NEWS FOR BABYLON
The Chatto Book of Westindian-British Poetry
edited by James Berry
wha man dohn know is good to know a Caribbean proverb
CHATTO & WINDUS • THE HOGARTH PRESS LONDON Contents
Introduction xii
John la Rose Unsaid 3 We Were Once 4 Their Bullring 4 Connecting Link 5
Nkemka Asika (Frank John) Right On 6 No Joke 7 Me Soul 8 Coolman 9
Grace Nichols Sections from: I Is a Long Memoried Woman 11
David Nathaniel Haynes Sections from: Lamentations 23
Frederick d'Aguiar Old Mama Dot 26 Doctor Mama Dot 27 The Day Mama Dot Takes 111 28 Mama Dot Learns to Fly 29 Mama Dot Warns Against ah Easter Rising 30
E. A. Markham Inheritance 31 Home 31 Love at No. 13 32 The Boy of the House 32 Today 33 A Sentence to Write 33 A Complacent Litde Poem Greets a Revolutionary Big Poem CONTENTS
Who's Afraid of Black People? 35 Lambchops I Racial Prejudice Day 36 II A Mugger's Game 37 Lambchops Ally 38 Love 39 Don't. Talk to Me About Bread 40 Help 41 The Man of Imagination 42 Footnotes 43 Love Poem 44 An Old Thought For a New Couple 44 Myth, etc. 44 Hello Again - Out of Season 45 A Face 46 West Indian Myth (VII) 47 Strange Fish 48
Mustapha Matura When 49
Jamal Ali On Trial 50
Ebony Ajibade Different 51
Linton Kwesi Johnson Reggae Sounds 53 For Those Who Go Doun Always an Under 53 Same Way 55 Rage 55 Dread Beat an Blood 56 Two Sides of Silence 57 Time to Explode 58 Song of Rising 59
[vi] CONTENTS
Yout Rebels 60 Song of Blood 61 Sonny's Lettah 62 Di Great Insohreckshan 65 Creswell Durrant Colours 67 Fragment 67 Faustin Charles Sugar Cane Man 68 Sugar Cane 70 Sections from: Meditations 71 Folk-Tales 71 Crab Track 73 The Voice 74 Setders 74 Brer Nancy 75 Black Cat 76 Viv 77 Benjamin Zephaniah Call It What You Like! 78 For Two Years One Time 80 Love Smoke 81 -
Amryl Johnson How Do You Feed the Ghosts? 82 Another Stab at the Wishing Well 82 Hole in the Wind 83 Circle of Thorns 84 The Unpaved Road 85
- Vivian Usherwood My Name is I Don't Know 87 Spy Man 87 TTie Dying World 87
[vii] CONTENTS
Donald Peters I Remember Back Home 89
Accabre Huntley Easter Monday Blues 90
Evan Jones The Lament of the Banana Man 91 \ The Song of the Banana Man 92
Jawiattika Blacksheep Historical Rights 95 Killing Me For I 96 Hallelujah 97 Discrimination 97 Giih - Weh 99
Anion Saba Saakana (Sebasdan Clarke) Child-Mother in Transit 100 Child-Mother in Metamorphosis 101
Valerie Bloom Letter From Home 102 Wha Fe Call I' 104 Yuh Hear Bout? 105
Jimi Rand Is You 106 Nock Nock Oo Nock E Nock 108 Winter 110 Talk, Talk: Nigger Talk Talk 113 A Black Man's Song 114
Stanley Alexander Martin Roots 116
[viii] Levi Tafari (Leonard Kelly) Black Roots in Babylon 117
T-Bone Wilson Wild Life 119 'Tarringdale Leaps' 119
Colin Prescod Indebted 121 Things I Dare Not Say Out Loud 122
Rudolph Kizerman Martians 123 The Essential Landlords 123 A Stray from the Tribe 124
Frederick Williams Me Memba Wen 130
Hugh Hailson Boatswain The Bongo Man 134 Dub Rock 135
Errol Nelson Ekome Feemo Hewaleyo 136
RAPP (Radical Alliance of Poets and Players) Songs of Darkness 138 Night Watch 140 Let the Feeling Flow 141 Two Men in the Slums 142 Squat 55 143 Oh Afrika 146
Imruh Bakari Caesar I Thought of You 147 CONTENTS
A. L. Hendriks Boundary 149 The Briefing 150 The Migrant 152 Neighbour, Tenth Floor 153 Madonna of the Unknown Nation 154 Report on a Caribbean Festival of Arts
Andrew Salkey Breaking Out of the Long Silence 160 Clearsightedness 161 The Festival of Flowers 162
Qaude Lushington The Dialectics of Inaction 163 The Lengthening Shadows 163 Flowers 164
Samuel Selvon Variation 165
Wilson Harris Spirit of the Labyrinth 166 The Well 167
John Figueroa Hartlands/Heartlands 169 Christmas Breeze 171
John Agard Palm Tree King 173 Anancy's Thoughts on Love 175 Sections from: Man to Pan 177
James Berry Caribbean Proverb Poems 1 181
M CONTENTS
Caribbean Proverb Poems 2 181 Detention and Departure 182 Bush Cousin 183 New World Colonial Child 186 On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955 190 In-a Brixtan Markit 191 Thinkin Loud-Loud 192 Confession 192 Lucy's Letter 194 Departure and Arrival 195 Cancel-order of Blues 197 An Echo After Freedom Bid 198 Ongoing Encounter 199 Speech for Alternative Creation 200 New Reading Like Rebellion 201 It's Me Man 204 Sections from: Stories by Bodyparts 205 Ordeal of Change 206 Dear-Dear 207
Notes on the Poets 209 Acknowledgements 212
[xi]