{"id":235,"date":"2019-05-14T09:30:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T09:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engp06.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=235"},"modified":"2019-05-14T09:57:18","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T09:57:18","slug":"kamau-brathwaite","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp06\/chapter\/kamau-brathwaite\/","title":{"rendered":"Kamau Brathwaite"},"content":{"raw":"
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Introduction to the Poems<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n

Brathwaite has authored several collections of poems, essays and plays. Some of his prominent\u00a0 publications\u00a0 include\u00a0 Four\u00a0 Plays\u00a0 for\u00a0 Primary\u00a0 Schools <\/em>(1964),\u00a0\u00a0 Odale's\u00a0\u00a0 Choice <\/em>(1967), Rights of Passage <\/em>(1967), Masks <\/em>(1968), Islands <\/em>(1969), Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica <\/em>(1970), The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 <\/em>(1971), The Arrivants <\/em>(1973), Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean<\/em>(1974), Other Exiles <\/em>(1975), Days &\u00a0 Nights <\/em>(1975),\u00a0 Mother\u00a0 Poem <\/em>(1977), Soweto <\/em>(1979), History of the Voice <\/em>(1979), Jamaica Poetry <\/em>(1979), Barbados Poetry <\/em>(1979), Sun Poem <\/em>(1982), Afternoon of the Status Crow <\/em>(1982), Gods of the Middle Passage <\/em>(1982) and Third World Poems <\/em>(1983).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

We discuss poems included in The Arrivants, Mother Poem <\/em>and Middle Passages <\/em>in this lesson. The Arrivants<\/em>, a trilogy consists of three volumes of poems including the \u201cRights of Passage\u201d, \u201cMasks\u201d and \u201cIslands\u201d. In the poem \u2018Tom\u2019 which is included in the volume \u201cRights of Passage\u201d Brathwaite writes<\/p>\r\n \r\n

So many seeds<\/p>\r\n

the cotton breeds<\/p>\r\n

so\u00a0many seeds<\/span><\/p>\r\n

our fathers need.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The beginning of the poem points out that for the emaciated population which is employed on the plantation, life is very difficult. Family structure is emasculated and children are removed from their parents. The social milieu, in an otherwise fertile soil, is unnecessarily harsh. The colonial master requires more hands to exploit the lands which have been assigned to him.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Hence they require more men. Brathwaite says Grow on, cotton\u00a0 lands\u00a0go on to the bottom lands where the quick cassava grows where the sick back dries, where no one knows if he lives or dies.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Brathwaite paints the harsh reality of life in the islands. Centuries of exploitation have led to a situation where life and death exist as mere words devoid of their meaning. In the other poem \u201cDidn\u2019t he Ramble\u2019, Brathwaite writes:<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nSo to New York London\u00a0I finally come hope in my belly hate smothered down to the bone to suit the part I am playing\r\n\r\n \r\n

The poems in The Arrivants <\/em>shed light on the situations that have forced the folk from the islands find their way to the metropolis. The poems also depict the plight that these immigrants face as they build their lives in unfamiliar and harsh milieu. The theme of \u2018nothing\u2019 keeps recurring through the book. The Arrivants <\/em>deals with the idea of Africa as the imaginary home-land to which the Caribbean black population is forced to cling to. However, Brathwaite doesn\u2019t romanticize Africa. Instead Brathwaite uses Africa as the backdrop to explore and contest the idea the Caribbean population has achieved nothing. He says<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nfor we who have achieved nothing\u00a0work\u00a0<\/span>who have not built dream\u00a0<\/span>who have forgotten all dance and dare to remember.<\/span>\r\n\r\n \r\n

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The Mother Poem <\/em>is one of the best known works of Brathwaite. The poet deems his island and his mother. Divided into four sections \u201cRock Seed\u201d, \u201cNightwash\u201d, \u2018Tuk\u201d and \u201cKoumfort\u201d; the collection describes the poet\u2019s engagement with his island. He points out that his mother; the island nation of Barbados is the most English nation in the West Indies. The first section deals with the social history of the island, the second and the third sections deal with the troubles that the island faces as it seeks to accommodate its diverse history, and in the final section Brathwaite the poet argues that the impending end of the exploitation offers the mother to rejuvenate herself.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The Middle Passages <\/em>is a volume of selected poems which deal with the image of Africa, Caribbean and the nature of change. Six of the fourteen poems included in the Middle Passages <\/em>are taken from X\/Self <\/em>(1987). X\/Self <\/em>is the last book of Brathwaite\u2019s Bajan trilogy. In X\/Self <\/em>Brathwaite traced the complex genealogy of African diaspora. It takes into account the multifaceted histories of slavery. As the slaves are captured, bound and brought from Africa to the Caribbean islands and Americas, they collectively face experiences of violence and humiliation. The slaves have lost their histories, cultures and voices (languages). The poems deal with the trauma of the loss of inheritance where the only constant in the lives of the displaced population is these reminders and an uncertain future. \u2018Middle passage\u2019 is a historical reality with which many of the contemporary Caribbean writers including V.S. Naipaul have dealt with.<\/p>\r\n

