Jamaican Poetry, contributed by

Tracie Blake
The Jamaican Dialect of Patois
(pronounced Patwa) is a colourful,
expressive and dramatic language.

This native tongue is very passionate

with variations between the British
English and the American English. This
has affected how the language of Patois
is perceived in Jamaica and the rest of
the world.
Poetry is an expressive, creative way of
writing and when combined with Patois,
it becomes positively explosive. In
Jamaican Poetry, we have an
opportunity to express ourselves
comfortably in our native tongue evoking
emotions freely and comfortably.
It was this yearning desire that lead
Jamaica’s first poets, Claude Mckay and
Thomas MacDermot to write and publish
our own poetry in the early 1900s.
McKay and MacDermot were both
well-educated and well-traveled but they
found their niche in writing Jamaican
Poetry.
They opened the door to bring forth the
blossoming of Louise Bennett in the late
1900s.
She was also well-educated and
well-traveled with most of her travels
taking her to England where the Queen’s
English was embedded in her.

She however, felt the need to come back

to her roots and later argued and fought
for Jamaican Patois to be accepted
worldwide as a full language- in the
same way as English.
She wanted Patois to be seen as a
legitimate language- both in writing and
performing literature.
This grew wings in the form of books,
newspaper publications, festivals, stage
shows and television broadcasts. Over
the years, it has been taught in schools
and has garnered more publicity by
being infiltrated to the world via the
worldwide web.
From these eras of poets also sprung
poets such as James Berry,
Joan Andrea Hutchinson, Geoffrey
Philip, Langston Hughes, Ralph
Thompson and Valerie Bloom.
Poetry in Jamaica has expanded into
Dub Poetry. Dub Poetry is a form of
musical poetic expression tied to
Reggae Music. It is typically written and
performed by Rastafarians with a distinct
drumming as the background music. It
emerged in the early 1970s when
disc-jockeys started "rapping" poems
and lyrics to the music they spun.
It soon became popular as a label in
Jamaica and on the British scene.
TheRastafarian religious beliefs are
featured a lot in Dub Poetry and Dub
Poets are largely of the Rastafarian
Sect. This has been influential in
embracing unity and peace amongst
political activists in the island.
The first Dub Poets emerging were
Mutabaruka, Oku Onuora and in Britain,
Linton Kwesi Johnson.
Rastafarian religious beliefs are used a
lot in dub poetry. Dub Poetry is mainly
done through oral performances but has
found itself in written forms over the
years.

0Salvar
A Jamaica Gleaner photo
Other Dub Poets include Yasus Afari
(Above), Malachi, Prince Far I, Michael
Smith, Jean “Binta” Breeze, Levi "Tafari",
Delroy and the most recent sensation,
'DYCR' Chandler.
http://www.my-island-jamaica.com/jamai
can_poetry.html

JAMAICAN POETRY: Arise, Think,

Speak And Live!

