BIRD HEAD SON THE POET

The new Spasm Band video for 'She is the sea'

2011-08-26T20:46:00.002Z

Audio & Video Clips

2011-07-12T22:06:00.002Z

Its summer, which means that I'm touring Europe with the Spasm Band. We have a new album released this August, so as we get ready for that, here are a few recent clips from my recent performances with and without the Spasm Band.
Firstly though, listen to an edit of the first release from the forthcoming album, this is 'Griot' a homage to all urban griots of past, present and future.

Anthony Joseph 'Griot' (Long Radio Edit) by heavenlysweetness

And here is part 1 of recent clip of a performance in Antwerp with Brazzvll.

Here's Pt 2.

Finally, here's a recent performance from Rich Mix, London. The song is 'Generations'. The album version was produced by Gerry Dammers.

A brief excerpt from my reading at the launch of Magma's latest edition, The Troubador, London June 27

2011-07-05T21:28:00.001Z

Philly's Congo Prayer - a slideshow

2011-05-05T11:17:00.002Z

This is a slide show I did for a poem from my forthcoming Rubber Orchestras collection. Its a tribute to Philly Joe Jones, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy.

Interview in Shelf Unbound

2011-04-24T00:33:00.002Z

Here's a recent interview I did for the US magazine Shelf Unbound in which I discuss influences, process and music.

You can read the full interview

here

Anthony Joseph at March's writLOUD - Anthony Joseph

2011-04-24T00:24:00.008Z

Here's a podcast of a reading I did recently for writLOUD, Rada, London.

Anthony Joseph at March 2011 writLOUD

The poet treats the writLOUD audience to poetry from his new old and as yet unpublished collections - while discussing the provenance of his work.

Reading in Paris, Jan 30 2011

2011-01-20T02:37:00.002Z

Rubber Orchestras Cover Art

2011-01-20T02:31:00.000Z

Here's a sneak preview of the cover art for my forthcoming collection Rubber Orchestras, due October 2011 on Salt.

Review of 'Bird Head Son' by CRB

2010-10-05T21:31:00.003Z

Anthony Joseph’s opening poem is titled “Bosch’s Vision”, and begins:
It started as I was leaving
…..with a dim groan in the afternoon.
What started? Where are we? The title, combined with these opening two lines, is unsettling. His is a wider canvas than Robinson’s, used to explore the personal and the universal. Like Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings, Joseph offers terrifying images of suffering and Hell, which he transposes to modern Europe and Trinidad. The phrase “a dim groan” gestures to later themes of a painful upbringing, the lamentation for a distant father, and his mother’s death, to which the section “The Tropic of Cancer” is devoted. His uncluttered opening sentence calls to mind Derek Walcott’s search for the line of poetry as a clear and most natural statement. There are other instances, as in “Conductors of his Mystery”, which ends: “He came back smelling of the sea.” On the other hand, the breath space in the second line of his opening poem offers the merest hint of Kamau Brathwaite’s Sycorax style. These elements suggest that Joseph has kept a close ear on contemporary Caribbean writing, and we should not be surprised to find echoes of other Caribbean poets throughout the collection. So, for example, in this poem he recalls Paul Keens-Douglas’s refrain “Tell me again” from his poem of the same title, which invokes, among other things, the mixed blessing of Trinidad’s oil.

Here's a new review of my recent 'Bird Head Son' collection by the Caribbean Review of Books, reviewed alongside my friend Roger Robinson's 'Suckle'.

Read the whole review here :

http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/23-september-2010/homestyle/

Capybara - from Rubber Orchestras, the forthcoming colletion

2010-08-14T06:15:00.003Z

Capybara
1.
Cool and dead like long brown shoes
in an Akasic coffin with Efua beads,
rimmed like a nation of Baptist promises
and desirable bells, sapphire skin, thin skin of night.

Who hurried back to San Juan?
Whose right side of hip belonged to pleasure?
Who came
shuddering
in the dining room
on a black leather chair
deep in athletic water,
like hummingbirds
in black pitch bush
alone in the house of the Capybara?
And Trinidad,
pinpricked with departments
at the ministry of light,
push those waves of fizzing foam from your throat.
Your sister, waiting in those Hindu hills.
Her laugh, and see her airport uniform,
nestled in the footfall of that nauseous heaven.
Dust on the roof of time.