Introduction to the Poet<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Gordon Rohlehr has argued that of all the Caribbean writers Edward Kamau Brathwaite and George Lamming are unique as they exist as nationalists, regionalists and internationalists at the same time. The American poet and literary critic Hayden Carruth declared that Brathwaite is \u201ca poet of real accomplishment by any standards, to whom we must give not only our attention but also our admiration\u201d. Born Lawson Edward Brathwaite in the city of Bridgetown, Barbados; Brathwaite began his secondary education in 1945. He attended the Harrison College and won a scholarship to attend Cambridge University. In England he majored in English and History. He passed out of Cambridge in 1953, with\u00a0 a\u00a0 B.A.\u00a0 in History and began to work on the Caribbean Voices <\/em>program with the British Broadcasting Corporation. He completed his Diploma of Education from Cambridge and found a job as an Education Officer on the Gold Coast (Ghana) in Africa. This stint at the Ministry of Education, Ghana proved to be the turning point in his life. During his five years stay in Africa, Brathwaite strove to discover the cultures of Africa. In 1960 he took a year\u2019s leave and returned to England. In England he met and married Doris Monica who hailed from Guyana.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In Ghana, Brathwaite's began to write prolifically. His first publication from Africa was the play Odale's Choice <\/em>which was premiered in Ghana at Mfantsiman Secondary School. In 1962-63, Brathwaite moved to the island nation of St. Lucia where he worked as the Resident Tutor in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies. Later in 1963, he was appointed as a teacher of history at Kingston Campus of the University of the West Indies. In Jamaica, Brathwaite co-founded the Caribbean Artists Movement and in 1970 launched Savacou <\/em>a literary journal.<\/em><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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In 1971 Brathwaite accepted a City of Nairobi Fellowship. In Kenya he came into close contact with Ngugi wa Thiongo. Ngugi conferred Brathwaite the title Kamau. In 1992 he was offered the position of a Professor at the New York University. He has been teaching Comparative literature in New York ever since, where he is a colleague of Ngugi. Brathwaite also spent three self-financed years which he termed the \"Maroon Years\" (1997-2000) in Barbados. He married Beverley Reid, a Jamaican. In 2002 the University of Sussex conferred an honorary doctorate on Kamau Brathwaite.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Brathwaite is known for his strong political views. When compared with his peers including V.S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott; Brathwaite\u2019s writing is overtly political. At various stages of his career, Brathwaite has been involved in the creation of ideologies such as the\u00a0 negritude, Pan-Africanism, and regionalism. Through his poems he pays homage to the victims of slavery. Slavery was deeply involved with violence. Most of Brathwaite\u2019s poems are written in Caribbean Creole and explicitly challenge the linear, exclusive, colonial historiography which is created in the metropolis. The poems enquires how the gods are born, how histories are made and how are they told. The poems, even as they dissect the violence that the emaciated populations were exposed to, are beautifully structured.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Brathwaite ceaselessly pursued cultural authenticity and brought visibility to Caribbean language. He consistently used several elements to emancipate the language from its European origins. His intellectual focus is aimed at recounting the history in the voice of the Caribbean. His body of work takes into account and renders justice to the complex historical, cultural, and aesthetic practices of the island. His poems and essays capture the particular nature of creative expression in the region. As a poet, historian, critic, cultural activist, and teacher he has posited that the Caribbean, crucible of various interleaved traditions, has produced its own cultural forms that not only speak with an indigenous Creole voice but have the capability of posing an alternative model to the Western tradition.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Brathwaite has written several celebrated works on literary criticism. His work contextualizes the writing emerging from the postcolonial world. Some of his works include Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica <\/em>(1970) and The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica. <\/em>His History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry <\/em>(1984) is one of the more comprehensive surveys of Caribbean verse.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Often Brathwaite is unfavourably compared to his peers V.S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott (both of whom have received the Nobel Prize for literature. Outside Africa and the Caribbean region he is not popular unlike his illustrious contemporaries like George Lamming. Silvio, Torres-Sasillant in his essay \u201cThe trials of authenticity in Kamau Brathwaite\u201d attributes the \u2018meagre presence of Brathwaite\u2019s texts in the American literary arena\u201d, to \u201cthe nature of his own search for authenticity and the choices that he, as a Caribbean writer, has had to make\u201d. Silvio further adds \u201cto use a Frostian term\u201d, Brathwaite \u201cof the two paths normally available to writers from the neocolonial Third World\u201d, chose \u201cthe road less travelled\u201d. Gifted intellectuals and artists from the old colonies invariably must contend with the fact that they depend on the West to attain international visibility\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Elaine Savory in her still unpublished piece \u201cReturning of Sycorax\/Prospero\u2019s Response: Edward Kamau Brathwaite\u2019s Word Journey\u201d examined the history of Brathwaite\u2019s publications in the west and highlighted the fact that Western literary market was reticent in\u00a0publishing several texts by Brathwaite. She says that publishers often did not reveal the causes as to why they were not\u00a0 publishing\u00a0 the\u00a0 works.\u00a0 Savory\u00a0 further\u00a0 adds\u00a0 that\u00a0 that\u00a0 it was Brathwaite's defiance of \"the continued dominance of discourses deriving from Western intellectual history\u201d and his reluctance to discuss \u201cso-called Third World or Minority Cultural products...within Western referential sign-posts\" led him to being censored by both the readers and the publishers in the northern metropolis.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Thus Brathwaite\u2019s apparent inability to penetrate the western literary scene is actually due to his political leanings. His career is a testimony to the fact that despite the several gains made by the postcolonial subjects, the global order is such that writers from the third world who seek authenticity and value historicity find it difficult to gain acceptance in the first world.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

It is not to suggest that Brathwaite is in dearth of admirers. The language and the themes that he uses to describe the human condition and his insistence on privileging Africa have made Brathwaite popular across the postcolonial world. Prominent theorists such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi and Simon Gikandi are counted among his biggest supporters. The overt and intense political fixation has won him several admirers outside Africa and Caribbean world. Bill Ashcroft and others in the celebrated work The Empire Writes Back <\/em>have stated that \u201cthe West Indian poet and historian E.K. Brathwaite proposes a model which, while stressing the importance of the need to privilege the African connection over the European, also stresses the multi-cultural, syncretic nature of the West Indian reality\u201d.<\/p>\r\n

Themes in Mother Poem<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/em>\r\n

The Mother Poem <\/em>(1977) is perhaps the most noted work of Brathwaite. It is considered a part of trilogy alongside Sun Poem <\/em>(1982) and X\/Self <\/em>(1987). In Mother Poem <\/em>Brathwaite takes a broader view and focuses on the mix of voices in the Caribbean region. Unlike in the Arrivants, <\/em>Brathwaite does not focus on the growth (or the lack) of an individual consciousness alone. He considers the nature of sex, race and geography on the growth and development of thought in Caribbean. He points out that the limitations of sex, race and geography have limited the growth of both the Caribbean or nationalist conscious on the islands.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The Mother Poem <\/em>is indicative of the fact that Brathwaite is a nationalist and the interests of Barbados are of utmost priority to him. As Brathwaite writes in the \u2018Preface\u2019 to the poem, the mother in the poem is the nation of Barbados. Brathwaite points out that the island nation is porous and weak. He reminds the reader that Barbados is a small island which is full of limestone formations and dried up water sources. A landscape which is severely fragmented is further, as Brathwaite points out, debilitated by the experience of colonialism. The poem is divided into four sections \u201cRock Seed\u201d, \u201cNightwash\u201d, \u2018Tuk\u201d and \u201cKoumfort.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In the poem Brathwaite highlights the experience of a woman in Revival Church (personification of the complex, almost Creole like religion itself) as she is possessed by the Haitian god of the sweet waters and Damballah the snake. The Church is different from the western church and there are several native, African elements within it. In \"Angel\/Engine\" even as the woman protagonist speaks Afro-Bajan language: \"i tek up des days wid de zion \/ we does meet tuesdee nights in de carpenter shop praaze be to god \/ i hear de chapman hall\u00a0preacher shout out\" (M, 98), included is \"praaze be to god\" of Revival Zion. These shouts of praise to god is subsumed by the sound and rhythm, like the \u201cseamless hiss\u201d, the \u201chuh\u201d and \u201chah\u201d of the Afro-Caribbean spirits. Danballah joins with the \"shang,\" the \"sh,\" \"gg,\" and \"ssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh\" of Shango (12) whom Brathwaite in X\/Self refers to as \"Pan African god of thunder and lightning\u201d. These gods are believed to be the cause for modern instruments such as electricity, sound systems and the locomotive engine.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Brathwaite resorts to the \u2018Bajan\u2019, the subculture of Jamaica ad Barbados which is supposed to be coarse and lewd, uses \"the drum, the beat and the bawdy,\" to base the poem in what he terms \"alternative\" folk or oral tradition. Common, everyday things find place in the poems\u00a0 as Brathwaite contradicts the notion that the poet is \"noble rider\" in the mundane world. He summons \"young Caliban \/ howling for his tongue,\" places him along with the \"computer conjur man.\" \"Children eating dirt,\" and the much-ignored mother of Caliban, \"black sycorax\" are situated alongside. The Sycorax is treated with respect \"what a way dem is mek we burn in we black- \/ ness: what a way dem is trouble me see . . . she doan feed de dawg, jook she hann in i back \/ and say dat ifavor a nigga\" (\"Dais,\" Mother Poem).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Thus the work contextualizes the hybridity of Barbados, an island which was inhabited by humans before the advent of Christianity, modernity, colonialism and slave trade began. The poem depicts the subjugation, the coercion and the rape of the mother (island); the nature of the emaciated and emasculated sons and urges for a cultural awakening to save the mother from further exploitation and eventual destruction.<\/p>\r\n

