Contemporary West Indian Poetry

606 Pages·2010·8.3 MB·English

Dottorato di ricerca in Lingue, Culture e Società
Indirizzo Filologia Moderna, 22° ciclo

SETTORE SCIENTIFICO-DISCIPLINARE DI AFFERENZA:
L-LIN/10 LETTERATURA INGLESE

Contemporary West Indian Poetry:
a “Creole” Aesthetics?

Tesi di dottorato di Sara Florian
n. matricola 955332

Dir. della Scuola di dottorato
Ch.ma prof.ssa Rosella Mamoli Zorzi

Tutore del dottorando
Ch.mo prof. Armando Pajalich

A.A. 2006/2007 – A.A. 2008/2009
ŖVerandahs, where the pages of the sea
are a book left open by an absent master
in the middle of another lifeŕ
I begin here again,
begin until this oceanřs
a shut book, and like a bulb
the white moonřs filaments wane.

Begin with twilight…ŗ

(Derek Walcott, Another Life, I,I)
Acknowledgments

As the motto of the University of the West Indies reads: ŖOriens ex Occidente Luxŗ, ŖA
Light Rising from the Westŗ. Eventually, from my experiences I found the East in the West, the
light in the twilight. I would like to thank my family for their invaluable support.

Academically, I would like to especially thank two professors, Prof. Armando Pajalich from
the Cà Foscari University of Venice, who has been my tutor for the past three years of PhD, and Dr.
Jeannette Allsopp from the University of the West Indies, Cavehill, Barbados, who has proof-read
my thesis and given me precious advice as an external expert.

Special thanks also to (in alphabetical order):

Australia
Prof. Anne Collett

Barbados
the late Prof. Richard Allsopp, Adisa Jelani Andwele (AJA), Prof. Jane Bryce, Dr. Ian Craig, Mr.
Alan Moss, the late Bruce St. John, Dr. Hélène Zamor

Canada
Dr. Pamela Mordecai (Jamaica), Prof. Victor Ramraj (Guyana), David Rudder (Trinidad), Prof.
Olive Senior (Jamaica)

Germany
Prof. Michael Hoenisch, Dr. Peter H. Marsden

Guyana
the late Martin Carter, Prof. Ameena Gafoor

Italy
Prof. Shaul Bassi, Prof.ssa Franca Bernabei, Prof.ssa Michela Calderaro, Prof.ssa Roberta
Cimarosti, Prof. Alessandro Costantini, Prof. Marco Fazzini, Prof. Giulio Marra, Prof. Anco Marzio
Mutterle, Prof. David John Newbold, Prof. Matteo Santipolo

Jamaica
Prof. Edward Baugh, Mr. Carl Bradshaw, Mr. Wayne Brown (Trinidad), Prof. Carolyn Cooper,
Prof. Hubert Devonish, Dr. Lorna Down, Prof. Stephanie Durlehmann (Switzerland), Dr. Norval
Edwards, Joan Andrea Hutchinson, Miss Donna Mae Jackson, Mrs. Verna George, Mrs. Sharon
Leach, Prof. Rupert Lewis, Prof. Earl McKenzie, Mr. Sean Mock Yen, Prof. Mervyn Morris,
Mutabaruka, Prof. Rex Nettleford, Prof. Velma Pollard, Mr. Ian Randle, Dr. James Robertson, Dr.
Veronica Salter, Prof. Verene Shepherd, Dr. Gregory K. Stephens, Mr. Ralph Thompson, Prof.
Maureen Warner-Lewis (Trinidad)

Singapore
Mr. Qun Xiang Eugene Ooi, Prof. Rajeev S. Patke, Prof. Kirpal Singh

St. Lucia
Kendel Hippolyte, Jane King, John Robert Lee, Derek Walcott
St. Maarten
Miss Rhoda Arrindell, Lasana M. Sekou

St. Vincent
the late Shake Keane

Tobago
the late Eric Roach

Trinidad
Prof. Funso Aiyejina, Prof. Leroy Clarke, Mr. Anson Gonzàlez, Prof. Barbara Lalla, Lutalo
Masimba (Brother Resistance), Dr. Jennifer Rahim, Prof. Kenneth Ramchand, Prof. Gordon
Rohlehr, Dr. Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw

UK
Miss Hannah Bannister, Prof. David Dabydeen, Prof. John J.M. McLeod

US
College Park, Maryland
Prof. Merle Collins
New York
Prof. Jacqueline Bishop (Jamaica), Prof. Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados)
New Orleans
Prof. John R.O. Gery

Venezuela
Mrs. Marijohn Sampson (Eric Williamsřs niece)

Special thanks to the following libraries which gave me access to their database/collections:
Università Cař Foscari, Venezia; Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna; Università degli
Studi di Milano; Sorbonne Paris IV, Paris; École Normale Supérieure, Paris; Bibliothèque Sainte-
Geneviève, Paris; The University of Warwick, UK; University of the West Indies: Mona, Jamaica,
Cave Hill, Barbados, and St. Augustine, Trinidad; Harvard University; Stanford University,
California; NUS, National University of Singapore; USyd, The University of Sydney.

