The Guyanese poet Martin Carter (1927-97) was one of the greatest Caribbean writers of the 20th century. This collection of his selected poems and prose discusses race, colonialism, political action and the role of the poet in a postcolonial society.
As a young socialist in the colony of British Guiana, Martin Carter wrote strong, vigorous poems that connect powerfully with the reader. This book includes some of most notable work.
Between the long title poem and the other poems in the collection, Michael Gilkes sets up a dialogue about the nature of memory and the meaning of experience across time.
"These poems, some written over the past thirty years, but most of them recently, have as their focal point an act of homage to the great Guyanese poet Martin Carter, voice of a nation. They celebrate a friendship and an example of vision and integrity, and bear witness to Carter's role as the nation's conscience in Guyana's continuing agony of poverty, flood, crime, disputed governance and ethnic divisions." "The poems also investigate the power of words and the necessity and sanctity of the act of making in such circumstances of disorder. Dense and jewelled, these poems create a surreal twist on the everyday and reveal the perceptions of a writer, who is also an artist, sculptor and musician, on the interlinkages between the senses. There is also a profound ecological vision of the correspondences between man and the natural world. The poems are quirky, philosophically enquiring, but have the concreteness of thought rising like 'pond-bottom bubbles'." "The collection is illustrated with half a dozen striking line drawings which demonstrate again Greaves's capacity to say more with less, and, as an afterword an insightful interview with Stanley Greaves by Stewart Brown." --Book Jacket.
This collection is an invaluable academic selection and will provide a fine introduction for the general reader interested in the lyricism of Caribbean poetry.
Featuring poems from: Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, Danielle Jennings, Ruel Johnson, Monica Minott, Debra Providence, Shivanee Ramlochan, Colin Robinson, and Sassy Ross. With a preface by Kwame Dawes. With a generous sample from each poet, this anthology is an opportunity to discover some of the best, new, previously unpublished voices from the Caribbean. This is a generation that has absorbed Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Martin Carter, and Lorna Goodison, while finding its own distinctive voice. Peekash Press is a collaboration between Akashic and UK-based publisher Peepal Tree Press, with a focus on publishing writers from and still living in the Caribbean. The debut title from Peekash, Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean, was published in 2014. Kwame Dawes is the author of eighteen collections of poetry, most recently Duppy Conqueror, as well as two novels, numerous anthologies, and plays. He has won Pushcart prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy, and was the 2013 awardee of the Paul Engel Prize. At the University of Nebraska--Lincoln, he is a Chancellor’s Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. Dawes is the associate poetry editor at Peepal Tree Press, the series editor of the University of South Carolina Poetry Series, and the founding director of the African Poetry Book Fund. Dawes also teaches in Pacific University’s MFA program, and is the director of the biennial Calabash International Literary Festival.
How to Read a Japanese Poem offers a comprehensive approach to making sense of traditional Japanese poetry of all genres and periods. Steven D. Carter explains to Anglophone students the methods of composition and literary interpretation used by Japanese poets, scholars, and critics from ancient times to the present, and adds commentary that will assist the modern reader. How to Read a Japanese Poem presents readings of poems by major figures such as Saigyō and Bashō as well as lesser known poets, with nearly two hundred examples that encompass all genres of Japanese poetry. The book gives attention to well-known forms such as haikai or haiku, as well as ancient songs, comic poems, and linked verse. Each chapter provides examples of a genre in chronological order, followed by notes about authorship and other contextual details, including the time of composition, physical setting, and social occasion. The commentaries focus on a central feature of Japanese poetic discourse: that poems are often occasional, written in specific situations, and are best read in light of their milieu. Carter elucidates key concepts useful in examining Japanese poetics as well as the technical vocabulary of Japanese poetic discourse, familiarizing students with critical terms and concepts. An appendix offers succinct definitions of technical terms and essays on aesthetic ideals and devices.