Themes in the Arrivants<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/em>\r\n

To fully appreciate \u2018the Arrivants\u2019, we need to keep in mind the life of Brathwaite as read the poems. Brathwaite rather convincingly argued that the \u2018middle-passage\u2019 experience was not an entirely traumatic experience. He viewed the \u2018middle passage\u2019 as an experience which allowed \u201ca pathway or channel between (African) tradition and what is being evolved on new soil in the Caribbean\u201d (Brathwaite, 1970:38). In the essay \u201cTimehri\u201d, Brathwaite states that he went to England believing that he was a British citizen. However, in the \u2018mother country\u2019 he \u201cfound\u201d and \u201cfelt\u201d \u201crootless\u201d. On completion of his education, Brathwaite went on an \u201cexile\u201d to Ghana. In Ghana Brathwaite discovered his African roots. \u201cSlowly, slowly, ever\u00a0 so slowly; obscurely, slowly but surely, during the eight years that I lived there, I was coming to an awareness and understanding of community, of cultural wholeness, of the place of the individual within the tribe, in society\u201d. He gradually began to develop a \u201csense of identification\u201d as he associated with the people of Ghana whom he deemed were his \u201cliving diviners\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In Ghana, Brathwaite argues that he came \u201cto connect\u201d his \u201chistory\u201d with \u201ctheirs\u201d. This association for him was \u201cthe bridge\u201d of \u201cmind now linking Atlantic and ancestor, homeland and heartland\u201d. Literary historian Bruce King argued that in Africa Brathwaite found a \u201cculture in which there is a profound relationship of individual and of the spiritual world to the community\u201d. According to King, if Brathwaite through his non-fiction and poems has transcended the colonial implications of \u2018rootlessness\u2019 and isolation, it was due to his stay in Ghana. Thus, before Brathwaite attempted to write \u2018The Arrivants\u2019, he was interested in\u00a0\u2018afrocentrity\u2019. As Paul Gilroy discussed, Brathwaite\u2019s belief in \u2018afrocentricity\u2019 helped him to create, recreate and reconstruct African genius and values and narrate this experience. . These values, for Brathwaite are to be created from the experience and history. Thus Africa is the central theme of the poem.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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In the section titled \u2018Masks\u2019, Brathwaite refers to several of Africa\u2019s cultural markers. These include African empires such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Benin, Congo and Chad. He writes about the urban centres of Axum, Timbuctu, Ougadougou, Takoradi and Kumasi. The legends and the myths of Africa are referenced along with history of Africa African personalities as Chaka, Osai Tutu and African gods as Ogun, Damballa, Olodumare and Tano are invoked. The poem also invokes the tropical African rain forest; lists out its fauna and flora of Africa...<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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\u2018Masks\u2019 is very different from the violated \u2018New World\u2019, which Brathwaite inhabits. Brathwaite\u2019s vision of Africa is mythical and nostalgic picture and it seems Brathwaite is the son who returning to his roots. These poems could have been titled \u2018Africa\u2019; however Brathwaite terms them the \u2018Masks\u2019. The choice of the title is political as Brathwaite efforts are not to romanticize the past.\u2019<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In \u201cRights to Passage\u201d Brathwaite misspells proper nouns of cities and countries. Look at the poetic style that Brathwaite uses to describe the path of coerced migration, \u201cE- gypt In Africa Mesopo tamia Mero e the nile silica glass and brittle Sa hara, Tim buctu, Gao the hills of Ahafo, winds of the Niger,Kumasi and Kiver down the coiled Congo and down that black river\u201d (\u201cRights of Passage\u201d, III, 35). The lines show the migration of African people from Egypt to West Africa where they are tricked and sold into slavery. The disjointed form in the poem helps to create geographical and a poetic effect on the reader. The reader would comprehend how the black people are scattered all over the world.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

These poems help us comprehend the psychological condition of \"Tom,\" who laments, \"They call me Uncle \/ Tom and mock me \/'\/ these my children \/ mock me \/\/ they hate the hat \/ in hand the one- \/ roomed God I praise\" (17). In another poem he remembers, \"we kept \/ our state on golden stools--remember?\" (18), and in yet another he reminisces and curses, \"I am a fuck- \/ in' negro, \/ man, hole \/ in my head, \/ brains in \/ my belly; \/ black skin \/ red eyes \/ broad back \/ big you know \/ what: not very quick to take offence \/ but once\/ offended, watch \/ that house \/ you livin' in \/ an' watch that lit- \/ tle sister\".<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The black population are denied home, culture, language, and religion. They are prevented from forming \u2018self\u2019 and subjected to dehumanizing experiences. Yet the black man in the New World has survived and made that world his home. The poet argues that before the\u00a0 black man can possess it fully, he must understand that journey which he was forced to undertake from Africa to New World. This is the theme in \u2018Masks\u2019.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Africa, Brathwaite argues, welcomes its children who are returning home. Brathwaite says that \"Akwaaba they smiled \/ meaning welcome akwaaba they called \/ aye kooo \/\/ well have you walked \/ have you journeyed welcome \/\/ you who have come \/ back a stranger \/ after three hundred years welcome here is a stool for \/ you; sit; do \/ you remember?<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Thus Brathwaite argues that the pain of a personal journey to Africa induces a catharsis only if the subject understood the meaning of the return. In other words the black men of the New World would find the voyage to Africa meaningful only if they aware of Africa\u2019s ruined\u00a0cities, lost empires, lost babies abd necessary sacrifices. The subject has to comprehend and appreciate that Africa bears her share of the burden. He has to respect and help renew the remembrance and performance of ancient rituals.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nThemes in Middle Passages<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\n\u00a0<\/em>\r\n

Brathwaite\u2019s spouse Doris Monica Brathwaite in A Descriptive and Chronological Bibliography (1950-1982) of the Works of Edward Kamau Brathwaite, <\/em>mentioned that V.S. Naipaul\u2019s vision for the Caribbean as laid out in his Middle Passages <\/em>(1962) was \u201cbare and insensitive with little hope or promise\u201d. Monica claims that she was \"a witness of the Middle Passage\u201d and states that Brathwaite\u2019s vision is \"so clearly forced into the kind of utterance\u201d which comes out not only from his experience but also \u201carises from a deep concern with the future of Caribbean literature\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Verses in \u201cMiddle Passages\u201d are proof that Brathwaite is the most complete Caribbean poet of his age. He uses visuals, sounds and technology to speak on diverse issues such as the political question in the Caribbean, oral narratives, calls for self determinacy and black mythologies. Brathwaite dedicated the collection of poems to the Cuban poet Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Batista . Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Batista, National Poet of Cuba, of Afro-European descent, was influenced by Afro-American poets who experimented music with in their poems. Nicol\u00e1s used \u2018drum talk\u2019 in his poems. The opening poem in Middle Passages <\/em>\"Word Making Man\" is a celebration of Guill\u00e9n's belief that resistance and the defiance that is evident in the works of the black artists, activists, musicians and sportsmen in the Caribbean region is actually the language of resistance. Guill\u00e9n believes that this resistance originates in the African roots of these artists and activists. Guill\u00e9n believed that such impudence on the part of these cultural icons creates a new language which manifests the force of Xango (the African god of thunder). Guill\u00e9n believed in a pan-Caribbean world. The \u201cWord Making Man\u201d opens with a personal salutation which is evidence of Bratwaite\u2019s respect and deep personal intimacy with the senior poet.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

