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MASARYK UNIVERSITY West Indian Poetry for Children and Its Place In MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE West Indian Poetry for Children and its Place in Contemporary British Literature Diploma Thesis Brno 2017 Supervisor: Written by: PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D. Mgr. Tatiana Savchenko Annotation The diploma thesis West Indian Poetry for Children and its Place in Contemporary British Literature deals with peculiarities of children’s poetry by James Berry, John Agard, Benjamin Zephaniah, Valery Bloom and Grace Nichols in the selected volumes of poetry. The thesis defines what is meant by Black British literature, comments on the main topics in West Indian literature for children as a part of Black British literature, speaks about performance features of West Indian children’s poetry, its target audience, genre variations and the language. Attention is drawn to the connection of the oral poetic traditions of West Indies and Britain.The crucial part of the thesis is the analysis of the above mentioned collections of poetry in the context of the information acquired from the academic texts dedicated to Black British literature and children’s literature. Anotace Diplomová práce “Západoindická poezie pro děti a její místo v současné britské literature” se zabývá zvláštnostmi dětské poezie ve vybraných dílech, jejímiž autory jsou: James Berry, John Agard, Benjamin Zephaniah, Valery Bloom a Grace Nichols. Diplomová práce si klade za cíl definovat pojem “Černá britská literatura”, podat komentář k hlavním tématům, zastoupených v Západoindické literatuře pro děti. Teoretickou část práce také tvoří vhled do zmiňované oblasti literatury, zaměřuje se na cílovou skupinu, variaci žánrů a soustřeďuje se na volbu jazykových prostředků. Stěžejní částí diplomové práce je její praktická část, ve které je provedena analýza výše uvedených jevů básnických sbírek. Analýza sborníků byla vzpracována na základě současných odborných textů, jež jsou zaměřeny na "Černou anglickou literaturu" a literaturu pro děti. Pozornost je upřena na propojenost ústní poetické tradice Západoindické literatury a Velké Británie. Key words: children’s poetry; West Indian children’s poetry; James Berry; John Agard; Grace Nichols; Valerie Bloom; Benjamin Zephaniah; ethnic literature Klíčová slova: poezie pro děti; Západoindická poezie pro děti; James Berry; John Agard; Grace Nichols; Valerie Bloom; Benjamin Zephaniah; etnická literatura 2 Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů. V Brně 29. 03. 2017 .…………………… Tatiana Savchenko 3 Acknowledgement I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D., for her professional advice, patience, motivation, and engagement through the whole process of woking on this master thesis. I would like to thank my sister Natalia Savchenko for the language corrections and support. 4 Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………6 Chapter I. Theoretical Background of the Research ……………………..9 1. Black British Literature ……………………………………………9 2. Contemporary Children’s Literature and Oral Lore ………….......18 3. Creole Language and its Peculiarities ……………………………24 Chapter II. The Analytical Part …………………………………………..29 1. Themes in West Indian Poetry for Children ………………………30 1.1. Caribbean Nature, Weather and Food ………………………….30 1.2. Caribbean Folklore and Traditions. Carnival …………………..36 1.3. Racism, Migration and Equality ………………………………..41 1.4. Rastafarianism ………………………………………………….47 1.5. Modern Technologies …………………………………………..49 2. Oral Lore and the Reflection of Contemporary Trends in Children's Literature in West Indian Poetry for Children ……………………………………..53 2.1. Target Audience ……………………………………………….53 2.2. Poetic forms and Genres ……………………………………….55 2.3. Performance Features of West Indian Poetry for Children and Poetry Based on Music ……………………………………………………………………60 2.4. British Nursery and school Lore and West Indian poetry for Children…………………………………………………………………………….65 3. Creole Language in West Indian Poetry for Children …………….69 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….75 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………..80 Appendix ……………………………………………………………………87 5 Introduction The British Empire was the greatest and the largest territorial formation that ever existed in the world history. At the end of the 20th century, the empire collapsed but millions of people from its previously administrated lands (such as Africa, Caribbean Islands and Asia) relocated and settled in the territory of Great Britain, thus becoming an indefeasible part of the British culture. Contemporary British literature reflects the diversity and complexity