Abstract for Interview with Edward Baugh, 30 January 2018 Edward Baugh Is an Internationally Acclaimed Poet and Scholar
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Abstract for Interview with Edward Baugh, 30 January 2018 Edward Baugh is an internationally acclaimed poet and scholar. Now Professor Emeritus of the Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, Baugh joined the faculty in 1968 and retired in 2001, serving thrice as chair. He has also served as Dean and Vice- dean of the Faculty of Arts and General Sciences. He taught at Dalhousie University, Flinders University, Howard University, Macquarie University, UCLA, and the University of Wollongong in visiting positions. His works of poetry include: A Tale from the Rainforest (1988), It Was the Singing (2000), and Black Sand: New and Selected Poems (2013). His scholarly works include: West Indian Poetry 1900-1970: A Study in Cultural Decolonisation (1971), Another Life: Fully Annotated (2004), Derek Walcott (2006), and, Frank Collymore: A Biography (2009). He was public orator for the University of the West Indies (Mona) from 1985 to 2002; his speeches have been collected in Chancellor, I Present...; a Collection of Convocation Citations given at the University of the West Indies, Mona, 1985-1998 (1998). He has also been a leader in literary and academic organizations, including the Jamaica P.E.N. Club and the Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (“Edward Baugh”). Leah Rosenberg interviewed Baugh on 30 January 2018 in Kingston Jamaica as part of her research for a book on tourism and Caribbean literature. In the interview, Baugh discusses his childhood in Port Antonio and the poetry he wrote about it, including poetry about family members such as “Words,” about his mother, “The Carpenter’s Complaint,” about his father’s death, and “June Roses” about the death of his mother’s sister. He also discusses poetry about Port Antonio, including “The Town That Had Known Better Days” and “A Rain-washed Town by the Sea.” Other topics of discussion include his graduate education, his acting career, and the tourist industry. An excerpted version of this interview will be published in the Jamaica Journal. Works Cited “Edward Baugh.” Journal of West Indian Literature, vol. 15, no. 1 & 2, 2006, pp. 1–2. Interview with Professor Edward Baugh in Kingston, Jamaica on January 30, 2018 Transcribed by Rubyline McFadden and Leah Rosenberg L.R: I want to thank you very much for putting so much of your time into this and you are a very important poet. So, to start out, I am Leah Rosenberg and it is January 30, 2018 and I am sitting with Edward Baugh in Kingston, Jamaica. I first want to thank him for his generosity in sharing his knowledge and giving up his time for this interview. I want to start off by asking you to talk a little bit about your childhood, where you were born and what your full name is. E.B. Ok, I’ll start with the full name – Edward Alston Cecil Baugh, called generally Eddie Baugh as if it’s one word. I was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, which is in the north eastern part of the island, on January 10, 1936. I was born there and grew up there and left Port Antonio when I went to enter the University College of the West Indies in Kingston in October 1954. So, my first 18 years of life were spent in Port Antonio. I travelled out, a little, to Kingston, and once to England when I was 17, but otherwise all my time was in Port Antonio. I’ve never been back to live there and hardly go back there anymore, though I love the place, because I don’t have any relatives there anymore. L.R: In several of your poems you’ve mentioned your house. Was it at Boundbrook? E.B: Oh yes, right, right. I was born and spent the first 6 years of my life in a house at Boundbrook. As you enter Port Antonio from Kingston you come first to Boundbrook, and there is a road which goes off from the main road to the left and leads to Boundbrook wharf which is where bananas were shipped from in Jamaica originally and for a long time. My father worked with the United Fruit Company of Boston, Mass. which started 1 the banana business in Jamaica and the house we lived in just at the entrance to the small street leading to the wharf, and the two houses next to ours, were owned by the United Fruit Company, so I was born and spent the first 6 years of my life in a United Fruit Company house at Boundbrook, Port Antonio L.R: I probably shouldn’t interrupt by saying this but I’m wondering about the name ‘Boundbrook’ because Lorenzo Baker also had property in Massachusetts where I used to spend my childhood and there was a Boundbrook… E.B: Yes, I know there are perhaps more than one Boundbrook in the United States, but I have no idea where our Boundbrook came from. L.R: I will be quiet about Boundbrook. So, then you moved, is that right? E.B: Yes, because my father, when I was 6, had to move, I’m not sure why, but he decided to build a house. He bought some land on the other side of town and decided to build a house. I don’t know what prompted that, but it was a good idea. We lived in a sort of interim place in Port Antonio for a few months, and then, when the house was completed, we moved there. That house, as I said, was on the side of the town going towards the Rio Grande valley. L.R: So could you see the sea from your house? E.B: No, the house I was born in the sea was right there. L.R: You were on the wharf, but your new house? E.B: No, we couldn’t see the sea. You just imagined the sea; the new house was much higher because the house at Boundbrook was at sea level. The other house was some height above sea level, but you couldn’t actually see the sea. At nights on the verandah, one could look out in the direction of the sea and imagine the sea. 2 L.R: Ok, because I was wondering, in “A Rain-Washed Town” you mentioned a desk and I imagine you could see… E.B: Oh, that was from my school desk, because the school, my school, Titchfield school, the High School, is right by the sea. it’s in Fort George, which was built to defend Jamaica but was never really needed by the British. My school occupied the buildings of the fort. When I was in what you would call Grade 13 or what we call Sixth Form, which was just a few of us, our classroom was on an elevated area where you looked out towards the sea and could see the sea and the famous Folly Point Lighthouse across the harbour. Port Antonio has two harbours – east and west. So, it was from my school desk or from the school building that one could see the sea. L.R: And could you just tell us a little bit about the school? E.B: Oh well…. L.R: Was it a boys’ school? E.B: No, no, no, happily it was a co-educational school, so that there were always girls with us, so much so that when I was offered two teaching jobs, one at Kingston College, which was a boys’ school, and one at Excelsior College, which was co-educational, one of the big decisions was which one to take, because my natural inclination – I couldn’t imagine myself in a school that didn’t have girls, but then Kingston College had a kind of slightly higher reputation. There was a kind of challenge, and I finally, almost by a toss of coin picked Kingston College, which I never regretted and spent I two years there, happy years of my life. But no, Titchfield was a co- educational school. L.R: When did you get interested in reading literature and writing? Was that at Titchfield? 3 E.B: Oh yes, in my school days, I don’t…well first of all, as to the reading, I seem to have been always a reader. In other words, I loved books and was always a reader, but in my school days – this didn’t mean necessarily poetry, but I loved to read and something about poetry was always attracting me and language and the rhythm of language and the words. The other consideration is that in the High School, Titchfield, and certainly also in the primary school before that – during my time – no science subjects were taught. The nearest thing to science was something called Hygiene and Physiology and then of course Mathematics. It wasn’t until I was about to leave school that the sciences like Chemistry and Physics started to be taught and a science lab was built. In other words, I always wonder if science had been there whether I would still have gravitated naturally towards the Arts as I did. As to words and poetry, other factors were hearing people recite, because there was what was called ‘elocution’ in the town. There were one or two men famous as elocutionists and sometimes as part of concerts sponsored by church organizations and so on, they would recite a poem. I got drawn also into hearing parsons in my church. I went to the Methodist church; I grew up in the Methodist church in Port Antonio.