DOCSLIB.ORG

Workshop Pack Leicester Event for Webpage

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Workshop Pack Leicester Event for Webpage UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Network: Dons, Yardies and Posses: Representations of Jamaican Organised Crime Workshop 3: Jamaican Organised Crime: Aesthetics and Style Venue: University of Leicester Workshop Programme Day 1: Friday 16th November (Fielding Johnson First Floor Council Suite Room 2) 10.15-10.45 Registration and refreshments 10.45-11.00 Welcome 11.00-12.00 The Devil’s Dandruff: A Cocaine Trilogy & Modern Cautionary Tale: Work In Progress By Carol Leeming FRSA. 12.00-1.00 ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’: Bodies, Affect, and Caribbeanized Cityscapes (interactive session) 1.00-2.00 Lunch 2.00-3.30 Organised Crime and the State (panel) 3.30-4.00 Refreshment break 4.00-5.00 A Brief History of Blood Money: Reflecting on Corruption and Crime in Contemporary Jamaican Music Videos (interactive session) Day 2: Saturday 17th November (Charles Wilson Fourth Floor SR 409 Garendon) 9.15-9.30 Registration 9.30-11.00 Urban Imaginaries and the Badman Figure (panel) 11.00-11.30 Refreshment break 11.30-12.30 Badmanism and Masculinity (interactive session) 12.30-1.30 Lunch 1.30-3.00 Affect and Aesthetics in Organised Crime (panel) 3.00-3.30 Refreshment break 3.30-4.00 Concluding discussion reflecting on the progress of the project and future directions 5.00-6.30 Representing Kingston: author reading and discussion with Kei Miller and Kerry Young (Venue: Attenborough University Film Theatre) 1 Panels and interactive sessions Day 1: Friday 16th November 11.00: The Devil’s Dandruff: A Cocaine Trilogy & Modern Cautionary Tale. Work In Progress By Carol Leeming FRSA. A creative response to a legendary global drug using the medium of drama 12.00: ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’: Bodies, Affect, and CaribbeaniZed Cityscapes Interactive session led by Faith Smith (Brandeis University) and Donette Francis (University of Miami) 2.00: Organised Crime and the State Lucy Evans (University of Leicester), ‘Eco-noir, environmental crime and Esther Figueroa’s Limbo’ Anthony Harriott (University of the West Indies), ‘Power and accountability in the security domain: The extradition of Christopher Coke and the Commission of Enquiry as an instrument of security sector accountability’ Petrina Dacres (Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performance Arts), ‘Entangled Histories, Death and Violence in Jamaican Art’ Chair: Rivke Jaffe 4.00: A Brief History of Blood Money: Reflecting on Corruption and Crime in Contemporary Jamaican Music Videos Interactive session led by Zakiya McKenzie (University of Exeter) Day 2: Saturday 17th November 9.30: Urban Imaginaries and the Badman Figure Faith Smith (Brandeis University), ‘Millennial Posturing?’ David Howard (University of Oxford), ‘The aesthetics and influence of “badmen” and banditry in contemporary Jamaica’ Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam), ‘Pathologies of Infrastructure: Abjection and Connection in Kingston’s Gullies’ 2 Chair: Tracian Meikle 11.30: Badmanism and Masculinity Interactive session led by Michael Bucknor (University of the West Indies) and Lucy Evans (University of Leicester) 1.30: Affect and Aesthetics in Organised Crime Donette Francis (University of Miami), ‘Kingston in Miami’ Michael Bucknor (University of the West Indies), ‘Criminal Intimacies: Psycho-Sexual Spatialities of Jamaican Transnational Crime in Garfield Ellis’s Till I’m Laid to Rest (and Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings)’ Tracian Meikle (University of Amsterdam), ‘Memorial Murals and the Aesthetic Work of Maintaining Personhood after Death’ Chair: David Howard 3.30: Concluding discussion Concluding discussion reflecting on the progress of the project and future directions Chair: Lucy Evans and Rivke Jaffe 5.00: Author readings / Q&A: Representing Kingston Venue: Attenborough University Film Theatre Author reading and Q&A with poet, novelist and broadcaster Kei Miller and novelist and short story writer Kerry Young. Chairs: Lucy Evans and Rivke Jaffe 3 Abstracts and Bios Michael A. Bucknor (University of the West Indies, Mona) Paper title: Criminal Intimacies: Psycho-Sexual Spatialities of Jamaican Transnational Crime in Garfield Ellis’s Till I’m Laid to Rest (and Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings) Abstract: On reading the first 80 pages of Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, I