As far as possible, I have tried to contact each and every person mentioned above to proof-
read those parts of the thesis which reflect their advice.
Table of contents

Preface 9

Introduction: A West Indian ŖCreoleŗ Aesthetics? 13
1950s: West Indian poetry: Ŗpoor imitations of English modelsŗ? 29
1960s: ŖWest Indianization of the English Literature and Languageŗ 31
1970s: ŖWest Indianismusŗ? 33
1980s: The Ŗfederatingŗ role of West Indian poets 45
1990s: Creole as a vector of aesthetic unity 54
2000s: ŖThe entire world is gone Řcreoleřŗ 59
Summarizing chart of the main aesthetic points 68

Chapter I Ŕ Eric Roach (1915-1974) Ŕ An ŘIsland Aestheticsř as an ŘAesthetics of the Islandsř 76
I.i. Roachřs nostalgia for origins: the influence of W.B. Yeats 77
I.ii. The importance of nature in Roachřs poetry 80
I.iii. The search for an aesthetic unity: the use of Creole and Roachřs relevance in the
ŘSavacou debateř 84
I.iv. Poetry as a preparation for death 89

Chapter II Ŕ Bruce St. John (1923-1995) Ŕ The ŖCultivatedŗ Voice of the Common Folk 94
II.i. ŘEddicationř vs. common sense: politics and aesthetics 95
II.ii. ŘBajanismř: Ŗcricket and kite-flying and sexŗ 99
II.iii. St. Johnřs socio-cultural aesthetics: from the Bajan folk and its language to a
Caribbean creolization 103

Chapter III Ŕ Shake Keane (1927-1997) Ŕ The irreverent flourish of a Creole ŖAngel Hornŗ 110
III.i. An irreverent look at history as a poetic form of survival 112
III.i.i. History and religion of St. Vincent 112
III.i.ii. Irony, satire, and nonsense 118
III.ii. A daring look on language 122
III.ii.i. Keaneřs employment of Vincentian Creole 129
III.ii.ii. The influence of jazz on Keaneřs language 131
III.iii. A West Indian Aesthetics: the blending of peopleřs languages and musical/literary
genres 134

Chapter IV Ŕ Martin Carter (1927-1997) Ŕ The Aesthetics of Social and Political Freedom in Post-
Colonial Guyana 139
IV.i. Freedom in post-colonial Guyana 140
IV.ii. ŘThoughtř: ŖThis Colony Is a Jailŗ 142
IV.iii. ŘInspirationř: prison as Hell? 146
IV.iv. ŘArtř: a metaphysical prison 147
IV.v. Speech: philosophical couplets or iambs? 149

Chapter V Ŕ Le Roy Clarke (1938 - ) Ŕ The Poetic Call of the Orishas 152
V.i. Rhythms on the page, rhythms on the canvas 154
V.ii. Haunting presences: the call of the Orishas 157
V.iii. The universals of the Caribbean sociological aesthetics of love according to Clarke 167
V.iii.i. Sociological aesthetics of suffering 167
V.iii.ii. Aesthetics of love: women 169
V.iii.iii. Language 171

Chapter VI Ŕ Earl McKenzie (1943 - ) Ŕ Creole in McKenzieřs Poetry: Blending Three Arts into
One 174
VI.i. The poetics of the five Ps: Philosophy, Painting, Poetry, Prose-Fiction, and Pedagogy 175
VI.ii. Nature and spiritual reconciliation with the universe 176
VI.iii. Aesthetics and language 182

Chapter VII Ŕ Merle Collins (1950 - ) Ŕ A Peopleřs Revolutionary Aesthetics 192
VII.i. Revolution in Grenada: Because the Dawn Breaks! 193
VII.ii. Rotten Pomerack 199
VII.iii. The nutmeg as the queen of Grenadian crops: Lady in a Boat 205
VII.iv. Collinsřs ŘPoetics of the Nutmegř and its aesthetic meaning 208

Chapter VIII Ŕ Kendel Hippolyte (1952 - ) Ŕ Sound and Undersound: the Aesthetics of Cultural
Resistance 212
VIII.i. Walcottřs and Brathwaiteřs influence in Hippolyteřs poetry 212
VIII.ii. Creole Musicality: a Caribbean Ŗsubmarine unityŗ 213
VIII.iii. Walcottřs influence in Hippolyteřs poetic palimpsest 215
VIII.iv. Brathwaiteřs influence: neologisms and poetic inventiveness 218
VIII.v. Caribbean oral culture onto the page 222

