{"id":19219,"date":"2017-01-10T13:09:12","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T12:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/?p=19219"},"modified":"2022-11-09T12:11:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T11:11:32","slug":"edward-kamau-brathwaite-barbados","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/edward-kamau-brathwaite-barbados\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Kamau BRATHWAITE – Barbados"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n\t

\"Edward<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Edward Kamau Brathwaite is an internationally known poet, literary critic and historian. A native of Barbados, he is professor of History at the University of West Indies.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Few publications :\u00a0'The Arrivants'<\/i> (1973) ; 'The Visibility Trigger' (Le d\u00e9tonateur de visibilit\u00e9)\u00a0<\/i>1986 ; 'Jah Music'<\/i> (1986) ; 'Trenchtown Rock'<\/i> (1993) ; 'Born to Slow Horses'<\/i> (2005) (International Griffin Poetry Prize\u00a02006) ; 'Elegguas'<\/i> (2010) ; 'R\u00eavHa\u00efti'<\/i>\u00a0(2013).<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Shar - Hurricane Poem<\/h1>\n

[published in the Magazine Revue Noire RN 06 & RN 09 in September 1992 and July 1993<\/p>\n

Original text written in English]<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

For the stone of this island to be bombed<\/span><\/p>\n

by this wind & all this, all this water<\/span><\/p>\n

O longshore late light duppy Kingston nights<\/span><\/p>\n

wood<\/span><\/p>\n

has become so useless, stripped wet,<\/span><\/p>\n

fragile, broken, totally uninhabitable<\/span><\/p>\n

with what we must still build<\/span><\/p>\n

a half-a-million shaved off from the auction block<\/span><\/p>\n

curled & cut off thier stock<\/span><\/p>\n

without even that sweet scent of resin on a good day<\/span><\/p>\n

O Saviour saviour Sav-la-Mar<\/span><\/p>\n

wasted wasted wasted all all all wasted wasted wasted<\/span><\/p>\n

the five hundred years of Colombus dragging us here<\/span><\/p>\n

& the four thousand three hundred years before that<\/span><\/p>\n

across valley & dune, dry river bed. gully & waddi<\/em>, slip<\/span><\/p>\n

scream of sandstorm, salt, mineral, glint, quartz<\/span><\/p>\n

cutting the soles of my feet, gold<\/span><\/p>\n

in the harrowed face of the rock, gold<\/span><\/p>\n

in what will become leaf, branch, eucalyptus, cocoa<\/span><\/p>\n

pod, odoum, tweneduru, chikichiki,<\/em>\u00a0even the evening man,<\/span><\/p>\n

grove<\/span><\/p>\n

at golokwati & Pong<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

&<\/span><\/p>\n

the spider arachne Ananse<\/span><\/p>\n

the sweet of your arms hollowed out at Anum<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

And that more wind, rip, gust, scissors-howl<\/span><\/p>\n

copper kettle boiling, boiling<\/span><\/p>\n

over into your years<\/span><\/p>\n

would wait, wait, wait like a snap or a flat rat trap in the streets<\/span><\/p>\n

to freeze freeze frizzle out of your head, where you are hoarding its\u00a0sound<\/span><\/p>\n

like a timble of thunder, shuch limitless size in the so little a room<\/span><\/p>\n

that you own<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

the wood<\/span><\/p>\n

of your wails & the fret<\/span><\/p>\n

work<\/span><\/p>\n

the fancy<\/span><\/p>\n

fence & the humble humble humble hallelujah railling of your chapel, <\/span><\/p>\n

all shatter. shatter. shattering now with that round saw\u2019s buzz of teeth that<\/span><\/p>\n

will eat<\/span><\/p>\n

all the leaves off the trees, most of the wood off their treasuries<\/span><\/p>\n

even the big ones like cotton & cedar & guango & cut<\/span><\/p>\n

the branches off short<\/span><\/p>\n

to a white stubble & trump,<\/span><\/p>\n

frayed out like the end of a chew. stick or bomb,<\/span><\/p>\n

ballast<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Edward Kamau Brathwaite<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edward Kamau Brathwaite, writer from Barbados, poems<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,64],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22557,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19219\/revisions\/22557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revuenoire.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}