began thinking about the relationship between criminal violence and queer intimacy. Indeed, James’s novel made me realize the importance of including the sexual body as a significant site for tracing the spatial imaginaries of Jamaican transnational crime. Yet, before James, there was Garfield Ellis’s novel of transnational crime ironically invoking Buju Banton (himself imprisoned for a transnational drug crime) in the title, “‘Till I am Laid to Rest.”” In tracking the extended terrain of Jamaica’s criminal activity beyond the inner city scenes and the shores of Jamaica to Miami, USA, dubbed Kingston 21, Ellis is less interested in the macro spatialities of the geographical landscape of crime and more interested in the micro spaces of intimacies which engender criminal activity. Antwi et al’s work on “postcolonial intimacies,” Lisa Lowe’s idea of “proximate intimacies” which can be cross-referenced with Sedgwick’s enumeration of “homosocial” intimacies and Christina Sharpe’s concept of “monstruous intimacies” have all been instrumental in my reading of criminal intimacies in these novels. While there are smaller material sites such as the car, the vault and the briefcases/bags of money that work as motifs of criminality in Ellis’ novel, the major geographical sites of Sufferer’s Heights and the cityscapes of Miami are shrouded in secrecy and the criminal enterprise is primarily registered in the sonic spaces of ghetto-grapevine gossip. By turning attention to the “emotional geographies” (Antwi) of these novels, this paper mines “rapes and coerced intimacies” as well as homosocial friendships as a way of mapping the psycho-sexual dimension of Jamaican transnational crime. Author Bio: Dr. Michael A. Bucknor is an Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Literatures in English and the Public Orator of the Mona Campus, UWI. He serves on the editorial boards of Caribbean Quarterly, Issues in Critical Investigation and Lucayos, and is Senior Editor of the Journal of West Indian Literature. He is also co-editor with Alison Donnell of The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature and carries out research on Austin Clarke, Caribbean-Canadian writing, postcolonial literatures and theory, diaspora studies, masculinities and popular culture. He is completing a book manuscript entitled, “Performing Masculinities in Jamaican Popular Culture.” Carol Leeming FRSA The Devils Dandruff A Cocaine Trilogy & Modern Cautionary Tale: Work In Progress A Creative Response to a Legendary Global Drug Using The Medium of Drama Abstract My writing project began with my interest firstly, in the Coca Plant and later Cocaine, the substance derived from the Coca plant, and how it is used in the present day, specifically the impact of its global illegal trade across the world and its affect on individual lives and society 4 The Coca plant is viewed as sacred and beneficial by the peoples of South America, this attracted me as a writer of magic realism narratives. I plan to highlight the Coca plant, and its derivative Cocaine, through human stories, foregrounding legend and myth, associated with the Coca plant. Looking at the way the Coca plant is seen as primarily benign, but its derivative Cocaine is more taboo, and its centrality to the lives of diverse characters, within three dramatic narratives, set in very different contemporary locations. Highlighting the contrasting ways, in which Cocaine is interwoven in their lives, in seemingly positive but ultimately negative ways. The three narrative dramas of the trilogy are titled as follows: The Don The Nurse The Model I would like to share synopsis, character descriptions, and a brief extract of the first drama, a short scene with the character of the Jamaican Don and his Wife. Author bio Carol Leeming is a multi-disciplinary, international artist from Leicester. A polymath, she is Artistic Director/Lead Artist of Dare to Diva Company, working in Literature, Performing Arts & Digital Media. Carol is the Winner of East Midlands Women’s Award 2017, for Outstanding Woman in Arts, Media & Music. Carol is a multi-award winning writer, a published poet, recipient of Ena Young Poetry Award & Siobhan Logan Writing for Listeners Award. Her plays have been performed at Curve and Brighton Dome theatres, and broadcast on national BBC Radio 4. Carol’s roles include playwright, dramaturge, singer /songwriter, composer, performer, musician, director/film maker, cultural critic and curator. Carol also received the African Caribbean Citizens Forum Awards