"Xplode the prison/ burn the clock": Tracing Black British Literary Aesthetics from the Shores of the Caribbean to the Streets of South London"
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Date
2018-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
This paper seeks to contextualize contemporary London poet James Massiah within a longer history of black poetics in the UK. It considers Edward Kamau Brathwaite as the progenitor of a revolutionary West Indian poetic avant-garde, which was introduced to the UK by way of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) of 1966-1972. Through the dynamic literary organizing shepherded by this group, Brathwaite's critical theory espousing the necessary association of blackness, poetry, and music gained popularity resulting in a new standard for black poetics in the Caribbean and in Britain. While this model proved revolutionary indeed in the mid-20th century, it may have created a rigid black poetic ideal which contemporary artists, such as James Massiah, find themselves responding to and pushing back against. James Massiah's work continues in the tradition of Brathwaite in its rejection of canonical norms in black poetic expression. However, I argue that Massiah exhibits a new radicalism in the arena of black British poetry wherein there are no requirements to be met. On this account, Massiah is ushering in a new era in which black poets can be poets without expectations, and this in itself is an assertion of blackness and radicalism.
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Keywords
Poetry, Music, Caribbean Studies, Black London