Report 3: January - February 2002

Doing research on the influence of the Caribbean oral tradition on Black British performance poetry
by Eric Doumerc, University of Toulouse-Le Mirail

1. Research topic:

I have been doing research on the Caribbean oral tradition and its influence on Black British performance poetry since the early 1990's and this research has taken me to England, Jamaica, and Trinidad. While doing research for my thesis, though, I used mainly UK-based research resources apart from a short stay in Jamaica in July/August 1996. The poets I focused on included John Agard, James Berry, Valerie Bloom, Martin Glynn, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Marsha Prescod, Levi Tafari and Benjamin Zephaniah. In my thesis, I intended to show that the Caribbean oral tradition in the UK had taken many forms which had influenced Black British performance poets in various ways.

These various forms can be associated with two main aesthetics or modes: the aesthetic of confrontation and the aesthetic of openness.
The aesthetic of confrontation first gave rise to the dub mode and dub poetry. The reggae aesthetic corresponds to the confrontational mood of the 1970's when dub poetry developed thanks to Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Jamaican dub poets Mutabaruka and Okuonuora. The dub mode can be said to embody an aesthetic of confrontation and a rejection of British institutions and norms mediated through the resort to the reggae idiom, Rastafarian imagery and Jamaican "patois".
Linton Kwesi Johnson's dub experiments were later taken up by the "new" dub poets Desmond Johnson and Martin Glynn among others, but from the early 1980's on, a new mood set in, and the dub mode seems to have given way to a lighter approach based on the humour of the calypso and of the mento. That approach is represented by the work of John Agard and Marsha Prescod whose poems testify to the survival in the UK of a calypso-based type of humour. The mento tradition finds its clearest expression in the work of Valerie Bloom whose early poems were very much influenced by the work of Louise Bennett.
Nevertheless these two approaches, which continued to define Black British performance poetry until the early 1980's, still partook of an ideology of rejection and confrontation: England was still the enemy, the "bitch" to quote Linton Kwesi Johnson himself.

With the coming of the mid-1980's, a new generation of "performance poets" took over and these included Benjamin Zephaniah, Martin Glynn and Levi Tafari. These poets were all born in the UK and represent a new, hybrid and culturally diverse performance poetry: with them the tag "dub poetry" seems to be too restrictive or limited. Indeed their poetry is truly Black British and this is visible both in their thematic concerns ( personal relationships, the environment, etc.) and in their stylistic approaches ( rap and jazz) . These poets embody an aesthetic of openness and adaptation and England is not the enemy but the country they were born in and where they have to live.
Thus Black British performance poetry seems to have moved from an aesthetic of confrontation/rejection to an aesthetic of openness and the Caribbean oral tradition has embodied these two approaches.

2. Using UK-based and Jamaican research resources:

I did most of my research in England and used the resources of the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham where I was welcomed by Dr Stewart Brown whose help was invaluable.
The various public libraries in Birmingham (the Central Library which has a wonderful "Black Writing" section and the Balsall Heath library) were also quite useful.
Of course I was able to locate many hard-to-find books at the British Library.
Nevertheless I also managed to locate and to purchase many written and oral documents by visiting some bookshops which specialize in African, African-American and Caribbean literature(s):

• In Birmingham:

  Harriet Tubman Bookshop
  27 Grove Lane
  Birmingham B21 9ES

• In Bristol:

  Black River Books
  113 Stokes Croft
  Bristol BS1 3RW

• In London:

  New Beacon Books
  76 Stroud Green Road
  London
  N4 3EN

In the course of my research I was also able to interview Martin Glynn, Levi Tafari and Benjamin Zephaniah and I used short excerpts from these interviews to illustrate certain points made by the poets in their writings or to flesh out the sections on the poets' living conditions in England.

While doing research on the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica I was able to use the invaluable resources of the Radio Education Unit. The people there duplicated for me readings by Edward Kamau Brathwaite (Islands), poetry recitals by Louise Bennett, interviews with Linton Kwesi Johnson and recordings by Mutabaruka. The REA is really an invaluable repository for all kinds of oral documents.

The poets themselves ( Martin Glynn, Levi Tafari and Benjamin Zephaniah) were really helpful and sent me very rare and hard-to-find interviews they had done and recordings they had released.

My post-doctoral research has consisted in doing more interviews with Black British poets (Sue Brown, Leon Blades and Moqapi Selassie) and in focusing more closely on the development of Jamaican deejaying as an oral art form.

3. Select bibliography:

This bibliography concerns mainly the works by Black British performance poets studied for my doctoral research and is by no means exhaustive.

Agard, John. Limbo Dancer in Dark Glasses. London: Greenheart, 1985.
---, Mangoes and Bullets. London: Serpent's Tail, 1990.
---, Love Lines for a Goat-Born Lady. London: Serpent's Tail, 1990.

Berry, James. Fractured Circles. London: New Beacon Books, 1979.
--- Lucy's Letter and Loving. London: New Beacon Books, 1982.

---, Chain of Days. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Bloom, Valerie. Touch Mi Tell Mi. London: Bogle L'Ouverture, 1983.

Douglas, J.D. Caribbean Man's Blues. London: Akira Press, 1985.

Glynn, Martin. De Ratchet A Talk. London: Akira Press, 1985.
--- Angola. Northampton: Curious Press, 1990.
--- Ancestral Whispers. Oxford: Triangle, 1993.

Johnson, Desmond. Deadly Ending Season. London: Akira Press, 1984.

Johnson, Linton, Kwesi. Voices of the Living and the Dead. London: Race Today, 1975.
---, Dread Beat and Blood. London: Bogle L'Ouverture, 1974.
---, Inglan is a Bitch. London: Race Today, 1980.
---, Tings and Times. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1994.

Prescod, Marsha. Land of Rope and Tory. London: Akira Press, 1985.

Tafari, Levi. Liverpool Experience. Neuestadt: Michael Schwinn, 1986.
---, Rhyme Don't Pay. Wirral: Headland, 1993.

Zephaniah, Benjamin. Pen Rhythm. London: Page One, 1980.
---, The Dread Affair. London: Akira Press, 1985.
---, City Psalms. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1993.
---, Propa Propaganda. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1996.

4. Publications:

• La tradition orale dans la poésie anglo-antillaise. Rupture et ouverture. Villeneuve dAscq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion,1999.
• "Interview with Moqapi Selassie". Raw Edge Magazine, Autumn/Winter 2000.
• "Dub Poetry: from the straightjacket of riddim to performance poetry". Re-Soundings (the online periodical of Millersville University, Pennsylvania), August 2001.
• "A Note on Louise Bennett and the Mento Tradition". Ariel (forthcoming publication).

5. Talks:

• "West Indian Oral Poetry". March 1997. "Journée poésie" with John Kinsella at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail.
• "La "dub poetry": évolution d'un genre". Paper presented during an international conference on "Music and Literature" at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail

Copyright: © 2001. Eric Doumerc.

For further information please contact: Eric Doumerc, Département des Etudes du Monde Anglophone, UFR de Langues, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 5 allées Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cédex, France.