for contribution to Arts & Entertainment and the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019 she received an MBE for Services to the Arts and to Culture in Leicester. Petrina Dacres (Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performance Arts) Paper Title: Entangled Histories, Death and Violence in Jamaican Art Abstract This paper considers how visuality mediates state authority by analysing the artworks of several contemporary artists in Jamaica such as: Michael Robinson, Camille Chedda, Ebony Patterson, Omari Ra, Stanford Watson, Christopher Irons and Phillip Thomas. In the immediate decades after Independence in Jamaica visuality was used to disseminate political authority through history. This was exemplified by the heroic sculptures and history paintings of the 1960s and 1970s. The work of the artists in review in this paper subvert the heroic iconography and demonstrate the complexity and limitations of state authority and leadership. The paper considers how their works offer up what Mirzoeff (2011) describes as a “counterhistory of visuality.” The works under consideration engage themes of power, death and violence. The paper examines the form and content of the images in relation to the recent history of (state) violence and a vernacular and diasporic visual economy of death and memory. Earlier 1960s anxieties over the role of violence in the constitution of the politico-historical subject are also 5 addressed.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Perhaps One of the Most Insightful Critiques Of
    Miller, Andrew Kei (2012) Jamaica to the world: a study of Jamaican (and West Indian) epistolary practices. PhD thesis http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3597/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Jamaica to the World: A Study of Jamaican (and West Indian) Epistolary Practices Andrew Kei Miller MA Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy English Literature School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow 1 ABSTRACT The Caribbean islands have been distinguished by mass migratory patterns and diasporic communities that have moved into and out of the region; as a consequence, the genre of the letter has been an important one to the culture and has provided a template for many creative works. This dissertation is the first major study on West Indian epistolary practices: personal letters, emails, verse epistles, epistolary novels, letters to editors, etc. It focuses on a contemporary period – from the 1930s to the present, and on examples that have come out of Jamaica.
    [Show full text]
  • Poet Laureate Remarks at Investiture Ceremony King's House, 21 May
    Poet Laureate Remarks at Investiture Ceremony King’s House, 21 May 2014 I am deeply grateful for the honour bestowed on me. I am especially grateful to have been chosen in a process that required nominations from the general public. And I am happy that a great many persons have seemed to approve the selection. In the flow of good wishes, however, there has often been puzzlement. What will you be doing, actually? What is your remit? I am to assist in the promotion of Jamaican poetry at home and abroad. I am to facilitate contact between Jamaican poets and our potential audiences, and help to increase and improve appreciation of Jamaican work. I say “assist” and “help”; because there are of course a number of individuals and institutions already committed to doing these things. Prominent among them would be the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, the National Library and our schools. There are poetry-related events such as the annual Poetry in Motion in Mandeville and the monthly meeting of the Poetry Society at the Edna Manley College. The Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment has declared that “Recognising and enhancing Jamaica’s cultural offerings form part of our ongoing initiative to diversify the tourism product.” It knows that Brand Jamaica must include achievement in cultural activities such as craft, food, literature, as well as music and sport. Some tourists have been attracted by events such as the Calabash Literary Festival (now once every two years) and newer programmes such as Arts in the Park. At home and abroad Brand Jamaica is promoted by the reputation of outstanding poets, such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Olive Senior, 1 Edward Baugh, Lorna Goodison, Kwame Dawes, Earl McKenzie, Ralph Thompson, Mutabaruka, Jean Binta Breeze, Kei Miller and many others.