2.
Marie
of the Palestine.
Your subtle twitch, your very intention
remained in the church.
But your Deacon brews the turbulence
of an ill fitting Jesus,
and in Port of Spain
the cold Capybara’s brain is lifted up and eaten
Its eye still flash the flash eye
and I fall in love.

Venetian red is the latitude
of these cruel trees.

Reading at Soho Theatre in May 2010

2010-07-26T19:12:00.002Z

Blue Hues - A poem from 'Rubber Orchestras'

2010-05-12T13:32:00.001Z

This is another poem from my work-in-progress, forthcoming collection, Rubber Orchestras.

Blue Hues

She said

blue, like a strange heel

steps out of bed

hunting with devilish technique

like trick bag in the white broad’s hand

The river forest hid a palace

recap of the blue slash and pocket

we walked, sliver of a deep,

her confection was flame-red

like bursting inside

Exquisite, and parted her lips

cheek bones of her

beat back the black hustler

drag played the con for sure

like old crow whiskey

in the swedish bosom of her lullabye

her hairy thighs quivered

side of the bed

blue like fifteen echoes of winter

southbound to boulevards of dirty kickbacks

weeping like Bessie

Smith with her speckled head

she guaranteed a 50-50 split

There was a funk box in the rocking room

I was years well heeled

I played a tight con

in the hard eyed world of big time crooks

once, the half witch crushed blood in my rainstorm

and awfully in love

I wore a brokedick hat like a jitney driver

starving in a bargain for coins and Dutch head

with a broken shinbone

dope racket slick and mean

like some hurting thing

till the leather tong snapped

and sealed the sweet miracle

of her breath and hip

blue blowoff in the slum section

built upstairs

of gorilla pussy and champagne.

Poem for Franklin Rosemont

2010-03-23T12:48:00.003Z

This is another poem from my forthcoming Rubber Orchestras collection. This time, a poem written in tribute to the late Franklin Rosemont, leader of the Chicago Surrealist Group.

Poem for Franklin Rosemont

beyond words

or destinations

visual and multiplying

intricate and persistent

they found a faraway place

in paris

its potential splendour

hid sequels and contrary sex

in the early hours of 1960

proclivities

of struggle and synthesis

within the most complete utopia

of fire and speed

dream letters

were drowned

in invisible stars

silent suburbs of jazz and primitive hell

were spontaneously glimpsed

in rigid cities

in which these souvenirs

were read

at the chicago public library

shuddering

loosley

in method and name

on the avenue between Greene and Zion

intergalactic radio

sent a message

unifying voice

like a violin

during the anxious months of miracles

and triple time

proto-hip like every second syllable, free floating

like a giggle to the subversive current

of eden’s swift sea

by prime energy of libido

by degrees of fear

darker skin and the fragment of shadow

lucid and unique

as paradox to paradox

as serious as blue silk

These are the definitions of the palace of signs

these are the masks with which

I hitchhiked across the wonderland

and travelled by radio

to resemble that mask

eccentric and boundless

in the image of you.

Belladonna in the South seas

further

past stairs and doorways past

afro-american ruins

bamboo by the dozen among those denizens of marvellous film

dead

yet actually distant

and exhilarating

like dissident blues swung from the zydeco

in the brutal suburbs of Pharaoh Sanders

emerging

from light

into some literary response

Black Brown and Beige : Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora

2010-03-21T19:54:00.001Z

I have 2 prose poems included in this landmark anthology, which was probably the late great Franklin Rosemont's final testament. Its an incredible collection of surrealist writings from the Caribbean and the entire African Diaspora. Essential reading if ever there was.

Caribbean Erotic Anthology

2010-03-11T02:36:00.002Z

I have some work included in this new anthology of Erotic Caribbean writing. Many years in the making. My contribution is called 'The RealTime Trajectory of Explicit Love'.

A wide-ranging anthology of poetry, short fiction, and critical essays designed to generate thought about what is still a conflicted area of Caribbean literature and culture, this revealing, in-depth examination explores the many facets of the erotic in contemporary Caribbean literature—from desire; the psychology of abusive relationships; the role of fantasy; and issues of infidelity, lust, rape, self-respect, self-love, and child-birth. This anthology also discusses the Caribbean frameworks of sexuality as a cultural construct, from the role of machismo, homophobia, and Protestant-fundamentalist sexual ideologies as specific forms of denial and hostility to the open expression of sexual desire. The essays then extend the book’s scope beyond literature and consider the impact of the erotic upon other aspects of Caribbean life, ranging from song lyrics to the general issues of female empowerment in Caribbean societies. Featuring the work of well-known writers such as Nalo Hopkins, Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes and the work of many fresh new talents such as Obediah Michael Smith, Christian Campbell, and Tiphanie Yanique, this anthology aims to create a new framework in which the full spectrum of the erotic in Caribbean literature and life can be freely explored.