PART 1
As long as there have been people on
this island, there have been songs,
poems, incantations, curses, blessings,
prayers, abuses, witticisms, word and
sound play and all the core elements
that constitute what we call poetry.
We know that the Taino people managed
to pass onto future generations the
rituals of words, thoughts and feelings in
other islands.
The link to that past in Jamaica is
marked by the tragedy of genocide,
exile, and wilful and imposed amnesia,
but our poets and artists have long found
a way to invoke the spirit of those early
Jamaicans through an exploration of the
poetics of the landscape and the
narratives of history.
Those who did come--the Europeans,
the enslaved, the indentured聽labourers
聽and the willing migrants--all brought
with them their own traditions of words,
and so for as long as our historical
record allows, there are many examples
of Jamaicans writing poetry, or visitors
writing poetry about the island.
But in much the same way that our
political history has been defined by a
gradual and painful movement from the
absence of cultural and political
independence to a nationalism that has
allowed us to speak of a Jamaican
nation and identity, the same can be said
for how we have come to understand
poetry in this country.
For years, our poetry may have had the
distinction of subject matter that was
centrally about reflecting this landscape
for those not familiar with it, but in a form
that was either shaped by the literary
traditions of Europe, or often
unacknowledged songs and poems from
our rich聽orature聽that derived from the
culture and creative power of our African
past.
While there are examples of poets who
had started thinking of Jamaica as a
valid source of poetic expression, we
have not retained that memory very
effectively in our literary history. The
reasons are simple: The formation of a
literary history as we have come to know
it, was inextricably tied to our desire to
break away from colonial control and
oppression, and so any effort to
celebrate the poets of those years of
enslavement and colonial power would
amount to a betrayal of the broader
agenda of independence.
No doubt, we will soon begin to do the
necessary work of studying how our
poets (even those who were our
colonizers) started to imagine the island
and the nation in their poetry during the
early years of Europe's presence. But for
our purposes here, it is safe to say that
our ideas of what constitutes a Jamaican
poetic tradition begins in earnest at the
turn of the last century--a time when
Jamaican national identity was
becoming a critical part of the
imagination of those who felt
disenfranchised and oppressed by
colonialism.
For every preacher who spoke in
celebration of the African in the
Jamaican, there existed songs and
poems that engaged such ideas. It
makes sense that when Marcus Garvey
began to imagine a new nation of black
people, he felt compelled to create a
poetry that spoke to such a theme. By
the time Claude McKay published,
Constable Ballads in Jamaica in the very
first years of the nineteenth century, it
was clear in actions and words of men
like Robert Love, a Bahamian who
moved to Jamaica in 1889, that there
was developing, among Jamaica artists,
a growing sense of national identity that
was distinctive from their British identity.
McKay remains our first truly distinctive
Jamaican poet of the twentieth century,
and by any reckoning, he might well be
called our first major poet. There were
others around him, some quite
forgettable, and others who were in their
subject matter and style,
indistinguishable from the Victorians and
Georgians of Britain.
But in the same way that there were
sprouting up precocious聽theatre聽
societies, literary societies, and literary
clubs, there were poets talking in groups
from the various high schools to the
teachers colleges and social
organizations about a legitimate
Jamaican art.
These conversations, coupled with the
inevitable departure of many Jamaicans
first to Europe and various parts of the
Americas, and then to African nations
either to fight in the first World War or to
be educated or to become missionary
educators; and followed by their return to
the Jamaica of the twenties and thirties
during a period of tumultuous social and
political upheaval, would lead to what we
now regard as the聽naissance聽of
Jamaican poetry.