    [Show full text]
  • Literary Correspondence: Letters and Emails in Caribbean Writing Marta Fernández Campa
    Literary Correspondence: Letters and emails in Caribbean writing Marta Fernández Campa Abstract This article explores the role of correspondence (and literary archives in general) in illuminating central aspects of Caribbean literary culture and authors’ work, with a consideration of the challenges and the need to preserve email correspondence for archives in the future. This study is part of a larger three-year Leverhulme research project, Caribbean Literary Heritage, now in its initial stage. Led by Professor Alison Donnell (University of East Anglia) with Professor Kei Miller (University of Exeter), with consultancy support from Dr David Sutton (University of Reading), the project focuses on the recovery research of forgotten or less known Caribbean writers and a study of the development of literary archives across generations to explore authors’ recordkeeping practices, and the new challenges and possibilities created by born-digital papers. Author Marta Fernández Campa is a Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia. She has previously worked at the University of Reading and the University of Saint Louis, Madrid campus. Her research focuses on literary archives, digital preservation and the role of archival records in writer’s creative work. She has published articles in Arc, Anthurium, Caribbean Beat and Small Axe, and has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and the Center for the Humanities Fellowship at the University of Miami. Introduction Caribbean literary archives hold great value for understanding
    [Show full text]
  • The Power of Caribbean Poetry
    PPRROOGGRRAAMMMMEE The Power of The Power of Members of the Caribbean Poetry Caribbean Poetry – project from Cambridge University Caribbean Poetry – Faculty of Education and the University Word and Sound of the West Indies will be hosting the Word and Sound conference and disseminating its outcomes. A conference on Caribbean Poetry Homerton College / Cambridge Faculty of The programme will include Education 20-22 September 2012 performances, seminars, workshops and lectures by poets and scholars. The final day (Saturday 22nd September) will have a more educational focus with particular appeal to teachers. UWI Assembly Hall area and Aqueduct (above) FFUURRTTHHEERR IIINNFFOORRMMAATTIIIOONN For further information, contact Morag Styles ([email protected]) or Bryony Horsley-Heather ([email protected]) Tel: +44 1223 767680 Or visit: http://caribbeanpoetry.educ.cam.ac.uk Marilyn Brocklehurst’s bookshop will Online registration available now via website be available throughout the conference and some project partners, such as the online Poetry Archive, Southbank FACULTY OF EDUCATION Speakers: John Agard, Beverley Bryan, Centre, Poetry Society, Poetry Book 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ Kei Miller, Mervyn Morris, Grace Nichols, Society and Peepal Tree Press will be Velma Pollard, Olive Senior, Dorothea Smartt represented. Special guest: Linton Kwesi Johnson CCAALLLL FFOORR PPAAPPEERRSS Park in honour of UWI graduates who are or have been heads of Government Caribbean poetry and the word Origins and histories of Caribbean poetry Critical engagement
    [Show full text]
  • “Madness Is Rampant on This Island”: Writing Altered States in Anglophone Caribbean Literature
    Bénédicte Ledent, Evelyn O’Callaghan, and Daria Tunca,, “‘Madness Is Rampant on This Island’: Writing Altered States in Anglophone Caribbean Literature”, in Madness in Anglophone Caribbean Literature: On the Edge, ed. Bénédicte Ledent, Evelyn O’Callaghan, and Daria Tunca (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98180-2_1 Status: Postprint (Authors’ version) “Madness Is Rampant on This Island”: Writing Altered States in Anglophone Caribbean Literature Bénédicte Ledent, Evelyn O’Callaghan, and Daria Tunca Centuries of Crazy Two novels shortlisted in the fiction category for the 2017 NGM Bocas Literary Prize are explicitly concerned with madness and altered states of being. In Marcia Douglas’s The Marvellous Equations of the Dread (2016), a witness observes of Jamaica that “[m]adness is rampant on this island. The mad dream dreams and have visions. They stand on street corners and tell it” (76, italics in original). Some of these visionaries, it transpires, are, in fact, temporarily embodied ancestral spirits returned to earth to intervene in their