\u201cSir,\/ not in \u2018Sir\u2019\/ but compa\u00f1ero\/ <\/em>as you wd prefer it in hispa\u00f1ol\/ <\/em>i have not yet been to cuba\/ & do not know the language of yr oradores\/ <\/em>& as you said. Compa\u00f1ero <\/em>means comrade, and oradores <\/em>means orator. Brathwaite intentionally uses the term hispa\u00f1ol <\/em>to denote Spanish language instead of \u201cespa\u00f1ol\u201d <\/em>or \u201ccastellano. <\/em>Brathwaite then refers to Guill\u00e9n\u2019s class based politics as he says \u201cbut i know that we are watching in a long circle for the dawn\/ & that the ruling class does not wait at bus stops\/ & i know that we are watching in a\u00a0 \u00a0long\u00a0 circle\u00a0 for the fire\/ & that our compradores do not ladle soup out of the yabba\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The poem is a tribute in verse form to Guill\u00e9n and narrates the life of Guill\u00e9n. The poet urges to appreciate Guill\u00e9n\u2019s aesthetic one needs to comprehend the politics of race (the question of Africa and blacks) and class. Brathwaite further adds \u201camerika laughs\/ west indies west indies west indies ltd\/ <\/em>but suddenly in the night of possibility\/ it turns to the wall in its creaking bed of dollars\/ west indies west indies west indies unlimited\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\"The sea between us yields its secrets\" and enables the scattered islands to communicate, where \"together we say wind \/ & understand its history of ghosts \/\/ together we say fire \/ & again there is a future in those sparks.\" Ultimately, the many islands merge into one:\u00a0 \"we\u00a0 say this our land & know at last at last it is our home.\" In spite of history precisely, the world seems almost young, full of possibility, \"'w\/ the vast splendour of the sunshine & the sunflower & the \/\/ stars'.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

\u201cSycorax video style\u201d is probably the best known and the most interesting poem in this collection. Brathwaite was in many ways the precursor to the contemporary practitioner of digital humanities. His use of computers to write poetry (not merely type on it) is a manifestation of the fact that Brathwaite realized that the new scientific contrivance would aid his poetic expression. \"Letter Sycorax,\" an epistolary text appearing in Middle Passages <\/em>(1993), provides the intellectual framework that informs the style Brathwaite has ventured to rehearse in this new literary phase.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The computers enabled Brathwaite to experiment with the form of the poem and these experiments helped to create a new style. This new aesthetic allowed him to explore and address diverse themes. The computer, unlike the typewriter provided him greater movement in his poems including variations in font, size, and appearance of the letters including bold, capital and italic forms; a streamlined punctuation where periods replace the commas (unlike the earlier versions) but also fall in the middle of words. The words are interrupted into various syllables and these interruptions disrupt their usual meaning. Brathwaite plays with the alignment of the poems (some are justified, aligned centre and at times even right). These transformations in the form allowed him to use the \u2018nation language\u2019 more efficiently. The usage of the \u2018nation language\u2019 is best illustrated in \"Letter Sycorax\". The narrator used \u2018nation language\u2019 and explores the new possibilities of writing on a computer. The poet redraws every \u2018x\u2019 in the poem; hence every \u2018x\u2019 is big and bold and stands out with an added flair. The words are realigned to point out the inherent irony of colonialism. The Caliban is attempting\u00a0 to avoid the examples of Prospero:<\/p>\r\n \r\n

what is de bess way to say so\/so it doan sounn<\/p>\r\n

like<\/p>\r\n

brigg flatts\u00a0 or\u00a0 her.\u00a0\u00a0 vokitz\u00a0 nor de<\/p>\r\n

\u03c0.<\/p>\r\n

san cantos nor de souf sea bible.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

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The text is aligned to the right, several words are intentionally misspelt and he uses non- English words. The poem is addressed to the mother Sycorax: mother of Caliban, whom Shakespeare and other European writers have depicted as an exiled, evil witch who exercised demonic control over several spirits. The poet informs his mother \"Dear mamma,\" the computer has opened up endless possibilities for writing and \"is one a de bess tings since cicero\" (Brathwaite, 1993a, 97). The innovation in computer enables the writer to re-examine and comment on the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. The poet declines to limit himself to merely opposing Prospero but chooses a more self-assertive outlook on history and\u00a0self. He says \"but is like what i try. \/ in to sen\/seh & \/\/ seh about muse. \/ in computer \/\/ & mouse & \/ learn. \/\/ in prospero ling. \/ go \/\/ & \/ ting \/\/ not fe dem\/not fe dem \/ de way caliban \/\/ done but fe we \/ fe a-we\".<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The combination of \"Letter Sycorax\" and the more linear texts that make up Middle Passages puts us in touch with Brathwaite's sustained efforts at articulating and realigning his personal feelings with that of his community, of reconciling literary and oral traditions in Caribbean poetry. The poems are also indicative of his transition and his assessment of the contemporary postcolonialism.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In the other poem \u201c\u201cX\/Self\u201d Brathwaite\u2019s is the X\/self who has become the Caliban. The Caliban is informing his much maligned mother of his new place in the history. He is offering the mother his perspective of history. The poem begins with: Dear mumma uh writin yu dis letter wha? guess what! Pun a computer O kay? While many critics have pointed out that the Caliban is exhilarated that he has found a (computer) new toy, Caliban is only excited at discovering a new mode of communication which allows shows him to reach out to his mother. He further developed \u2018Sycorax\u2019 video style.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In \u201cLetter Sycorax,\u201d Brathwaite argues that Sycorax as the rightful owner, possessed the island, where she gave birth to her Caliban. She was falsely implicated, imprisoned and indentured to Prospero. As Caliban is strong enough to work for Prospero, Sycorax is imprisoned and banished and that \u201cshe became submerged\u201d as not to let her \u201cappear\" (Brathwaite, 1984b, 44). Brathwaite privileged Sycorax and believes that the key to actual political emancipation of the Caribbean world lies in it discovering its cultural authenticity. Like the Sycorax which was submerged, the culture of the Caribbean population is buried under the experience of colonization. The Caribbean population is the Caliban. The culture of the Caribbean people is the Sycorax. To psychologically liberate Caliban, the cultural revival of Sycorax is a precondition. Hence the mother has to return and the Caliban has to drink his \"mother's milk\" (since Brathwaite equates milk with language) which is speak \u201chis own mother's language.\" Caliban\u2019s exposure to the schools, mass media and other such alien institutions established by Prospero has led to his alienation. To undo his alienation Caliban and rediscover his self, the colonized, Caliban must besides revolting against Prospero\u2019s imposition, also has to discover his roots. The Caliban must seek the Sycorax, \"the carrier, the keeper, the protector of the native culture,\" whose banishment, with all its disadvantages, has nonetheless enabled her to preserve \"in a submerged manner the very essence of the native culture\" and to hold on to \"the secrets of a possible alternative culture for the Caribbean\".<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
you can view video on Kamau Brathwaite<\/strong><\/td>\r\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>","rendered":"
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Introduction to the Poems<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Brathwaite has authored several collections of poems, essays and plays. Some of his prominent\u00a0 publications\u00a0 include\u00a0 Four\u00a0 Plays\u00a0 for\u00a0 Primary\u00a0 Schools <\/em>(1964),\u00a0\u00a0 Odale’s\u00a0\u00a0 Choice <\/em>(1967), Rights of Passage <\/em>(1967), Masks <\/em>(1968), Islands <\/em>(1969), Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica <\/em>(1970), The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 <\/em>(1971), The Arrivants <\/em>(1973), Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean<\/em>(1974), Other Exiles <\/em>(1975), Days &\u00a0 Nights <\/em>(1975),\u00a0 Mother\u00a0 Poem <\/em>(1977), Soweto <\/em>(1979), History of the Voice <\/em>(1979), Jamaica Poetry <\/em>(1979), Barbados Poetry <\/em>(1979), Sun Poem <\/em>(1982), Afternoon of the Status Crow <\/em>(1982), Gods of the Middle Passage <\/em>(1982) and Third World Poems <\/em>(1983).<\/p>\n