PART 2
The Early Moderns
Jamaican poetry and been advanced by
people who wrote poetry but who, for
years and perhaps never in their life
time, could claim to have careers as
poets. Many of them never published a
full volume of poetry, and most of them
were sustained by the opportunities
afforded them for publication in the Daily
Gleaner, various magazines and
periodicals and later, in broadcast
venues with the advent of radio.
They advanced poetry in Jamaica,
however, because they were engaged in
the larger discussions, perhaps in the
youth, and even in their later years,
about what constitutes good culture,
good art, and good poetry. Many of the
young men and women of the thirties
and forties who were being affected by
the political and artistic upheavals taking
place around the world, found
themselves arguing with old colonials
about what the new poetry should do.
They argued in literary societies,
libraries and in high school and college
halls.
Many began to write about their art even
as they sought to exemplify their desire
for a new and relevant art/ the work they
produced. This period, we can say
safely, proved to be the most dynamic
one for the formation of a Jamaican
poetry tradition. Names like H.D.
Carberry, Evan Jones, Roger Mais, Vic
Reid, and Neville Dawes come to mind
as poets whose work we continue to
read and think about as at the core of
our literary tradition.
Perhaps the most dominant of these
poets would be George Campbell, one
of our first poets after Claude McKay,
who could be said to have had a full
blown and persistent career as a poet,
and a genuine pioneering in the
business of trying to find a poetics for
the Jamaican culture.
Louise Bennett whose achievements in
theatre and folklore are indisputable,
was also doing some of the most
influential work in shaping what would
become normal in Jamaican music,
poetry, and literature--the use of dialect/
patois.
Finally, Una Marson, though living in the
UK, was writing a modest (in size) body
of poetry that was filled with all the
excitement of a modernist sensibility that
was fully rooted in the experience of the
place where she was raised.
That said, it is no exaggeration to say
that when one looks back at the poetry
of the 1930s to the 1950s, while some of
the work seems quite dated and archaic,
a cluster of poets, all fully influenced by
various arts movements including the
Modernist movement, the Negritude
Movement, and the Harlem
Renaissance, remain vital and
impressive.
Neville Dawes, George Campbell, Una
Marson, Andrew Salkey and John
Figueroa all reward reading today. One
can only imaging what many of these
poets may have produced had the
publishing opportunities for them been
better than they were at that time.
The West Indian Project--Post
Independence
The early post independence period of
Jamaica would see the emergence of a
cluster of male poets who one could
safely regard as a part of a fully realized
lyric modernism that sought to test the
possibilities of a Jamaican poetry. At a
time when the explosion of West Indian
Literature was taking place primarily in
fiction, these poets found ways to
produce poetry that formed a solid and
consistent foundation for the poets that
would follow in the next decades.
Tellingly, these poets, along with poets
like Anfdew Salkey and Neville Dawes,
would become as well known for their
own poetry as for their encouragement
and mentoring of so many of the
Jamaican poets that would emerge in
the years to come.
Few Jamaican poets could say that they
did not feel gratitude for the support,
mentoring and editorial efforts of poets
Mervyn Morris, Edward Baugh and
Dennis Scott at some point in their
careers. And so many of the
contemporary poets speak highly of the
guidance and support that Wayne Brown
gave them over the years.
I say this to point to the critical work of
poets as mentors in the shaping of a
Jamaican poetry tradition. Mervyn
Morris, as Jamaica's first Poet Laureate
in half a century, continues to play this
critical role, and writers still seek out the
encouraging and critical eye of Edward
Baugh.
These three poets along with Trinidadian
poet, Wayne Brown and Jamaican poet
Anthony McNeill were friends who
shared work with each other and who
formed a cadre of writers primary
committed to being poets. Mervyn Morris
published steadily in the seventies and
has continued to publish books of poetry,
whereas Edward Baugh's first full
collection appeared in the early 1990s.
Anthony McNeill was published in the
1970s and went onto to publish fairly
modestly before his death, however,
recently, a remarkable body of
unpublished work by him has been
found and is undergoing editing for
publication. On the strength of the
volume and startling brilliance of this
work, it is fair to say that when this work
is published, we will find in McNeill one
of Jamaica's most innovative and
defining poets.
PART 3
The Voice of the People--Reggae and
Social Movements
Led by the purposefulness,
inventiveness, relevance and creative
dynamism of popular Jamaican music in
the 1960s and 1970s, it was inevitable
that a new kind of poetry would emerge.
It is clear that those poets who were
writing into being the spirit of
independence were gaining much from
the emergence of this new cultural force
called reggae and its spiritual center,
Rastafarianism, but there were poets
who saw in reggae a space for a poetry
of performance inextricably connected
and immersed in the music.
Dub poetry has become a fully formed
genre of poetry that has, in itself, helped
to expand the aesthetic possibilities of
poetry written by Jamaicans. Dub poetry
has produced at least two poems that I
regard as some of the best poems