society’s implosion. But as the witness also notes, “No one listens” (76, italics in original). In Kei Miller’s overall prize-winning Augustown (2016), however, people do listen. They listen to the preacher, Bedward, who has the gift of flight but, as history records, ends up committed to a lunatic asylum. It is madness, of course, to think that the spirits of the dead can and do return to our material reality and communicate with humans, or that humans can fly. Or is it? How do we critically analyse representations of a Caribbean world, such as occur in these two texts, which matter-of-factly include possession, states of transformation, visions and warnings from unknown sources, communication with spirits, and the rising of bodies into the sky as part and parcel of everyday life? The Caribbean has, throughout its history, been represented as an exotic, odd, and somewhat suspect space whose “natives” believe and act in strange (that is, non-Western) ways.
    [Show full text]
  • The 100 Caribbean Books That Made Us
    The 100 Caribbean Books That Made Us The Bocas Lit Fest turned to their social media channels to attempt to answer the question: what might a Caribbean list of 100 defining reads look like? The result is 100 Caribbean Books That Made Us - an unranked, expansive list as wide-ranging as the Caribbean Sea and its diaspora, spanning multiple genres, generations, styles, languages, settings and themes – a timeless reading list for the Caribbean reader, by the Caribbean reader. Inside these book covers are a range of concerns – class division, colourism, colonialism, development, exile, belonging, identity formation, and love and the challenges of love. www.bocaslitfest.com/books-that-made-us The majority of these titles are available for loan and can be reserved free of charge on our online catalogue: https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/islington If you are not already a library member you can join to borrow books and other items, as well as use eBooks, eAudiobooks, online magazines, newspapers, comics and other online resources. You can join online at: h ttps://www.islington.gov.uk/libraries-arts-and-heritage/libraries / join-islington-libraries by emailing [email protected] or phoning 020 7527 6952 @Islingtonlibs @IslingtonLibraries Michael Anthony Green Days by the River Fiction A coming of age story about Shell, who quickly matures against the backdrop of lush Mayaro village life and learns about love, friendship and responsibility. Michael Anthony The Year in San Fernando Fiction Twelve year old Francis goes to work as a servant companion in the city of San Fernando, where he learns lessons that change his outlook on love, hope and death.
    [Show full text]
  • 30 September 2014 KEI MILLER WINS FORWARD PRIZE FOR
    30 September 2014 KEI MILLER WINS FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION The Forward Prize For Best Collection (£10,000) The Cartographer Tries to May a Way to Zion, Kei Miller, Carcanet The Felix Dennis Prize For Best First Collection (£5,000) Black Country, Liz Berry, Chatto Poetry The Forward Prize For Best Single Poem (£1,000) In a Restaurant, Stephen Santus, Bridport Prize The winner of the 2014 Forward Prize for the Best Poetry Collection is Kei Miller for The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, described by the judges as a “stand out” book opening new worlds to the reader – and to the listener. The book is structured as a dialogue between a map-maker striving to impose order on an unfamiliar land, and a “Rasta-man” who undercuts his project, each joke and question shows what cannot be measured. The judges relished Miller’s ability to defy expectations, set up oppositions only to undermine them: the Rasta-man, like Miller himself, has a PhD, while the cartographer sucks his teeth like a local. Chair of the judges Jeremy Paxman, historian and broadcaster, whose panel consisted of singer-songwriter Cerys Matthews and poets Dannie Abse, Vahni Capildeo and Helen Mort said: “Kei is doing something you don’t come across often: this is a beautifully voiced collection which struck us all with its boldness and wit. Many poets refer to multiple realities, different ways of observing the world, Kei doesn’t just refer, he articulates them.” Kei Miller first discovered the power of his own voice when growing up in Jamaica, where his ability to induce fainting fits among listeners through his skills as a young preacher won him a following he did not always appreciate.