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We discuss poems included in The Arrivants, Mother Poem <\/em>and Middle Passages <\/em>in this lesson. The Arrivants<\/em>, a trilogy consists of three volumes of poems including the \u201cRights of Passage\u201d, \u201cMasks\u201d and \u201cIslands\u201d. In the poem \u2018Tom\u2019 which is included in the volume \u201cRights of Passage\u201d Brathwaite writes<\/p>\n

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So many seeds<\/p>\n

the cotton breeds<\/p>\n

so\u00a0many seeds<\/span><\/p>\n

our fathers need.<\/p>\n

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The beginning of the poem points out that for the emaciated population which is employed on the plantation, life is very difficult. Family structure is emasculated and children are removed from their parents. The social milieu, in an otherwise fertile soil, is unnecessarily harsh. The colonial master requires more hands to exploit the lands which have been assigned to him.<\/p>\n

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Hence they require more men. Brathwaite says Grow on, cotton\u00a0 lands\u00a0go on to the bottom lands where the quick cassava grows where the sick back dries, where no one knows if he lives or dies.<\/p>\n

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Brathwaite paints the harsh reality of life in the islands. Centuries of exploitation have led to a situation where life and death exist as mere words devoid of their meaning. In the other poem \u201cDidn\u2019t he Ramble\u2019, Brathwaite writes:<\/p>\n

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So to New York London\u00a0I finally come hope in my belly hate smothered down to the bone to suit the part I am playing<\/p>\n

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The poems in The Arrivants <\/em>shed light on the situations that have forced the folk from the islands find their way to the metropolis. The poems also depict the plight that these immigrants face as they build their lives in unfamiliar and harsh milieu. The theme of \u2018nothing\u2019 keeps recurring through the book. The Arrivants <\/em>deals with the idea of Africa as the imaginary home-land to which the Caribbean black population is forced to cling to. However, Brathwaite doesn\u2019t romanticize Africa. Instead Brathwaite uses Africa as the backdrop to explore and contest the idea the Caribbean population has achieved nothing. He says<\/p>\n

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for we who have achieved nothing\u00a0work\u00a0<\/span>who have not built dream\u00a0<\/span>who have forgotten all dance and dare to remember.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Mother Poem <\/em>is one of the best known works of Brathwaite. The poet deems his island and his mother. Divided into four sections \u201cRock Seed\u201d, \u201cNightwash\u201d, \u2018Tuk\u201d and \u201cKoumfort\u201d; the collection describes the poet\u2019s engagement with his island. He points out that his mother; the island nation of Barbados is the most English nation in the West Indies. The first section deals with the social history of the island, the second and the third sections deal with the troubles that the island faces as it seeks to accommodate its diverse history, and in the final section Brathwaite the poet argues that the impending end of the exploitation offers the mother to rejuvenate herself.<\/p>\n

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The Middle Passages <\/em>is a volume of selected poems which deal with the image of Africa, Caribbean and the nature of change. Six of the fourteen poems included in the Middle Passages <\/em>are taken from X\/Self <\/em>(1987). X\/Self <\/em>is the last book of Brathwaite\u2019s Bajan trilogy. In X\/Self <\/em>Brathwaite traced the complex genealogy of African diaspora. It takes into account the multifaceted histories of slavery. As the slaves are captured, bound and brought from Africa to the Caribbean islands and Americas, they collectively face experiences of violence and humiliation. The slaves have lost their histories, cultures and voices (languages). The poems deal with the trauma of the loss of inheritance where the only constant in the lives of the displaced population is these reminders and an uncertain future. \u2018Middle passage\u2019 is a historical reality with which many of the contemporary Caribbean writers including V.S. Naipaul have dealt with.<\/p>\n

Introduction to the Poet<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Gordon Rohlehr has argued that of all the Caribbean writers Edward Kamau Brathwaite and George Lamming are unique as they exist as nationalists, regionalists and internationalists at the same time. The American poet and literary critic Hayden Carruth declared that Brathwaite is \u201ca poet of real accomplishment by any standards, to whom we must give not only our attention but also our admiration\u201d. Born Lawson Edward Brathwaite in the city of Bridgetown, Barbados; Brathwaite began his secondary education in 1945. He attended the Harrison College and won a scholarship to attend Cambridge University. In England he majored in English and History. He passed out of Cambridge in 1953, with\u00a0 a\u00a0 B.A.\u00a0 in History and began to work on the Caribbean Voices <\/em>program with the British Broadcasting Corporation. He completed his Diploma of Education from Cambridge and found a job as an Education Officer on the Gold Coast (Ghana) in Africa. This stint at the Ministry of Education, Ghana proved to be the turning point in his life. During his five years stay in Africa, Brathwaite strove to discover the cultures of Africa. In 1960 he took a year\u2019s leave and returned to England. In England he met and married Doris Monica who hailed from Guyana.<\/p>\n

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In Ghana, Brathwaite’s began to write prolifically. His first publication from Africa was the play Odale’s Choice <\/em>which was premiered in Ghana at Mfantsiman Secondary School. In 1962-63, Brathwaite moved to the island nation of St. Lucia where he worked as the Resident Tutor in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies. Later in 1963, he was appointed as a teacher of history at Kingston Campus of the University of the West Indies. In Jamaica, Brathwaite co-founded the Caribbean Artists Movement and in 1970 launched Savacou <\/em>a literary journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

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In 1971 Brathwaite accepted a City of Nairobi Fellowship. In Kenya he came into close contact with Ngugi wa Thiongo. Ngugi conferred Brathwaite the title Kamau. In 1992 he was offered the position of a Professor at the New York University. He has been teaching Comparative literature in New York ever since, where he is a colleague of Ngugi. Brathwaite also spent three self-financed years which he termed the “Maroon Years” (1997-2000) in Barbados. He married Beverley Reid, a Jamaican. In 2002 the University of Sussex conferred an honorary doctorate on Kamau Brathwaite.<\/p>\n