written by a Caribbean poet, namely
Jean "Binta" Breeze's "The Mad
Woman" and Linton Kwesi Johnson's
"Five Nights of Bleeding".
Some of the better known poets of this
period included Oku Onuora, Mikey
Smith (whose brutal murder ended what
was promising to be one of the more
ground-breaking careers of a Jamaican
poet), Mutabaruka, and Bongo Jerry.
Dub poetry, of course, continues to
thrive in Jamaica and abroad even when
those who are engaged in that poet do
not readily identify themselves as dub
poets
Farrin Jamaicans
Migration has long been an elemental
part of the development of Jamaican
artists, and while many have lamented
the departure of Jamaicans to other
parts of the world to pursue lives as
writers, it should be noted that Jamaica
is not unique in this regard.
People migrate for various reasons, and
while some may have a great deal to do
with the lack of opportunities for
publishing and training in Jamaica for
writers, some reasons have also to do
with general economical and educational
opportunities that travel has provided.
Over the years, it is is clear that
Jamaican poets have either lived abroad
for much of their lives or have actually
settled in other countries to write. In
many instances, they have done so
while still embarked on the great
enterprise of writing a Jamaican poetry
even as they have expanded their
subject range to include the worlds in
which they live.
Poets like James Berry, who began
writing while in London, would continue
to make his career as a poet in the UK.
His work remains important to Jamaican
writing. The same may be said for Linton
Kwesi Johnson, whose influence has
been even more far-reaching for
Jamaican writers.
In Canada, Lillian Allen and Afua Cooper
along with spoken word poets like
Michael St. George among many others,
have found ways to locate in that country
an immigrant poetics rooted in Jamaican
sensibilities.
In the US, the Pulitzer Prize winning
poet Louis Simpson seemed less
interested in the "Jamaican project", if
you will, but was fully engaged in the
poetics of modern America. But this
should make him no less interesting to
readers of Jamaican poetry. Of the poets
based abroad today, few could be said
to have as strong a reputation as
Claudia Rankine who is recognized
today as one of the leading poets
working in the US.
Her "Jamaican" perspective permeates
all of early work and she considers
Jamaica a part of her sensibility. The
same could also be said for the
DC-based poet Mark McMorris who
grew up in Jamaica and who has built up
a sophisticated body of poetry that
should be seen as a proud part of the
Jamaican poetry tradition.
The fact is that Jamaican poetry has to
be defined not by some prescriptive
notion of what it should be, but by a
more ecumenical appreciation of what it
actually constitutes based on what the
poets have written. Simpson, like Berry,
belonged to a time in recent history
when communication between "home"
and away was challenging to say the
least.
When people left, they could fairly claim
the status of exiled writers. This is a
status that is harder for a Jamaica writer
to claim today. Most Jamaican writers
living abroad have access to Jamaican
daily life and most return to the island
routinely.
The international impact of reggae music
and the sporting prowess of Jamaican
athletes, has made the idea of
Jamaicanness accessible to a wider
world, and in many ways, this has
granted the writers permission to
embrace this identity as meaningful.
Woman
When, in the late seventies, Lorna
Goodison published her first volume of
poems, Tamarind Season, which was
published by the Institute of Jamaica,
she was ushering in several critical
things to Jamaican poetry that cannot
never be undervalued.
First of all, these were the first published
poems of a poet who would continue to
produce of formidable body of poetry in
volume after volume, that would
establish her as among the top three or
four poets of the Caribbean, along with
Martin Carter, Kamau Brathwaite and
Derek Walcott.
Lorna Goodison, by the end of the
century, would be the first woman to
solidly enter that small group, and in so
doing she would be at the forefront of a
tremendous explosion of women poets
in Jamaica that would, between 1980
and 2000, transform Jamaican poetry in
remarkable ways.
Some of the poets who would emerge
would publish modestly but with
significant impact on Jamaican poetry.
Rachel Manley, Christine Craig and
Gloria Escoffery would publish books of
poetry that expanded the "landscape" of
poetry to include rich elements of the
personal, the domestic, and the political
as seen from the distinctive perspective
of the woman.
Others would begin to publish in the
eighties and would continue to build a
body of work that demands careful
study. These poets would include the
internationally renowned poets like
Pamela Mordecai, Velma Pollard and
Olive Senior whose Gardening in the
Tropics is arguable one of the most
important collections of poetry published
by a Jamaican in the last thirty years.
The work of these poets would further
influence poets like Opal Adisa Palmer,
Donna Aza Weir Soley and Jacqueline
Bishop, all poets who have lived and
written outside of Jamaica for most of
their career, but who have remained
doggedly committed to the Jamaican
ethos in their work.
It should be telling that since the arrival
of Lorna Goodison, any survey of
Jamaican poetry since continues to
show a dominance of women poets who
are opening new and exciting spaces in
the poetry.
PART 4
Contemporary Voices
A few nights ago, at a family meal, I
asked a question: If you had a chance to
make a film or write a book that you
have never read or seen what would it
