Ainsley Burrows

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FUTURE
Ainsley Burrows grew up thinking that the road to fulfillment would be paved with Accounting, Finance and Economics textbooks. Luckily for him and poetry aficionados everywhere, he got bitten by the poetry bug and it changed his mind.
Drawing inspiration from fiction writers like Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Burrows' poetry takes the reader on trips through history, through dreamscapes and metaphysical episodes, through that inner city block we all have etched into our psyches. With Ainsley Burrows there is never a dull moment.
Burrows started his charmed life on the Caribbean isle of Jamaica. After moving to Brooklyn, New York as a teenager in the early 1990's, the young man discovered a penchant for writing: as a student at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, he and a friend started a band - Ainsley was the lyricist and his band mate was the singer. He enjoyed writing because it allowed him to express himself in a way that he couldn't before.
After high school, the budding writer began his pursuit of higher education at the State University of New York – Oswego. At Oswego, the impressionable and knowledge-hungry Burrows met students who were as interested in poetry as he was in songwriting. As time passed, he realized that there was not a huge difference between his lyricism and his schoolmates' poeticism aside from the wider range of topics - political ideas, and cultural ideas. He realized the power of poetry and the power within his own pen strokes.
On the heels of this realization, Burrows immersed himself in literature ranging everywhere from classics in Philosophy and World History, to the work of poetic giants like Sonya Sanchez, Langston Hughes, Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Maya Angelou, and others. He also became dedicated to writing and showcasing his work and the work of others through organizing on-campus poetry showcases. Even with his avid and growing interest in poetry, Ainsley remained diligent and continued to pursue studies in Accounting. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Accounting from SUNY Oswego, Ainsley matriculated to a graduate program in business and shortly afterward, the most life altering experience occurred.
In 1997, Burrows, and friends were involved in severe car accident. The driver of the vehicle fell as sleep behind the wheel, causing the car to run off of the highway, roll over repeatedly, hit a fence and land in a tree. Miraculously, no one in the car was injured. With this, Ainsley decided that as his life was spared from what could have been a horrific tragedy he would pursue his passion - poetry. From that day onward, Ainsley Burrows has been a literary force to be reckoned with. After the accident, Burrows left school and returned to New York City. He began sending manuscripts to different publishers, and even after receiving countless rejection letters, he toiled on. Determined not to give in, in 1999, Ainsley founded Burrows Ink. After building savings, Burrows Ink's first works Black Angels with Sky-blue feathers and Cataclysm were released; and the ever-determined and forward moving Burrows purchased a bus ticket and began a guerilla tour across the United States.
Since 1999, Ainsley Burrows has been a lean, mean, poetic machine, having toured at least eight to nine months of the last eight years; hitting almost every state in the United States, as well as several venues in Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Germany. To date, Burrows has published two collections of poetry, Black Angels with Sky Blue Feathers and The Woman Who Isn't Was and released four audio discs Cataclysm, The Groove Electric , Climax, and Rockstar. His work has also been anthologized in several books including Planet Slam , Twentyfourtwo, and Graphic Poetry.
Currently, Ainsley is the opening act of TSO Productions and Manhattan Center's monthly Reggae Cabaret series in New York City, which features legendary reggae artists. Past featured acts include Toots & the Maytals, Marcia Griffiths, Richie Stephens, and others. Burrows has several projects slated for the coming months: the as-yet unpublished novel Flames in Our Bones - a coming of age novel, or bildungsroman, based in the Caribbean, which touches on issues of politics, religion, suicide, and other areas that have long been considered taboo by people of Caribbean descent. Burrows recently completed a script entitled Black California. The smart, sharp screenplay is written in the style of Pulp Fiction, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , and Snatch but for an all black cast. Also in May 2007, Burrows and his band Arson Class will perform in a promotional concert for MTV's upcoming series Band in the Bubble, sponsored by KFC, College Music Journal, Dr. Pepper & MTV. Lastly, this August, Ainsley will embark on his 10 th Babylon by Foot tour. The tour will bring the literary powerhouse to 75 cities across United States, Canada, and the Europe Union.
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Ainsley's New Album "Rockstar" Release Date March 15th 2007.
“Rockstar” Review
Ainsley Burrows fourth album (“Rockstar”) requires not only a rethinking of the revolutionary potential of the spoken word movement but also a reevaluation of the line between good music and great poetry- and the possibility that the two can co-inhabit a track. Unlike his last album, which was a thematic love album, the only discernable underlying themes in “Rockstar” are an eclectic statement on the potential and promise of the diaspora and the placement of potent poems over beautifully selected musical beats. MSB