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Brathwaite is known for his strong political views. When compared with his peers including V.S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott; Brathwaite\u2019s writing is overtly political. At various stages of his career, Brathwaite has been involved in the creation of ideologies such as the\u00a0 negritude, Pan-Africanism, and regionalism. Through his poems he pays homage to the victims of slavery. Slavery was deeply involved with violence. Most of Brathwaite\u2019s poems are written in Caribbean Creole and explicitly challenge the linear, exclusive, colonial historiography which is created in the metropolis. The poems enquires how the gods are born, how histories are made and how are they told. The poems, even as they dissect the violence that the emaciated populations were exposed to, are beautifully structured.<\/p>\n

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Brathwaite ceaselessly pursued cultural authenticity and brought visibility to Caribbean language. He consistently used several elements to emancipate the language from its European origins. His intellectual focus is aimed at recounting the history in the voice of the Caribbean. His body of work takes into account and renders justice to the complex historical, cultural, and aesthetic practices of the island. His poems and essays capture the particular nature of creative expression in the region. As a poet, historian, critic, cultural activist, and teacher he has posited that the Caribbean, crucible of various interleaved traditions, has produced its own cultural forms that not only speak with an indigenous Creole voice but have the capability of posing an alternative model to the Western tradition.<\/p>\n

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Brathwaite has written several celebrated works on literary criticism. His work contextualizes the writing emerging from the postcolonial world. Some of his works include Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica <\/em>(1970) and The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica. <\/em>His History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry <\/em>(1984) is one of the more comprehensive surveys of Caribbean verse.<\/p>\n

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Often Brathwaite is unfavourably compared to his peers V.S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott (both of whom have received the Nobel Prize for literature. Outside Africa and the Caribbean region he is not popular unlike his illustrious contemporaries like George Lamming. Silvio, Torres-Sasillant in his essay \u201cThe trials of authenticity in Kamau Brathwaite\u201d attributes the \u2018meagre presence of Brathwaite\u2019s texts in the American literary arena\u201d, to \u201cthe nature of his own search for authenticity and the choices that he, as a Caribbean writer, has had to make\u201d. Silvio further adds \u201cto use a Frostian term\u201d, Brathwaite \u201cof the two paths normally available to writers from the neocolonial Third World\u201d, chose \u201cthe road less travelled\u201d. Gifted intellectuals and artists from the old colonies invariably must contend with the fact that they depend on the West to attain international visibility\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Elaine Savory in her still unpublished piece \u201cReturning of Sycorax\/Prospero\u2019s Response: Edward Kamau Brathwaite\u2019s Word Journey\u201d examined the history of Brathwaite\u2019s publications in the west and highlighted the fact that Western literary market was reticent in\u00a0publishing several texts by Brathwaite. She says that publishers often did not reveal the causes as to why they were not\u00a0 publishing\u00a0 the\u00a0 works.\u00a0 Savory\u00a0 further\u00a0 adds\u00a0 that\u00a0 that\u00a0 it was Brathwaite’s defiance of “the continued dominance of discourses deriving from Western intellectual history\u201d and his reluctance to discuss \u201cso-called Third World or Minority Cultural products…within Western referential sign-posts” led him to being censored by both the readers and the publishers in the northern metropolis.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Thus Brathwaite\u2019s apparent inability to penetrate the western literary scene is actually due to his political leanings. His career is a testimony to the fact that despite the several gains made by the postcolonial subjects, the global order is such that writers from the third world who seek authenticity and value historicity find it difficult to gain acceptance in the first world.<\/p>\n

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It is not to suggest that Brathwaite is in dearth of admirers. The language and the themes that he uses to describe the human condition and his insistence on privileging Africa have made Brathwaite popular across the postcolonial world. Prominent theorists such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi and Simon Gikandi are counted among his biggest supporters. The overt and intense political fixation has won him several admirers outside Africa and Caribbean world. Bill Ashcroft and others in the celebrated work The Empire Writes Back <\/em>have stated that \u201cthe West Indian poet and historian E.K. Brathwaite proposes a model which, while stressing the importance of the need to privilege the African connection over the European, also stresses the multi-cultural, syncretic nature of the West Indian reality\u201d.<\/p>\n

Themes in Mother Poem<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Mother Poem <\/em>(1977) is perhaps the most noted work of Brathwaite. It is considered a part of trilogy alongside Sun Poem <\/em>(1982) and X\/Self <\/em>(1987). In Mother Poem <\/em>Brathwaite takes a broader view and focuses on the mix of voices in the Caribbean region. Unlike in the Arrivants, <\/em>Brathwaite does not focus on the growth (or the lack) of an individual consciousness alone. He considers the nature of sex, race and geography on the growth and development of thought in Caribbean. He points out that the limitations of sex, race and geography have limited the growth of both the Caribbean or nationalist conscious on the islands.<\/p>\n

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The Mother Poem <\/em>is indicative of the fact that Brathwaite is a nationalist and the interests of Barbados are of utmost priority to him. As Brathwaite writes in the \u2018Preface\u2019 to the poem, the mother in the poem is the nation of Barbados. Brathwaite points out that the island nation is porous and weak. He reminds the reader that Barbados is a small island which is full of limestone formations and dried up water sources. A landscape which is severely fragmented is further, as Brathwaite points out, debilitated by the experience of colonialism. The poem is divided into four sections \u201cRock Seed\u201d, \u201cNightwash\u201d, \u2018Tuk\u201d and \u201cKoumfort.<\/p>\n

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In the poem Brathwaite highlights the experience of a woman in Revival Church (personification of the complex, almost Creole like religion itself) as she is possessed by the Haitian god of the sweet waters and Damballah the snake. The Church is different from the western church and there are several native, African elements within it. In “Angel\/Engine” even as the woman protagonist speaks Afro-Bajan language: “i tek up des days wid de zion \/ we does meet tuesdee nights in de carpenter shop praaze be to god \/ i hear de chapman hall\u00a0preacher shout out” (M, 98), included is “praaze be to god” of Revival Zion. These shouts of praise to god is subsumed by the sound and rhythm, like the \u201cseamless hiss\u201d, the \u201chuh\u201d and \u201chah\u201d of the Afro-Caribbean spirits. Danballah joins with the “shang,” the “sh,” “gg,” and “ssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh” of Shango (12) whom Brathwaite in X\/Self refers to as “Pan African god of thunder and lightning\u201d. These gods are believed to be the cause for modern instruments such as electricity, sound systems and the locomotive engine.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Brathwaite resorts to the \u2018Bajan\u2019, the subculture of Jamaica ad Barbados which is supposed to be coarse and lewd, uses “the drum, the beat and the bawdy,” to base the poem in what he terms “alternative” folk or oral tradition. Common, everyday things find place in the poems\u00a0 as Brathwaite contradicts the notion that the poet is “noble rider” in the mundane world. He summons “young Caliban \/ howling for his tongue,” places him along with the “computer conjur man.” “Children eating dirt,” and the much-ignored mother of Caliban, “black sycorax” are situated alongside. The Sycorax is treated with respect “what a way dem is mek we burn in we black- \/ ness: what a way dem is trouble me see . . . she doan feed de dawg, jook she hann in i back \/ and say dat ifavor a nigga” (“Dais,” Mother Poem).<\/p>\n