Chapter IX Ŕ David Rudder (1953 - ) Ŕ The New ŖKing of Calypsoŗ 229
IX.i. Rudderřs calypsoes on a local level: Trinidad 231
IX.ii. Rudderřs calypsoes on a regional level: the West Indies 250
IX.iii. Rudderřs calypsoes and worldřs politics 254
IX.iv. Conclusion: looking for a Caribbean musical aesthetics 260

Chapter X Ŕ AJA (1957 - ) Ŕ Music and Poetry Live As One 262
X.i. A fusion of music and poetry 263
X.ii Towards a Caribbean aesthetic unity 269

Chapter XI Ŕ Lasana Mwanza Sekou (1959 - ) Ŕ The Aesthetics of Salt and Sugar 273
XI.i. The pervasive oxymoron of Řsaltř and Řsweetř in Sekou 275
XI.ii. Use of language and graphic layout 280
XI.iii. An aesthetics of music 287
XI.iv. Sekouřs political fight: his aesthetic theory of the village chiefs and the maroons 291

Chapter XII Ŕ Joan Andrea Hutchinson (1963 Ŕ ) Ŕ An Aesthetics of Performance 304
XII.i. Meck Mi Tell Yuh (2004) 305
XII.ii. Inna Mi Heart (2006) 309
XII.iii. An aesthetics of performance 310

Conclusion 313
Towards the definition of a West Indian ŖCreoleŗ Aesthetics 313
Philosophical paraphernalia to a Caribbean aesthetics 316
The socio-aesthetics gains texture in a West Indian fine-grained poetic panoply 318
Aesthetic flourishes and solos in a West Indian poetic ensemble 323
A West Indian ŖCreoleŗ Aesthetics? 332

Appendix A Ŕ Interviews with poets and scholars 339
Interview with Prof. Velma Pollard, 16th Nov 2007, Kingston, Jamaica 339
Interview with Dr. Jeannette Allsopp, Nov. 29th 2007, St. Michael, Barbados 342
Interview with Prof. Hubert Devonish, 29th Nov. 2007, Kingston, Jamaica 354
Interview with Earl McKenzie, 3rd Dec 2007, Kingston, Jamaica 358
Interview with Joan Andrea Hutchinson, 2nd Dec. 2007, Kingston, Jamaica 370
Interview with Mutabaruka, 11th Dec. 2007, Kingston, Jamaica 374
Interview with Prof. Edward Baugh, 11th Dec. 2007, Kingston, Jamaica 378
Interview with Prof. Maureen Warner-Lewis, 12th December 2007, Kingston, Jamaica 384
Interview with Prof. Maureen Warner-Lewis, 30th April 2008, Kingston, Jamaica 389
Interview with Kenneth Ramchand, 9th May 2008, Port of Spain, Trinidad 393
Interview with Prof. Funso Aiyejina, 8th May 2008, Port of Spain, Trinidad 400
Interview with Prof. Gordon Rohlehr, 8th May 2008, Port of Spain, Trinidad 403
Interview with Kendel Hippolyte, J. R. Lee and Jane King, 12th May 2008, Gros Islet, St.
Lucia 409
Interview with AJA, 13th May 2008, Bridgetown, Barbados 417
Interview with Lasana M. Sekou Ŕ Philipsburg, St. Maarten, 15th May 2008 422
Interview with Rhoda Arrindell, 16th May 2008, Philipsburg, St. Maarten 431
Interview with Carolyn Cooper, 30th May 2008, Kingston, Jamaica 434
Interview with David Rudder, 4th November 2008 438

Appendix B Ŕ The presence of African-derived religions and beliefs in West Indian contemporary
poetry 443
Introduction 443
Poems: the presence of Haïti 445
The voodoo pantheon 447
Loas: Agwé, Marassa, Shango, Ogun, Legba, Guédé 449
Calabash: gourds & rattles 458
Vévé 460
Haïti: zombies, boloms, and dances 461
Jamaica: obeah and pocomania 464
Conclusion 469