Buy it from Peepal Tree : http://www.peepaltreepress.com/single_book_display.asp?isbn=9781845230890

Work included in two new anthologies

2010-03-05T17:34:00.004Z

I was fortunate enough to be in included in the new anthology of contemporary British Poetry 'Identity Parade' (Bloodaxe) as well as in 'Red' the new anthology from Peepal Tree, both published this month.

"Riff for Morton" from "Rubber Orchestras"

2010-01-17T13:13:00.003Z

This is the a poem from a new collection I'm working on, Rubber Orchestras. The collection will feature 100 poems, and will be published in early 2011 if all goes to plan. More soon.

Riff for Morton

Damper down

both phallic and acquainted

with African blues.

The hips suggest

good jazz )(i.e.sex)

Anita, 1900.

the african fiction of whiteness is absolute.

arcade saloons and dance halls

gambling down like evil or false notes

blue notes of white magic

Jelly roll morton

at the cadillac cafe

pimp or piano drunk and sick

on the bricktops of vancouver

Ragtime Billy

from Chicago

a clarinetist at the Regent

1923

went southwest with the wrath of poseidon

gambling down

in terrific storms which broke down

the pensacola kid

at the Paradise gardens

with the first three notes of Dead Man Blues

and The Pearls

yes he left mamanita, yes he left

yes he let his beard grow

spat blood in the broom closet

yes he let his beard grow

there were many diamonds

she left many diamonds

cash on cadillac cars

duke ellington

had swing bands

basie and calloway

had a cluster of tricks

which in fact were as spikes at kingpin sessions

and in the exact rooms of the kidworth hotel

where days passed like clinic cards

Morton left the sepia spot and took his body to the jungle inn

on 126 North West

Red Peppers and the attack of alibi, restless priests

listening to Pops Mabel

at the church of intercourse

Jelly you rascal

you minstrel

you lover

you bone meat of the creole caribbean

- vicious semen, Jelly

bake ‘em brown and break a banjo across their backs

jelly you blues talker

1930

the worried blues and the voodoo of your laughter

stepping lean in stove pipes

with the prestige of your father

to the very end.

NEWS: 'BIRD HEAD SON'S READING TOUR OF GERMANY/AUSTRIA 2009

2009-11-02T13:03:00.001Z

From November 16 to 23 I will be embarking on a short German spoken word tour reading from my new 'Bird Head Son' collection. I will be mainly reading at universities, with a date in Austria on Nov 23. The last German tour, in 2007 was an incredible experience, so I'm really looking forward to this one.

The dates are :

Nov 16 - - JENA - Rosensale, University of Jena - 20.00

Nov 17 - SIEGEN - Kultur Cafe, University of Siegen - 18.00

Nov 18 - BOCHUM - GBCF 04/514 University of Bochum - 16.00

Nov 19 - DORTMUND - Sonnendeck, University of Dortmund - 19.00

Nov 20 - MAINZ - University of Mainz - 12.00

Nov 23 - VIENNA - University of Vienna - 19.00

For more info on the book see http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/9781844714353.htm

News Views and Reviews

2009-07-14T22:59:00.001Z

Yes, I know, its been an incredibly long time since I updated this site. Fact is, I've been busy. Been on the road with the Spasm Band in Europe, touring relentlessly. Its been hectic, moving from place to plane, eating weird shit and drinking copious amount of Martiniquan rum but also performing some heavy shows with the guys. This leg of the tour goes on till Aug 9 when we fly in from Reunion Island to play the Big Chill. There are more gigs in September, October, then in November : I tour Germany promoting my Bird Head Son book. In terms of writing, I am working on 2 major texts. Firstly, my PHD project, a fictional biog of lord kitchener (not the English guy, the calypsonian), finally managing to get a rhythm going, getting through 1000 words a day, in 80 days I'll have a novel, well, at least a novel lenght thing. Wish me luck. Secondly, a new collection I'm hoping will get published next year, its an abstract, experimental work-100 poems based on a surrealistic technique I think I might have invented. Its a secret. But the book will be called 'Rubber Orchestras' (Ted Joans describing Bob Kaufman's work). Its a strangely haunting work that will either be deeply profound (concerning the slippages and dark spaces of language) or deeply odd. Either way, I'm enjoying the process of discovery. I've finished teaching for the summer : a great group of Birkbeck folks, amazing to see the transformation from beginner to writer by the end of the 22 week course. They even put together a booklet of their work as an end of course gift to me. Good stuff. Teaching resumes in September when I will be teaching a new Life Writing course. I designed the syllabus, looking forward to it. So, to make up for the lost time, here's a vid from a recent New Morning, Paris performance.