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Thus the work contextualizes the hybridity of Barbados, an island which was inhabited by humans before the advent of Christianity, modernity, colonialism and slave trade began. The poem depicts the subjugation, the coercion and the rape of the mother (island); the nature of the emaciated and emasculated sons and urges for a cultural awakening to save the mother from further exploitation and eventual destruction.<\/p>\n

Themes in the Arrivants<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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To fully appreciate \u2018the Arrivants\u2019, we need to keep in mind the life of Brathwaite as read the poems. Brathwaite rather convincingly argued that the \u2018middle-passage\u2019 experience was not an entirely traumatic experience. He viewed the \u2018middle passage\u2019 as an experience which allowed \u201ca pathway or channel between (African) tradition and what is being evolved on new soil in the Caribbean\u201d (Brathwaite, 1970:38). In the essay \u201cTimehri\u201d, Brathwaite states that he went to England believing that he was a British citizen. However, in the \u2018mother country\u2019 he \u201cfound\u201d and \u201cfelt\u201d \u201crootless\u201d. On completion of his education, Brathwaite went on an \u201cexile\u201d to Ghana. In Ghana Brathwaite discovered his African roots. \u201cSlowly, slowly, ever\u00a0 so slowly; obscurely, slowly but surely, during the eight years that I lived there, I was coming to an awareness and understanding of community, of cultural wholeness, of the place of the individual within the tribe, in society\u201d. He gradually began to develop a \u201csense of identification\u201d as he associated with the people of Ghana whom he deemed were his \u201cliving diviners\u201d.<\/p>\n

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In Ghana, Brathwaite argues that he came \u201cto connect\u201d his \u201chistory\u201d with \u201ctheirs\u201d. This association for him was \u201cthe bridge\u201d of \u201cmind now linking Atlantic and ancestor, homeland and heartland\u201d. Literary historian Bruce King argued that in Africa Brathwaite found a \u201cculture in which there is a profound relationship of individual and of the spiritual world to the community\u201d. According to King, if Brathwaite through his non-fiction and poems has transcended the colonial implications of \u2018rootlessness\u2019 and isolation, it was due to his stay in Ghana. Thus, before Brathwaite attempted to write \u2018The Arrivants\u2019, he was interested in\u00a0\u2018afrocentrity\u2019. As Paul Gilroy discussed, Brathwaite\u2019s belief in \u2018afrocentricity\u2019 helped him to create, recreate and reconstruct African genius and values and narrate this experience. . These values, for Brathwaite are to be created from the experience and history. Thus Africa is the central theme of the poem.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In the section titled \u2018Masks\u2019, Brathwaite refers to several of Africa\u2019s cultural markers. These include African empires such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Benin, Congo and Chad. He writes about the urban centres of Axum, Timbuctu, Ougadougou, Takoradi and Kumasi. The legends and the myths of Africa are referenced along with history of Africa African personalities as Chaka, Osai Tutu and African gods as Ogun, Damballa, Olodumare and Tano are invoked. The poem also invokes the tropical African rain forest; lists out its fauna and flora of Africa…<\/p>\n

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\u2018Masks\u2019 is very different from the violated \u2018New World\u2019, which Brathwaite inhabits. Brathwaite\u2019s vision of Africa is mythical and nostalgic picture and it seems Brathwaite is the son who returning to his roots. These poems could have been titled \u2018Africa\u2019; however Brathwaite terms them the \u2018Masks\u2019. The choice of the title is political as Brathwaite efforts are not to romanticize the past.\u2019<\/p>\n

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In \u201cRights to Passage\u201d Brathwaite misspells proper nouns of cities and countries. Look at the poetic style that Brathwaite uses to describe the path of coerced migration, \u201cE- gypt In Africa Mesopo tamia Mero e the nile silica glass and brittle Sa hara, Tim buctu, Gao the hills of Ahafo, winds of the Niger,Kumasi and Kiver down the coiled Congo and down that black river\u201d (\u201cRights of Passage\u201d, III, 35). The lines show the migration of African people from Egypt to West Africa where they are tricked and sold into slavery. The disjointed form in the poem helps to create geographical and a poetic effect on the reader. The reader would comprehend how the black people are scattered all over the world.<\/p>\n

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These poems help us comprehend the psychological condition of “Tom,” who laments, “They call me Uncle \/ Tom and mock me \/’\/ these my children \/ mock me \/\/ they hate the hat \/ in hand the one- \/ roomed God I praise” (17). In another poem he remembers, “we kept \/ our state on golden stools–remember?” (18), and in yet another he reminisces and curses, “I am a fuck- \/ in’ negro, \/ man, hole \/ in my head, \/ brains in \/ my belly; \/ black skin \/ red eyes \/ broad back \/ big you know \/ what: not very quick to take offence \/ but once\/ offended, watch \/ that house \/ you livin’ in \/ an’ watch that lit- \/ tle sister”.<\/p>\n

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The black population are denied home, culture, language, and religion. They are prevented from forming \u2018self\u2019 and subjected to dehumanizing experiences. Yet the black man in the New World has survived and made that world his home. The poet argues that before the\u00a0 black man can possess it fully, he must understand that journey which he was forced to undertake from Africa to New World. This is the theme in \u2018Masks\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Africa, Brathwaite argues, welcomes its children who are returning home. Brathwaite says that “Akwaaba they smiled \/ meaning welcome akwaaba they called \/ aye kooo \/\/ well have you walked \/ have you journeyed welcome \/\/ you who have come \/ back a stranger \/ after three hundred years welcome here is a stool for \/ you; sit; do \/ you remember?<\/p>\n