    [Show full text]
  • Writing States of Independence: Erna Brodber and Kei Miller
    Kunapipi Volume 34 Issue 2 Article 7 2012 Writing states of independence: Erna Brodber and Kei Miller Evelyn OCallaghan Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation OCallaghan, Evelyn, Writing states of independence: Erna Brodber and Kei Miller, Kunapipi, 34(2), 2012. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol34/iss2/7 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Writing states of independence: Erna Brodber and Kei Miller Abstract Caribbean literature records the disillusionment with the reality of political independence that followed the failure of the West Indies Federation, and indicts the confederacy of dunces largely responsible. Peter Abraham’s This Island Now, V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men, Oonya Kempadoo’s Buxton Spice and Caryl Philips’s A State of Independence, among others, have excoriated both colonial and national political machinations that divide states and the region on the grounds of race, class and ideological differences. I want to attend, however, to a more positive vision which cautiously raises hopes for the prospects of Caribbean citizens to actually achieve a state of independence, or as Erna Brodber puts it in The Rainmaker’s Mistake, entry into ‘the Free’ (2007 150). This process, however, takes place far outside the realm of organised politics: specifically, the realm of Spirit. The writing of Erna Brodber and Kei Miller envisions Caribbean people accessing epistemological resources of their own cultural fashioning, resources which properly harnessed admit the possibility of growth, transcendence and fulfilment beyond the strictly material realm.
    [Show full text]
  • Uptake, Action and Generic Dissent in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry
    WRITING GENRE, WRITING RESISTANCE: UPTAKE, ACTION AND GENERIC DISSENT IN ANGLOPHONE CARIBBEAN POETRY A Dissertation Presented By Dania Annese Dwyer to The Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts August 2018 Writing Genre, Writing Resistance: Uptake, Action and Generic Dissent in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry. A dissertation presented By Dania A. Dwyer ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University August 2018 1 Abstract This dissertation looks at the strategies that have been undertaken by Anglophone Caribbean poets seeking to revise the history of the Caribbean through genre. I consider how texts written in literary genres respond to particular historical and social exigencies by co-opting antecedent colonial genres in ways that transgress them. In doing so, I take up questions from Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) that ask whether a theory of social action might be applied to literary works, and place Caribbean history and cultural studies in conversation with sociolinguistics and genre theory in literature and RGS. Using the poetry collections of Olive Senior, Kei Miller and Linton Kwesi Johnson as case studies, I argue that West Indian poetry pushes the theoretical envelope of literary analysis and invites an approach that incorporates rhetorical genre theory — specifically Carolyn Miller’s theory of genre as social action and Anne Freadman’s theory of uptake—to unearth the full potential of the text.