Works Consulted 471
Preface

Caribbean literature is very prolific in nature. There are hundreds of authors and artists in
the Caribbean who deserve to be appreciated but are barely known outside the borders of their
region. As an outsider, my interest focuses on contemporary Caribbean poetry, especially from the
Anglophone Caribbean, or rather those islands and territories which were formerly colonised by the
British. Many territories have been colonised by different European powers subsequently, the
region being a check board game for the European colonisers. That is why many territories retain
several European linguistic and cultural traditions. Attempts to analyze such a phenomenon have
been made, but were not holistic enough to include an analysis of the literary texts and their
contexts in order to outline the Ŗcontrasting similaritiesŗ and the Ŗunifying differencesŗ of the
literary trends in the region. The ŖCaribbeanŗ is a broader term and it generally includes the islands
and territories from the whole region; thus my choice of the term ŖWest Indiesŗ because it
differentiates the English-speaking territories from the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the
Dutch, and the Danish. I will focus on the British West Indies. The term ŖAntillesŗ separates the
Greater from the Lesser Antilles and it is split between geography and culture, between North
America and South America, at the same time retaining colonial relics.
From my understanding, no approach like mine has been attempted or conceived before. My
scope of work covers a huge spectrum including an analysis of several poets from the British West
Indies writing in English and their regional Creoles, and focusing on the possibility of an aesthetic
unity. Torres-Saillantřs Caribbean Poetics is in a sense a keystone work, a sort of breakthrough for
Caribbean literary criticism, but it was limited to the study of three major authors: Kamau
Brathwaite for the Anglophone Caribbean, René Depestre for the Francophone Caribbean, and
Pedro Mir for the Hispanophone Caribbean. Nonetheless the other languages and cultures present in
the region are mainly neglected in scholarly studies (Amerindians, Chinese, Indian, Dutch, and
Portuguese). One could counter argue that the concepts of poetics and aesthetics are different,
nonetheless the terms might still be used interchangeably: basically poetics is the study of literary
and poetic theory, while aesthetics is the philosophical study of not just the beautiful aspect and the
concept of taste, but also of the perception of society and the world surrounding us. When a poet
speaks about the basic rules of poetry, the metre, the rhyme, the figures of speech and the poetic
devices, he is talking about poetics; on the other hand, when a poet speaks of nature, of political
issues and of art, he is talking about aesthetics.
As a pioneer thesis, my work will undoubtedly be subjected to frailties and criticism,
especially because of the broad scope of it, of my arbitrary choice of the poets/artists to be analysed,
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and because of historical and political reasons. However, I believe that with the proper focus on the
relevant facets of my chosen topic, it is only a matter of time before the seemingly insurmountable
difficulties are due for subjugation. The poets were chosen on the basis of equality, geographical
provenance and thus respective regional variety of the Creole, and Ŕ aesthetically speaking Ŕ on the
basis of taste. Nowadays the Caribbean is not politically or socially united yet, but I believe that it is
not an improbable reality in the near future. The attempts to create a Federation of the West Indies
failed one after the other: the last and most unsuccessful attempt to unify the whole region was in
1958. It was the UK which prompted the unification, but it failed a few years later in 1962, under
the disagreement of the major island leaders, who could not arrive at an agreement re the conduct of
the federal elections (Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante in Jamaica, Eric Williams in
Trinidad, leaving the office of Prime Minister to the Barbadian Grantley Adams) and the collapse of
a plan which, according to the provinces, was more deleterious than fruitful and could rather hinder
the attempt of independence more than giving a sense of social and political unity. Apart from
disagreement on the taxation and economic freedom which would have probably penalised the
smaller islands, the main islands were constantly afraid of receiving too many immigrants from the
smaller territories. The choice of Chaguaramas (Trinidad) as capital was also contradictory, as it
was US territory. Furthermore, Jamaica Ŕ which felt the distance from all the other islands as
compromising for its political welfareŔ was displeased that Kingston was not elected as the capital
of the Federation.1
In comparison with what happened in the West Indies with the ten provinces involved in the
Federation (Jamaica; Barbados; Trinidad and Tobago; St. Lucia; Antigua and Barbuda; St. Kitts,
Nevis, and Anguilla; St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Montserrat; Dominica; Grenada), the
European Union has instead found a balance among its twenty-seven states,2 which have increased
from the starting six countries which signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. There are still problems
of a social and political nature in the Union but there is a common economic space, and the
circulation of goods and people are not seen as insurmountable obstacles by one country or another.
As far as a linguistic unity is concerned, there is no unity even in the European Union itself Ŕ even
if at the end of the 19th century Zamenhof created Esperanto as an artificial language to promote
cultural unity Ŕ by means of mirroring the Caribbean region, even though the use of English with
island accents allows communication between speakers from one island and another. Nonetheless,

1 For a more detailed history of the Federation, cf. ŖWest Indies Federation.ŗ Wikipedia. The Free
Encyclopedia. A Wikimedia project. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 28 Sept. 2009
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Indies_Federation>.
2 I would like to thank Prof. Kirpal Singh for suggesting this comparison. Personal communication. 14 Sept.
2009.
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