of the modern British society. For my research, I chose five Black British poets of the Caribbean descent: James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Valery Bloom and Benjamin Zephaniah. Black British is an umbrella term that defines those people of African and Caribbean ethnic background who either were born or spent the major part of their lives in the United Kingdom. It should be noted, that in the recent academic research the terminology is not yet settled. For instance, Michael Lockwood considers Benjamin Zephaniah, who was born and educated in the United Kingdom, to be a Black British poet, while James Berry, Valery Bloom, Grace Nichols and John Agard are called Caribbean British. For the aims of my research, this terminological differentiation is not crucial, therefore, I use the terms West Indian, Caribbean and Black British as interchangeable synonyms. The main objective of the diploma thesis is to examine and evaluate the selected poetic texts by James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Valery Bloom, Benjamin Zephaniah with the focus on thematic, genre, form and language peculiarities of these texts and to make conclusions about the place of the Caribbean poetry for children in the context of the modern British poetry. My hypothesis is that West Indian literature for children can be considered a part of a mainstream British literature. The thesis is divided into two parts, theoretical and analytical. In the theoretical part I firstly discuss the approaches of different researchers to defining Black British literature, I dwell on the topics that are considered conventional for West Indian literature for adults, I comment on the oral lore and performance traditions in the Caribbean region and the United Kingdom. Secondly, I attempt to depict characters, genres and tendencies specific to contemporary children’s poetry. Thirdly, I describe the history and linguistic features of Creole language and its use in the poetry for children. 6 In the analytical part of my research, I, first of all, focus on the topics that are frequent in the Caribbean poetry for children and define which topics of the West Indian literature for adults and of the world’s children’s literature found their reflection in the poetry for children of the Black British authors. Secondly, I deal with genre variation, target audience, graphic design and performance features of children’s poetry by West Indian authors. Lastly, I speculate if Creole language is an obstacle in understanding Caribbean poetry for children and I put forward a hypothesis on the reasons to use Creole in poetic texts. The analytical part of my research is based on the analysis of the following volumes of poetry: Only One of Me (2004) by James Berry, I Din Do Nuttin' (1983) and Goldilocks on CCTV (2011) by John Agard, Duppy Jamboree and other Jamaican Poems (1992) and Whoop an’ Shout! (2003) by Valery Bloom, Everybody Got a Gift (2006) and Come on into My Tropical Garden (1990) by Grace Nichols and Wicked World (2000), Talking Turkeys (1995), Funky Chickens (1997), We are Britain! (2003), J is for Jamaica (2006) by Benjamin Zephaniah. Concerning the methods used in this diploma thesis, the theoretical part is developed out of an examination of the fields of Black British literature, contemporary children’s poetry, Creole language and finding specific academic texts related to it. In the analytical part of the work I am using the standard means of stylistic analysis and the approach to poetry analysis suggested by David Wheeler in his book Moon on the tides: the aqa gcse poetry anthology -a guide for students (2011) while keeping in mind the aims and goals of my research as well as the material that was gathered in the theoretical part. The Caribbean children’s poetry is a relatively new field of study and the majority of the related academic texts either deal with the practical use of poetry in English classrooms or describe the peculiarities of Creole language. Consequently, I was forced to ground my work on the books and academic articles dedicated to West Indian literature for adults, the most helpful among them being A Reader’s Guide to West Indian and Black British Literature (1997) by David Dabudeen and Nana Wilson-Tagoe and a collection of essays Write Black Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature edited by K. Sesay (2005). Contemporary poetry for children itself is one of the marginal subsets of literature and there are not many writings dedicated specifically to British children’s 7 poetry. Thus, I founded the analytical part of my study on academic articles devoted to contemporary
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