Roots and Wings

These poems are not just words on a page; they are footprints in soil and feathers in flight. In Roots and Wings, The Literacy Guy, Dr Zidane X. Salmon, traces the tender, turbulent journey of a little Black boy from the vibrant shores of the Caribbean to the complex terrain of the United Kingdom. This striking debut collection is both a love letter to home and a brave reckoning with displacement, identity, and transformation. Each poem is rich with rhythm, memory, and cultural pride grounded in the soil of ancestry yet reaching boldly toward possibility. Through vivid imagery and unapologetic truth-telling, Salmon explores what it means to belong, to resist, and to rise as a young Black man navigating two worlds. From the sting of racism to the balm of community, from inherited wisdom to the longing for freedom, The Roots and Wings is a testament to resilience and becoming. These verses will speak to anyone who has ever straddled borders, geographical, emotional, or spiritual and wondered if they were enough. This is more than poetry. This is a flight from root to sky.