Découvrez Découvrez Mondomix.com, le magazine des Musiques et Cultures dans le Monde!

And here's a new review of the Bird Head Son album from Cyclic Defrost

The first thing that hits you is the funk, the throbbing urban grooves, taut, almost militant 70’s funk that drifts into the stirring power of spiritual and free jazz, even Afrobeat or bizarrely enough Calypso music. And then we meet Anthony Joseph. He is a poet. But you wouldn’t know it. He comes across like a New Orleans preacher, loud, proud, rousing, over the sweat and the sin of the music. His delivery is somewhere between Martin Luther King Jnr and Jimi Hendrix, these incredibly vivid spiritual street stories that build and swell with the music. Make no mistake he’s not thumbing earnestly through a dog eared excercise book, he’ll wail and sing, writhe and live the music. These are songs, not poetry put to music, where the music can just flow on instrumentally for long periods before Joseph will pop up with his unique wordplays. Jospeh is Trinidadian, based England, he even lectures in creative writing there, though it’s his super cool 7 piece band with horns, hand drums, wah guitar, organs and shakers that really takes this out of the classroom. They’ve really transcended the spoken word medium here, creating the kind of obscure rare groove record that crate diggers would go mad for if it was made thirty five years ago, like it sounds like it should have. Bob Baker Fish

SPATIAL AKA

2009-03-17T01:52:00.004Z

On Tuesday March 10 2009 I performed at the Barbican Center, London with Jerry Dammers' Spatial AKA, here are a couple backstage pics.

Francine Luce, Anthony Joseph & Space Ape

Anthony Joseph & Jerry Dammers

Space is the place...

NEW SPASM BAND BLOG

2009-02-10T10:18:00.002Z

A new blog has just been set up to deal specifically with my work with the Spasm Band.Things were getting a bit crowded on my birdheadson blog so I will us that one for literary work and this for music
spasmband.blogspot.com
We will post music,archive material, photos, videos,interviews, a city by city blog of the Bird Head Son tour, plus other random things as they occur along the road. We will also be offering rare and unreleased Spasm Band recordings for the fans. Enjoy, and do leave comments so we can keep in touch.

Bright Moments,
Anthony

The work

2009-01-31T02:13:00.001Z

This January/Feb sees the joint release of my new album and book, both entitled Bird Head Son. At the moment I am on tour with the Spasm band throughout Europe and beyond in support of the album which was released in France in January. It will be simulteanously released with the new book in the UK on Feb 7.
Info on the UK album launch is included below.
Once again, thanks for all the support from fans, supporters and colleagues for making this all a reality. See the textology section of thie site for more info and excerpts and myspace.com/adjoseph for music samples and tour info, plus some eager graphics. New Time Shuffle!

Bird Head Son - the book published by Salt Publishing Feb 7.

Bird Head Son - the album, released Jan 20 in Europe, Feb 7 in the UK.

Album Launch gig & Party at Cargo:

Kartel are offering a special deal on this show. For purchasing tickets you also get the chance to pre-order the new album ‘BIRD HEAD SON’, for the very special price of only £5! (normal price £9.99 in store)

Order your tickets from :

Kartel Box Office/Shop

Bird Head Son the album is released on the 9th February 2009, along with the book of the same name.
For more info on the album and the Bird Head Son Tour see www.myspace.com/adjoseph

Beyone the linear narrative

2009-01-30T01:32:00.003Z

Have a look at this new blog set up by Goldsmiths's Pinter center for their 'beyond the linear narrative' project. I'm one of 2 Phd students involved in the project.

http://thepintercentre.blogspot.com/

Anthony Joseph and the Spasm Band aux Transmusicales Dec 2008 ft Joe Bowie

2009-01-08T19:22:00.002Z

Anthony Joseph and the Spasm Band
Uploaded by zazoom

Conductors - A poem from 'Bird Head Son'

