Teaching Caribbean Poetry

Teaching Caribbean Poetry will inform and inspire readers with a love for, and understanding of, the dynamic world of Caribbean poetry. This unique volume sets out to enable secondary English teachers and their students to engage with a wide range of poetry, past and present; to understand how histories of the Caribbean underpin the poetry and relate to its interpretation; and to explore how Caribbean poetry connects with environmental issues. Written by literary experts with extensive classroom experience, this lively and accessible book is immersed in classroom practice, and examines: • popular aspects of Caribbean poetry, such as performance poetry; • different forms of Caribbean language; • the relationship between music and poetry; • new voices, as well as well-known and distinguished poets, including John Agard (winner of the Queen’s Medal for Poetry, 2012), Kamau Brathwaite, Lorna Goodison, Olive Senior and Derek Walcott; • the crucial themes within Caribbean poetry such as inequality, injustice, racism, ‘othering’, hybridity, diaspora and migration; • the place of Caribbean poetry on the GCSE/CSEC and CAPE syllabi, covering appropriate themes, poetic forms and poets for exam purposes. Throughout this absorbing book, the authors aim to combat the widespread ‘fear’ of teaching poetry, enabling teachers to teach it with confidence and enthusiasm and helping students to experience the rewards of listening to, reading, interpreting, performing and writing Caribbean poetry.

This volume recognizes that the most challenging aspect of introducing students to anglophone Caribbean literature--the sheer variety of intellectual and artistic traditions in Western and non-Western cultures that relate to it--also offers the greatest opportunities to teachers. Courses on anglophone literature in the Caribbean can consider the region's specific histories and contexts even as they explore common issues: the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and colonial education; nationalism; exile and migration; identity and hybridity; class and racial conflict; gender and sexuality; religion and ritual. This volume considers how the availability of materials shapes syllabuses and recommends print, digital, and visual resources for teaching. The essays examine a host of topics, including the following: the development of multiethnic populations in the Caribbean and the role of various creole languages in the literature oral art forms, such as dub poetry and reggae music the influence of anglophone literature in the Caribbean on literary movements outside it, such as the Harlem Renaissance and black British writing Carnival religious rituals and beliefs specific genres such as slave narratives and autobiography film and drama the economics of rum Many essays list resources for further reading, and the volume concludes with a section of additional teaching resources.

Compilation of essays on innovative and significant approaches to pedagogy of Caribbean literature by three generations of Caribbean teacher-writers.

Mangoes and jelly coconut, garter snakes and speckled frogs. These are some of the many vivid memories of a Caribbean childhood from poets such as Valerie Bloom, Faustin Charles, Telcine Turner and Dionne Brand.

This collection is an invaluable academic selection and will provide a fine introduction for the general reader interested in the lyricism of Caribbean poetry.

Teaching, Reading, and Theorizing Caribbean Texts explores alternative approaches to Caribbean texts from transnational and multilingual perspectives. The authors query what new systems and criteria can be implemented to rethink and remodel our theoretical and pedagogical corpus and alter the lenses through which we study Caribbean texts. Pulling from the Caribbean’s global diaspora, the authors examine writers such as Roxane Gay, Esmeralda Santiago, Wilson Harris, and Gloria Anzaldúa in order to resituate the place of Caribbean texts in the classroom. Each chapter argues for a reunification of Caribbean literature studies—rather than studying this body of text only in terms of a certain aspect of its history or culture, the authors necessitate the importance of analyzing these works from a pan-Caribbean perspective. This collection discusses the ideas of transcending individual disciplines and specialties to create global theories, overcoming pedagogical challenges when bringing Caribbean texts into the classroom, and (re)reading texts with the purpose of discovering new symbols, themes, and meanings.

Caribbean poetry written in English has been attracting growing amounts of scholarly attention. The first substantial annotated bibliography of primary and secondary materials related to the topic, this reference chronicles the development of Anglophone Caribbean poetry from 1970 through 2001. Included are nearly 900 entries for anthologies, reference works, conference proceedings, critical studies, interviews, and recorded works. The volume also includes a chronology, an overview of the development and significance of Caribbean poetry in English, and extensive indexes. In 1971 the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies held a conference on West Indian literature at the University of the West Indies. This was the first assembly for the discussion of West Indian literature by West Indian people on West Indian soil. Since then, interest in Caribbean poetry written in English has grown dramatically. Caribbean poetry was influenced by the American Black Power movement during the 1970s, and women poets began to contribute their voices throughout the 1980s. Caribbean poets have, in turn, gained greater access to publishing outlets, resulting in a wider international readership and a corresponding increase in scholarly and critical studies. This book is the first substantial annotated bibliography of primary and secondary materials related to Caribbean poetry written in English. The volume begins with the rise of interest in Anglophone Caribbean poetry in the 1970s and continues through 2001. Included are entries for nearly 900 anthologies, reference works, conference proceedings, critical studies, interviews, and recordings. The entries are grouped in chapters devoted to particular types of works. In addition, the volume includes a chronology, a discussion of the history of Anglophone Caribbean poetry, and extensive indexes.