    [Show full text]
  • Enhancing Awareness of Caribbean Literature
    Impact case study (REF3b) Institution: University of Glasgow Unit of Assessment: 29 – English Language and Literature Title of case study: Enhancing international awareness of Caribbean culture through creative writing 1. Summary of the impact Dr Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet, novelist, essayist and editor based at the University of Glasgow, who works in a range of different media to promote international awareness of Caribbean culture and literature. He has championed the Caribbean voice as judge of the Commonwealth Book Prize, as editor of the Heinemann Caribbean Writers series, and in his own creative output of three books of poetry, two novels, one collection of short stories and a forthcoming book of essays. He provides guidance and encouragement to emerging writers through festivals, workshops and residencies, is an established practitioner-tutor for the British Council, and has been recognised as an important cross-cultural voice in being selected for a leadership role with the International Writing Program at Iowa State University. 2. Underpinning research The research of Kei Miller (Reader in English Literature, University of Glasgow, 2007-present) takes four main forms. The first is poetry, as embodied in three published collections (2006; 2007; 2010) which explore Miller’s personal responses to living in Jamaica, to emigration and exile, to travel, and to the linguistic, political, racial, intellectual and emotional conflicts he has encountered as a Jamaican at different stages of his personal and artistic development. The link between Miller’s poetry and song, as indicated in the title of his latest collection A Light Song of Light, was recently highlighted by his commission to work on a libretto for a new work for voices and instruments to be performed at the Wigmore Hall.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Contemporary Caribbean Poetry in English
    Calabash A JOURNAL OF CARIBBEAN ARTS AND LETTERS Volume 4, Number 2: Spring/Summer 2007 Tiphanie Yanique SOUL-JAHS: AN INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN POETRY IN ENGLISH ••• The Trinbagonian poet E.M. Roach was nagged by a feeling that if poetry was really important then there should be an audience for it. He believed poetry belonged not to the individual but to the community. When he published and read his work he thought he heard only a soft reverberation. He doubted if there was an audience at all. Roach lamented his own sense of disconnection from Caribbean poetry and Caribbean poets so deeply that he abandoned writing and eventually killed himself. What is it about poetry; a gathering of words onto a page, this thing attempting to be a sculpture and a song at once; that might cause us to invest our lives in it? A poem is only an effort of a thing. How can that save? “If the poem could open itself out and be wide” begins Edward Baugh in his hope for fearless love even for the unworthy. “If”…but he does not tell us what. “If the poem could be patient and wide as this evening”…then would we all be saved? Would we all know love? How might poetry do the work Roach needed? Rachel Mordecai in her “Ages of Innocence” (published in the Caribbean Review of Books, August 2006) argues that the poet’s task is this: “to bear meticulous witness.” The language here is important. Certainly we have heard the term, but pay attention: ‘bear’ suggests carrying, suggests a heavy weight.
    [Show full text]
  • Carcanet New Books 2010
    NEW BOOKS APRIL – DECEMBER 2010 Chinua Achebe John Ashbery Sujata Bhatt Eavan Boland Joseph Brodsky Paul Celan Inger Christensen Gillian Clarke Donald Davie Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) Forty years of great poetry Iain Crichton Smith Elaine Feinstein Carcanet Celebrates 40 Years...from Carcanet... Louise Glück Jorie Graham W.S. Graham Robert Graves Ivor Gurney Marilyn Hacker Sophie Hannah John Heath-Stubbs Elizabeth Jennings Brigit Pegeen Kelly Mimi Khalvati Thomas Kinsella R. F. Langley Hugh MacDiarmid L ETTER FROM THE E DITOR The connections and disconnections between British and American poetry have been the subject of recent debate, and Carcanet does its bit to keep the channels of transatlantic dialogue open. British poet Tom Raworth is as current in America as here; and American poetry continues to find British readers. John Ashbery for over three decades has been our cynosure; this catalogue features books by Louise Glück and Lucie Brock-Broido too. Canada appears on the Carcanet map, and the Antipodes, long a major concern, are everywhere to be found: Les Murray’s powerful new collection Taller When Prone, Judith Wright’s legendary Selected Poems with a new introduction by John Kinsella, and John Gallas’s Forty Lies re-mark the spot. The Caribbean is voiced in the poems of Kei Miller. Among our British writers, Fiona Sampson’s Rough Music and Elaine Feinstein’s Cities explore new territories, while Robert Saxton brings the ancient world of Hesiod before us. Elsewhere, Philip Terry detonates Shakespeare’s sonnets, disclosing their hitherto secret Oulipian affinities. Peter Sansom is essentialised and Selected; David Morley Enchants.
    [Show full text]