be about? They were stumped, they
said. I asked them to think carefully
about this. The begged off, citing the fact
that they were musicians and not
creators of stories.
I suggested to them that one of the great
benefits of being a writer from a country
still starting to chart the experience of its
society and history, was that there were
so many stories to tell that simply had
not been told. At the heart of the
contemporary writing of poetry in
Jamaica is this richness of possibility in
subject matter and form.
While there has been a rich history of
poetry in Jamaica, it is not hubris for our
poets to feel as if they are still writing a
new poetry, a poetry that can tell so
many untold stories and that can capture
the complex and varied stories of
Jamaica. The emergence of the
publishing house, Peepal Tree Press, in
the UK, has effectively ensured that
there is a platform for these poets, an
opportunity for their work to be published
in ways that simply were not available
for many of their predecessors.
It is possible, also, for these poets to
consider themselves career poets. It
may well be enough to offer a list of the
poets I am referring to as the
contemporary voices of Jamaican poetry
and it is a powerful and exciting cluster
of poets. The beauty is that you can
actually find their work and read it. And
in so doing, you are allowed into the
imagination of poets of varied
backgrounds obsessions and
preoccupations.
Some of these poets live in Jamaica and
others live outside of Jamaica. These
poets are constrained by little in terms of
what to write about, and how to write it.
There are many poetry events in
Jamaica today, many of them following
the model of the American poetry slams
and spoken word events. Indeed, much
of the interest in poetry today in Jamaica
grows out of this movement made
popular through television.
However, these spoken word events
found fertile ground in Jamaica where for
several decades dub poetry had
flourished, and where, for even longer,
the vital poetry of dancehall and deejay
music, along with the lyric grace of roots
reggae music, offered a rich occasion for
poetic expression that emerged from the
grassroots of Jamaican society.
Tellingly, it is this powerful lyric possibility
developed by the great reggae and
dancehall artists of the last fifty years
that has served as a model and a source
of possibility for the contemporary
Jamaican poet. Yet, while the stages and
the microphones have never stopped
sounding the words of poets, a great
development of the last few decades has
been the publication of Jamaican poets
internationally.
With two or more books of poetry to their
credit, poets like, Shara McCallum, Ann
Margaret Lin, Tanya Shirley, Kei Miller,
Delores Gauntlet, Earl McKenzie, Ralph
Thompson, and Millicent Graham, are
embarked on legitimate careers as
poets.
It should be noted, of course, that some
of these poets began their publishing
careers at more advanced ages, but
they are as much a part of the exciting
contemporary scene as the younger
generation of poets. Any casual survey
of the work of the poets listed above
should make it clear that we speaking of
poets that have shown evidence
becoming major Caribbean poets in the
next few decades.
Similar things are being claimed for yet
another dynamic group of poets that is
gaining an impressive reputation at
home and abroad having published their
first collections of poems to great
acclaim. Such poets include two truly
remarkably gifted poets, Safiya Sinclair,
and Ishion Hutchison.
So many of Jamaica's contemporary
poets have been shortlisted for or won
major international prizes and have
become important poets in their own
right wherever they are.
Conclusion
As the Associate Poetry Editor at Peepal
Tree, I recognize everyday that surveys
like this become obsolete quite quickly. It
is exciting to see that new ports are
emerging each day who call themselves
Jamaicans. Some are embarked on
creative writing programs in the US and
the UK and others are plugging away at
their poetry from Jamaica or wherever
they are living.
They know they are a part of a rich
tradition, and they also know that there
is no shortage of subject and form to
challenge them as Jamaican writers.
This year, renowned Jamaican novelist,
Colin Channer, will publish his first
collection of poetry, Providential, that
demonstrates this point.
The power of this book speaks to the
exciting possibilities that exist for
Jamaican poetry. Despite this promise,
Jamaican poetry faces many challenges.
While the Peepal Tree's existence has
been a remarkable gift to Jamaican
poetry, there exist very little opportunity
for publishing in Jamaica.
Most of the poets listed here were either
published by Peepal Tree Press or have
been published by publishers in the US
or the UK. At the same time, Jamaica
has not yet developed a creative writing
program at the tertiary level that will train
poets in prosody that is rooted in the
Caribbean. Most of our poets with
graduate degrees in writing have
received such degrees abroad.
Since the founding of the Calabash
International Literary Festival in 2001,
there has been an explosion of literary
festivals in Jamaica and through out the
Caribbean that have afforded poets and
writers opportunities to share their work.
This is a good thing.
Good, also, has been the
reestablishment of the Poet Laureate
position in Jamaica, and Mervyn Morris
energy and vision which is helping to
bring attention to the richness of the
poetry tradition in Jamaica, and to also
push us to think of ways to make it
possible for our talented to have a viable
career as poets.

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