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FOREWORD TO KAMAU 85, AN ARTSETC SPECIAL

Poet
is a craftsperson, oral or literary, ideally both, who deals in metrical and/or rhythmical—sometimes riddmical—wordsongs, wordsounds, wordwounds & meanings, within a certain code of order or dis/order—what Antonio Benítez-Rojo calls creative chaos. These word/sound/meanings are caught out of the mind or moment’s sky as it were & etched into the ground and underdrones of the poet’s/of the artist’s culture. And from the ground of that culture is he/ she grown// is he/ she known// is he .she be/ come

FINGER IN OUR EYE QUOTATION

“‘Barbados education is the best?/Then why, why so many expert in de town?’

…It reminds me of the same question, but clothed in the accusatory language of a statement, a sentiment of political condemnation, that another of our poets put to us [in ‘Negus’], at a time when, like the one Bruce St John talked about, we were going through the first phase of political independence. Kamau Brathwaite pushed his finger in our eye, blinding us to the accusation of our profound misunderstanding of freedom and of ourselves, as that self is placed in history.”

ALL CLEAR FOR PRODUCTION

CLIVE WAGNER CHECKS the light levels in the carpenter’s workshop while Matt Gray adjusts the tracks for his dolly.

Sound engineer Robert Green stands by, listening, and Jacqui Doughty, the producer, looks on, a black pen and a red plastic folder in hand.

Lights and camera are in position. Kamau Brathwaite, Barbados’ leading poet, is expected to arrive any minute.

The BBC crew flew into Barbados Sunday on BWIA just for this.

Not for a first ministers’ meeting or a major sporting event or a big concert.

GOLOQUATIE FOR KAMAU

“No woman no cry….” Song
itches unhearing ears
and laughter disconnects
the murmuring breeze.
Bob Marley sings, “Do you remember…?”
And we do.

The eight of morning “talks” that twinned
our midnight mares,
cold, library corners where we lost our ease,
and sleepless struggles behind borrowed
masks.
Who, who

BOCAS LITFEST 2015 ON BRATHWAITE

On May 6, 2015 3:46 AM, "Vladimir Lucien" wrote:

For Kamau and all: a little rundown of those who weren't there about the Brathwaite tribute and the Walcott VS Brathwaite panel [last week at Bocas]:

THE ROUTE HOME

KAMAU PLAYED A crucial role in returning me to myself, so to speak. I’d left Jamaica at age nine for Barbados. We are both—though of different eras—alumni of Harrison College. After Barbados, I spent five years at an English public (i.e., private) school. I was an outsider there, of course, though I enjoyed the experience, and England.

FROM WHY WE WRITE: CONVERSATIONS WITH AFRICAN CANADIAN POETS AND NOVELISTS, INTERVIEWS

H Nigel Thomas:
Some of your poems interrogate the way Western languages have sullied Blackness. I wonder whether you would like to comment on this.

LET THE STORY TAKE YOU TO HISTORY

THE TIME WAS the summer of 1991. Kamau said to me, “Where are those Guanahani poems?” The place was the English Department of the University of Miami. Kamau was the Poetry Director for the Caribbean Writers Summer Institute.

I was one of several persons attending the Institute and definitely one of the beginner writers in a workshop of established and published writers such as Zee Edgell, Velma Pollard, Michael Anthony, Robert Antoni, to name a few. I was extraordinarily nervous and lacking in confidence in this setting.

HOW WE LOVE THEM

WES HALL, THE fastest fast bowler, 6'4", strong, loud, is beginning to totter. He says it is because of his accident. No doubt. Derek Walcott rides a wheelchair—the man people and his poetry said was a lover, possibly a rake. George Lamming, well, he totters, too. I saw him drop a book, and though he possibly could pick it up, I saw the relief, surreptitious and possibly angry, too, when she, young and supple, did instead. Tom Clarke curses that he has to sit when the young one offers him a seat in the bus. He'd rather not be seen to need a hand up of that kind. Well, I am 61, and i

KOKROKO: FOR KAMAU BRATHWAITE

It is as if there is a shadow
of something whole

interrupting the relentless clouds
of snow swirling about us,

and suddenly, the dark body
of steel, wood, and canvas,

sailing through with the warm laughter
of a singing troupe drunk

with careless delight,
becomes everything in the world.

This is how the news
that Kamau Brathwaite had won

the medal named after that tricky,
tricky New Hampshire poet,

who sardonically goaded
his earnest best friend to war,

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