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When you think of the Caribbean, you might think of pirates, beaches, or the turquoise blue sea. However, the Caribbean is filled with a rich history that the academic and poet, Edward Kamau Brathwaite (1930‐2020), brings to life in his uniquely rhythmic poetry. Brathwaite's poetry explores the themes of Caribbean identity and the alienating effects of colonization and slavery.
Lawson Edward Brathwaite (later Edward Kamau Brathwaite) was born on May 11, 1930, in Bridgetown, Barbados. His father was a warehouse clerk, and his mother was a pianist. Brathwaite attended school at Harrison College in Bridgetown, where his exploration of writing began. As a teen, he wroteessaysabout jazz in the school newspaper and wrote for the Caribbean literary magazine,Bim.
After high school, Brathwaite won a scholarship to study English and History at the University of Cambridge. While attending Cambridge, Brathwaite started broadcasting his poems and stories on a BBC radio show calledCaribbean Voices. He graduated with a Bachelor's in History from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1953, and a Diploma of Education in 1954.
In 1955, after completing his degrees at Cambridge, Brathwaite worked for the Ministry of Education in the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast was a British colony from 1821 until it became the first African state to gain independence. The Gold Coast became the county of Ghana in 1957. Living in Ghana during this progression towards independence gave Brathwaite a deep interest and awareness of Caribbean identity and culture, which are central themes in his books and poetry.
While in Ghana in 1960, Brathwaite married his wife, Doris Monica Wellcome, and wrote a play calledOdeale's Choice. The play premiered at a secondary school in Cape Coast, Ghana, in 1962.
Around 1963, Brathwaite returned to the Caribbean, where he was a tutor in St. Lucia, and then became a History teacher at the University of the West Indies Campus in Kingston, Jamaica.
在1960年代中期,Brathwaite回到英国to do doctoral studies at the University of Sussex. In 1966, Brathwaite became a co-founder of theCaribbean Artists Movement.In 1968, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex. 1971, Oxford University Press published his doctoral thesis,The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica.
The Caribbean Artists Movement的缩写凸轮,加勒比cultural initiative that was prevalent from 1966 to 1972. The movement started in London, England, and focused on the work of Caribbean writers, artists, actors, filmmakers, and musicians. The writers Edward Brathwaite, John La Rose, and Andrew Salkey were vital in establishing the Caribbean Artists Movement.
Also in 1971, Brathwaite was on a fellowship at the University of Nairobi, where he received the name Kamau from the grandmother of the Kenyan writer and academic, Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
In 1973, Brathwaite published a poetry collection calledThe Arrivants: A New World Trilogy. This Trilogy is comprised of three earlier volumes of his most significant work:Rights of Passage(1967),Masks(1968), andIslands(1969).
In the 1980s, Edward Kamau Brathwaite experienced difficulties, including the death of his wife and the destruction of Hurricane Gilbert in Irish Town, Jamaica.
From 1990 to 2004, Brathwaite was a Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University (NYU) and lived between New York and Barbados. After retiring from New York University, Brathwaite stayed in Cow Pasture, Barbados. He died on February 4, 2020, in Barbados.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite is best known for his 1973 trilogy of poetry books calledThe Arrivants: A New World Trilogy. The Trilogy is made up of three poetry collections:Rights of Passage(1967),Masks(1968), andIslands(1969). The poems follow the movement of African people through the atrocities of the Middle Passage, the endurance of slavery, and displacing journeys to the UK, France, and America. The stories of these books span centuries but are tied together through the use of African and Caribbean jazz and folk rhythms.
Brathwaite published another trilogy of poetry books made up of the booksMother Poem(1977),Sun Poem(1982), andX/Self(1987), which continue the exploration of African and Caribbean identity.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite is well known for his 1994 collection of poetry,Barabajan Poems, 1492‐1992. The poet also published numerous cultural and historical research studies, includingFolk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica(1970),The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770‐1820(1971),History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone and Caribbean Poetry(1984), andRoots(1986).
While Brathwaite's poetry and cultural writings were primarily based on history and collective cultural identity, his later writing became more autobiographical. In 1993, he publishedThe Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926 – 7 September,an account of the poet's experience of his wife's death.
Two well-known poems by Edward Kamau Brathwaite are "Ogun" (1986) and "Bread" (2005).
“Ogun”(1986年)是一个关于Brathwaite很棒的诗ncle, an extremely talented, hardworking carpenter. The poem expresses the poet's view that recognizing of the past must be built into the present. The poem expresses frustrations that modernity has trampled over appreciation of past culture, art, and skill.
Notice how the poet builds intensity and develops a drum-like rhythm through the use of alliteration (repetition of the initial letter sounds of nearby words) in the opening lines of the poem:
My uncle made chairs, tables, balanced doors on, dug out
coffins, smoothing the white wood out
with plane and quick sandpaper
until it shone like his short-sighted glasses." (1-4)
"Bread" (2005) is a poem from Brathewate's collection of poems,Born to Slow Horses(2005). The poem explores the idea of black people's broken dreams and hopelessness. The poem uses fragmented lines and phrases to emphasize the fragmented and lost experiences of displaced Black people.
Slowly the white dream wrestle(s) to life
hands shaping the salt and the foreign cornfields
the cold flesh kneaded by fingers
is ready for the charcoal for the black wife" (1-4)
Edward Kamau Brathwaite's poetry draws heavily upon African and Caribbean music and culture. The poet infuses Caribbean identity into his poems' meter, rhythms, and expressions.
My poetry has been concerned, for a long time now, with the attempt to reconstruct, in verse, in metric and in rhythms, thenatureof the culture of the people of the Caribbean. This involves not only discovering what I would call “new poetic forms” — a breakaway from the English pentameter — but also, and more importantly, discovering the nature of our folk culture, the myths, the legends, the speech rhythms, the way we express ourselves in words, the way we express ourselves in song."1
Although Brathwaite's poetry was heavily influenced by Caribbean poetry, the poet noted that T.S. Eliot had an effect on conversational tones and different voices used within Caribbean poetry. Brathwaite's famous poetry book,The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy(1973),uses Eliot's technique, as the voices of numerous people throughout African and Caribbean history weave in and out of the narratives.
What T.S. Eliot did for Caribbean poetry and Caribbean literature was to introduce the notion of the speaking voice, the conversational tone"2
Edward Kamau Brathwaite was a Caribbean poet and academic who lived from 1930 to 2020.
Brathwaite's poetry explores the themes of Caribbean identity and the alienating effects of colonization and slavery.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite is best known for his 1973 trilogy of poetry books calledThe Arrivants: A New World Trilogy.
Two well-known poems by Edward Kamau Brathwaite are "Ogun" (1986) and "Bread" (2005).
Many of Brathwaite's poems are modeled on African and Caribbean drum rhythms.
1Kalamu Ya Salaam, "Interview: Edward Kamau Brathwaite,"Neo-Groit, 2014.
2Edward Kamau Brathwaite, "History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry,"New Beacon Books, 1984.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite coined the term creolization to examine intercultural changes in Jamaica.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite is famous for his poetry collection calledThe Arrivants: A New World Trilogy(1973).
This Trilogy is comprised of three earlier volumes of his most significant work:Rights of Passage(1967),Masks(1968), andIslands(1969). Two well-known poems by Edward Kamau Brathwaite are "Ogun" (1986) and "Bread" (2005).
Edward Kamau Brathwaite died on February 4, 2020.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite wrote about Caribbean identity and the alienating effects of colonization and slavery.
The poem "South" by Edward Kamau Brathwaite is about the poet reflecting on his childhood and his home in the Caribbean.
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