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Thus Brathwaite argues that the pain of a personal journey to Africa induces a catharsis only if the subject understood the meaning of the return. In other words the black men of the New World would find the voyage to Africa meaningful only if they aware of Africa\u2019s ruined\u00a0cities, lost empires, lost babies abd necessary sacrifices. The subject has to comprehend and appreciate that Africa bears her share of the burden. He has to respect and help renew the remembrance and performance of ancient rituals.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Themes in Middle Passages<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Brathwaite\u2019s spouse Doris Monica Brathwaite in A Descriptive and Chronological Bibliography (1950-1982) of the Works of Edward Kamau Brathwaite, <\/em>mentioned that V.S. Naipaul\u2019s vision for the Caribbean as laid out in his Middle Passages <\/em>(1962) was \u201cbare and insensitive with little hope or promise\u201d. Monica claims that she was “a witness of the Middle Passage\u201d and states that Brathwaite\u2019s vision is “so clearly forced into the kind of utterance\u201d which comes out not only from his experience but also \u201carises from a deep concern with the future of Caribbean literature\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Verses in \u201cMiddle Passages\u201d are proof that Brathwaite is the most complete Caribbean poet of his age. He uses visuals, sounds and technology to speak on diverse issues such as the political question in the Caribbean, oral narratives, calls for self determinacy and black mythologies. Brathwaite dedicated the collection of poems to the Cuban poet Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Batista . Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Batista, National Poet of Cuba, of Afro-European descent, was influenced by Afro-American poets who experimented music with in their poems. Nicol\u00e1s used \u2018drum talk\u2019 in his poems. The opening poem in Middle Passages <\/em>“Word Making Man” is a celebration of Guill\u00e9n’s belief that resistance and the defiance that is evident in the works of the black artists, activists, musicians and sportsmen in the Caribbean region is actually the language of resistance. Guill\u00e9n believes that this resistance originates in the African roots of these artists and activists. Guill\u00e9n believed that such impudence on the part of these cultural icons creates a new language which manifests the force of Xango (the African god of thunder). Guill\u00e9n believed in a pan-Caribbean world. The \u201cWord Making Man\u201d opens with a personal salutation which is evidence of Bratwaite\u2019s respect and deep personal intimacy with the senior poet.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSir,\/ not in \u2018Sir\u2019\/ but compa\u00f1ero\/ <\/em>as you wd prefer it in hispa\u00f1ol\/ <\/em>i have not yet been to cuba\/ & do not know the language of yr oradores\/ <\/em>& as you said. Compa\u00f1ero <\/em>means comrade, and oradores <\/em>means orator. Brathwaite intentionally uses the term hispa\u00f1ol <\/em>to denote Spanish language instead of \u201cespa\u00f1ol\u201d <\/em>or \u201ccastellano. <\/em>Brathwaite then refers to Guill\u00e9n\u2019s class based politics as he says \u201cbut i know that we are watching in a long circle for the dawn\/ & that the ruling class does not wait at bus stops\/ & i know that we are watching in a\u00a0 \u00a0long\u00a0 circle\u00a0 for the fire\/ & that our compradores do not ladle soup out of the yabba\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The poem is a tribute in verse form to Guill\u00e9n and narrates the life of Guill\u00e9n. The poet urges to appreciate Guill\u00e9n\u2019s aesthetic one needs to comprehend the politics of race (the question of Africa and blacks) and class. Brathwaite further adds \u201camerika laughs\/ west indies west indies west indies ltd\/ <\/em>but suddenly in the night of possibility\/ it turns to the wall in its creaking bed of dollars\/ west indies west indies west indies unlimited\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“The sea between us yields its secrets” and enables the scattered islands to communicate, where “together we say wind \/ & understand its history of ghosts \/\/ together we say fire \/ & again there is a future in those sparks.” Ultimately, the many islands merge into one:\u00a0 “we\u00a0 say this our land & know at last at last it is our home.” In spite of history precisely, the world seems almost young, full of possibility, “‘w\/ the vast splendour of the sunshine & the sunflower & the \/\/ stars’.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSycorax video style\u201d is probably the best known and the most interesting poem in this collection. Brathwaite was in many ways the precursor to the contemporary practitioner of digital humanities. His use of computers to write poetry (not merely type on it) is a manifestation of the fact that Brathwaite realized that the new scientific contrivance would aid his poetic expression. “Letter Sycorax,” an epistolary text appearing in Middle Passages <\/em>(1993), provides the intellectual framework that informs the style Brathwaite has ventured to rehearse in this new literary phase.<\/p>\n

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The computers enabled Brathwaite to experiment with the form of the poem and these experiments helped to create a new style. This new aesthetic allowed him to explore and address diverse themes. The computer, unlike the typewriter provided him greater movement in his poems including variations in font, size, and appearance of the letters including bold, capital and italic forms; a streamlined punctuation where periods replace the commas (unlike the earlier versions) but also fall in the middle of words. The words are interrupted into various syllables and these interruptions disrupt their usual meaning. Brathwaite plays with the alignment of the poems (some are justified, aligned centre and at times even right). These transformations in the form allowed him to use the \u2018nation language\u2019 more efficiently. The usage of the \u2018nation language\u2019 is best illustrated in “Letter Sycorax”. The narrator used \u2018nation language\u2019 and explores the new possibilities of writing on a computer. The poet redraws every \u2018x\u2019 in the poem; hence every \u2018x\u2019 is big and bold and stands out with an added flair. The words are realigned to point out the inherent irony of colonialism. The Caliban is attempting\u00a0 to avoid the examples of Prospero:<\/p>\n

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what is de bess way to say so\/so it doan sounn<\/p>\n

like<\/p>\n

brigg flatts\u00a0 or\u00a0 her.\u00a0\u00a0 vokitz\u00a0 nor de<\/p>\n

\u03c0.<\/p>\n

san cantos nor de souf sea bible.<\/p>\n

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The text is aligned to the right, several words are intentionally misspelt and he uses non- English words. The poem is addressed to the mother Sycorax: mother of Caliban, whom Shakespeare and other European writers have depicted as an exiled, evil witch who exercised demonic control over several spirits. The poet informs his mother “Dear mamma,” the computer has opened up endless possibilities for writing and “is one a de bess tings since cicero” (Brathwaite, 1993a, 97). The innovation in computer enables the writer to re-examine and comment on the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. The poet declines to limit himself to merely opposing Prospero but chooses a more self-assertive outlook on history and\u00a0self. He says “but is like what i try. \/ in to sen\/seh & \/\/ seh about muse. \/ in computer \/\/ & mouse & \/ learn. \/\/ in prospero ling. \/ go \/\/ & \/ ting \/\/ not fe dem\/not fe dem \/ de way caliban \/\/ done but fe we \/ fe a-we”.<\/p>\n

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The combination of “Letter Sycorax” and the more linear texts that make up Middle Passages puts us in touch with Brathwaite’s sustained efforts at articulating and realigning his personal feelings with that of his community, of reconciling literary and oral traditions in Caribbean poetry. The poems are also indicative of his transition and his assessment of the contemporary postcolonialism.<\/p>\n

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In the other poem \u201c\u201cX\/Self\u201d Brathwaite\u2019s is the X\/self who has become the Caliban. The Caliban is informing his much maligned mother of his new place in the history. He is offering the mother his perspective of history. The poem begins with: Dear mumma uh writin yu dis letter wha? guess what! Pun a computer O kay? While many critics have pointed out that the Caliban is exhilarated that he has found a (computer) new toy, Caliban is only excited at discovering a new mode of communication which allows shows him to reach out to his mother. He further developed \u2018Sycorax\u2019 video style.<\/p>\n

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In \u201cLetter Sycorax,\u201d Brathwaite argues that Sycorax as the rightful owner, possessed the island, where she gave birth to her Caliban. She was falsely implicated, imprisoned and indentured to Prospero. As Caliban is strong enough to work for Prospero, Sycorax is imprisoned and banished and that \u201cshe became submerged\u201d as not to let her \u201cappear” (Brathwaite, 1984b, 44). Brathwaite privileged Sycorax and believes that the key to actual political emancipation of the Caribbean world lies in it discovering its cultural authenticity. Like the Sycorax which was submerged, the culture of the Caribbean population is buried under the experience of colonization. The Caribbean population is the Caliban. The culture of the Caribbean people is the Sycorax. To psychologically liberate Caliban, the cultural revival of Sycorax is a precondition. Hence the mother has to return and the Caliban has to drink his “mother’s milk” (since Brathwaite equates milk with language) which is speak \u201chis own mother’s language.” Caliban\u2019s exposure to the schools, mass media and other such alien institutions established by Prospero has led to his alienation. To undo his alienation Caliban and rediscover his self, the colonized, Caliban must besides revolting against Prospero\u2019s imposition, also has to discover his roots. The Caliban must seek the Sycorax, “the carrier, the keeper, the protector of the native culture,” whose banishment, with all its disadvantages, has nonetheless enabled her to preserve “in a submerged manner the very essence of the native culture” and to hold on to “the secrets of a possible alternative culture for the Caribbean”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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