Kwame Dawes in Jamaica - poet as journalist?

In early 2008 Kwame Dawes to Jamaica with assistance from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis
Reporting. The center's grants for AIDS journalism in the Caribbean are supported by the MAC AIDS Fund.

Dawes, who was raised in Kingston, is now the poet in residence at the University of South Carolina. He returned to Jamaica with a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, hoping to draw attention to the country's growing HIV/AIDS crisis: the country's AIDS rate is nearly three times that of the U.S. and experts fear that it may soon become an epidemic.

The result of Dawes' efforts is a new form of journalism--a remarkable website called HOPE: Living & Loving with HIV in Jamaica. The site sets first person audio and video accounts by doctors and patients to the of Joshua Cogan.

In his poem Coffee Break, Dawes recounts a story told to him by one of the doctors at the center:

It was Christmas time,

the balloons needed blowing,

and so in the evening

we sat together to blow

balloons and tell jokes--

the cool air off the hills

made me think of coffee,

so I said, "Coffee would be nice,"

and he said, "Yes, coffee

would be nice," and smiled

as his thin fingers pulled

the balloons from the plastic bags;

so I went for coffee

and it takes a few minutes

to make the coffee

though I did not know

if he wanted cows milk

or condensed milk,

and when I came out

to ask him, he was gone,

just like that, in the time

it took me to think,

cows milk or condensed;

the balloons sat lightly

on his still lap.

See Bearing Witness: The Poet as Journalist here

and an interview with Dawes on the project here.