appointed the district reporter in Gateshead and the Durham, and the Health Correspondent. In 1977, Michael moved to London where he worked in the current affairs and features department at London Weekend Television until 1987. During this time, he worked as a researcher on Credo, The London Weekend Show, Black on Black, and The London Programme. He also worked as a producer-director on The London Programme and South of Watford, a series producer for South of Watford, and an editor of local features for South of Watford, The Making of Modern London, City Safari and Concrete and Clay. Between 1987 and 1989, Michael produced two series of the ITV drama Wish Me Luck, before moving to be the Head of Drama and Arts at Tyne-Tees Television in 1987. During this time, he was the Executive Producer for early Catherine Cookson adaptations. At this time, he was also centrally involved in C3W; an unsuccessful bid for the ITV franchise for Wales and the West Country. He then moved in 1991 to Head of Programmes for BBC Wales where he was responsible for all output in English, across radio and television, network and regional. After leaving BBC Wales in 1994, Michael became a full-writer and producer and since then he has written some 30 plays for Radio 4 including the series Two Pipe Problems and The Ferryhill Philosophers and various single plays like The Song Thief. His work for television includes the series Grafters, Dalziel and Pascoe and Monarch of the Glen and films like Just Henry. His 30-year relationship with Newcastle's Live Theatre encompasses In Blackberry Time (with Alan Plater) based on the life and work of Sid Chaplin, You Couldn't Make It up (with Tom Chaplin) about the travails of being a Newcastle United fan, and A Walk-On Part, based on the diaries of ex-Labour MP Chris Mullin. His prose work includes Come and See – The Beguiling Story of the Tyneside Cinema, and Tyne View which arose out of his time as writer in residence for the Port of Tyne. The book then spawned the musical play Tyne which ran at Live Theatre, the Customs House in South Shields and Newcastle's Theatre Royal. The residency also encompassed the theming of The Word, the new library and resource centre in South Shields, around the town's maritime and trading tradition over 200 years. Michael has served on the boards of Live Theatre and New Writing North and as a trustee of the Tyneside Cinema; as the President of the People's Theatre, Newcastle; President of the Friends of the Robinson Library, Newcastle University; and Vice-President of the Friends of Beamish Museum. He is also a Visiting Professor of Practice in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. Michael Chaplin was appointed the executor of his father, Sid Chaplin's estate.