Poetry power

The hugely popular British-Guyanese writer John Agard once wrote a poem titled Listen Mr Oxford Don. The poem is written from the perspective of a West Indian immigrant living in Clapham, south London. He has had few formal educational opportunities, but is rich in linguistic skills and has a sharp-eyed view of life.

“I didn’t graduate. I immigrate,” says Agard’s speaker at one point, implying a degree of equivalence between these two life-shaping experiences. He is perhaps also suggesting that those who leave their homeland to settle in another country learn something different, but just as important, as they might from university degrees.

This week a group of Cambridge academics from the Faculty of Education is hosting a conference where ‘dons’, scholars and teachers from around the world will have an opportunity to listen to Agard and other Caribbean poets’ brilliant performances in real life.

Called The Power of Caribbean Poetry – Word and Sound, the conference is part of a wider project to encourage enjoyment, and participation, in poetry within schools and universities, focusing particularly on the diverse and vibrant work of Caribbean poets. Opening today and continuing until Saturday, it takes place at Homerton College.

The Caribbean Poetry Project is a pioneering collaboration between the Faculty of Education, the Centre for Commonwealth Education, and the University of West Indies at Mona (Jamaica), St Augustine (Trinidad) and Cave Hill (Barbados). It has forged strong links between poets and those who study them as well as those who teach poetry, or fear to do so – and a book based on a course developed as part of the Project will be published in 2013.

Caribbean poetry is one of the most vibrant literatures in the world. Although distinctive in some ways – in its connections with popular music forms like reggae and calypso, in its powerful response to the brutal histories of the region, and in its vivid evocation of a rich language, landscape and natural world – it is not separated off from other kinds of poetry and writing. As Professor Mark McWatt (a distinguished Caribbean poet and critic who will be talking at the conference) has said, this is “arguably the most vigorous and exciting body of poetry of our time”. It deserves to have a more central place in young people’s learning about the world.

The conference brings together academics, teachers and poets from the UK, the Caribbean and elsewhere to talk about their work, share their experiences, and enjoy live poetry.  The topics being tackled in discussion sessions include poetry and the environment, politics, oppression and the power of language.

The audience will be invited to explore perspectives on the teaching of Caribbean poetry and discussions will be interspersed with live readings from some of the poets taking part. Performance has always played a central role in Caribbean poetry and is a major part of its appeal. Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott (whose latest collection is called White Egrets, a bird common in the Caribbean) has said that he comes “from a place…that likes large gestures; it is not inhibited by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a society of physical performance; it is a society of style”.

The poets performing at the conference include Dorothea Smartt, Kei Miller, John Agard, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mervyn Morris, Christian Campbell, Anthony Joseph, Philip Nanton, Mark McWatt, Grace Nichols, Velma Pollard and Olive Senior.

The Caribbean Poetry Project is directed by Morag Styles, Professor of Children’s Poetry at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education who has worked in collaboration with Beverley Bryan, Professor of Language Education, University of the West Indies, Mona.  The programme was motivated by their determination to raise the profile of poetry in both British and Caribbean schools, where it is often regarded by teachers and pupils as inaccessible – and either too difficult or boring.

As a result, poetry is a neglected area of the English curriculum in both British and Caribbean secondary schools and universities – despite the fact that it shares much of its appeal with popular music and draws so much on the colourful vitality of ordinary speech.  Teachers tend to be less confident in communicating the appeal of poetry than other literary genres, and young people often have fewer opportunities to develop a deep and lasting love of it.  This means that many children leave school without experiencing the excitement of a form that can, as Emily Dickinson famously put it, “lift the top of your head off”.

To address this lack of exposure, the Caribbean Poetry Project has developed a course aimed at giving teachers the skills and confidence needed to help their pupils engage with poetry in a lively and creative way.  This course has now been run very successfully, in varied forms both in the UK and the Caribbean.  Teachers from a London school, who took part in the UK-based course, will be talking at the conference about the ways in which the course has helped them bring poetry alive in the classroom and encourage pupils in their own creativity.

Key note speakers at the conference are: Christian Campbell who will talk about Caribbean Poetry and Freedom; Mervyn Morris who will discuss Tracking Variations – Word and Sound; Linton Kwesi Johnson whose lecture is titled Remembering Michael Smith; Olive Senior who will explore the theme Locked into language with a golden key: Poetry and Childhood; and Beverley Bryan, who will talk about Cross-cultural approaches to teaching Caribbean poetry.