2008-11-28T02:18:00.006Z

Albert Joseph, Santa Cruz, Trinidad, August 2007. Photo by A. Joseph

Conductors of his Mystery is a poem inspired by my father. Its in the new Bird Head Son collection, as well as on the Bird Head Son album, due in January 2009. The song was recorded in Paris last spring and features The Spasm Band joined by the great Joseph Bowie on Trombone and David Neerman on electric vibraphone. You can hear an excerpt from the song at http://www.myspace.com/adjoseph

These are the lyrics of the poem :

Conductors of his Mystery
for Albert Joseph

The day my father came back from the sea
broke and handsome
I saw him walking across the savannah
and knew at once it was him.
His soulful stride, the grace of his hat,
the serifs of his name
~ fluttering ~
in my mouth.

In his bachelor's room in El Socorro that year
he played his 8-tracks through a sawed-off speaker box.
The coil would rattle an the cone would hop
but women from the coconut groves
still came to hear
his traveller's tales.

Shop he say he build by Goose Lane junction.
But it rough from fabricated timber string.
Picka foot jook wood
like what Datsun ship in.
And in this snackette he sold red mango,
mints and tamarind.
Its wire mesh grill hid his suffer well tough.
Till the shop bust,
and he knock out the boards
and roam east
to Enterprise village.

Shack he say he build same cross-cut lumber.
Wood he say he stitch same carap bush.
Roof he say he throw same galvanize. He got
ambitious with wood
in his middle ages.

That night I spent there,
with the cicadas in that clear village sky,
even though each room was still unfinished
and each sadness hid. I was with
my father
and I would've stayed
if he had asked.
Brown suede,
8 eye high
desert boots. Beige
gabardine bells with the 2 inch folds.
He was myth. The legend of him.
Once I touched the nape of his boot
to see if my father was real.
Beyond the brown edges of photographs
and the songs we sang
to sing him back
from the sweep and sea agonies
of his distance.
Landslide scars. He sent no letters.

His small hands were for the fine work of his carpentry.
His fingers to trace the pitch pine's grain.
And the raised rivers of his veins,
the thick rings of his charisma,
the scars — the maps of his palms —
were the sweet conductors
of his mystery.
Aiyé Olokun.
He came back smelling of the sea.

Caribbean Review of Books

2008-10-17T20:16:00.005Z

I was honoured this month to have 2 poems - 'Blues for Cousin Alvin' and 'Bosch's Vision'- both from my forthcoming collection Bird Head Son included in the cuurent issue of the acclaimed Caribbean Review of Books, the regions foremost literary journal. See the CRB website for more info on the issue, its definately worth subscribing to the CRB if you want to keep up with Caribbean literature's past, present and future.

Bird Head Son - cover

2008-10-15T10:11:00.006Z

This is the cover from my forthcoming poetry collection 'Bird Head Son', due from Salt in November 08. The image is of my brother and I one Carnival Monday, up Ramkissoon Trace, San Juan, circa 78/79, getting ready to go into Port of Spain in tracksuits we got from England. Dennis is in red with the gangster lean.

River Breakin Biche - from 'Bird Head Son' Audio

2008-09-18T09:05:00.004Z

River breakin biche is a poem from my forthcoming collection 'Bird Head Son'(Salt 2008).
The poem speaks of 'breakin biche' or 'playing truant'. (Biche = fr -Bush) - So we left school and went to the river bush...it speaks of these adventures along the banks of the San Juan River...from San Juan Government Secondary.
I'll be posting more poems and audio here leading up to the books publication later this autumn, so check back often.

Woman on the bass - Trinidad All Stars, Panorama Finals 1980

2008-08-30T10:40:00.003Z

1980. All Stars playing Scrunter's 'Woman on the bass' with an arrangement by Leon 'Smooth' Edwards. One of the greatest Panorama performances.

May spirits build nests in his beard

2008-07-26T10:45:00.003Z

'I like to play fast. I get excited, and I have to sort of control myself, restrain myself. But when the rhythm section gets cooking, I want to 'explode'. --- Johnny Griffin - April 24 1948 - July 24 2008

"Unquestionably Johnny Griffin can play the tenor saxophone faster, literally, than anyone else alive. At least he can claim this until it's demonstrated otherwise. And in the course of playing with this incredible speed, he also manages to blow longer without refueling than you would ordinarily consider possible. With this equipment he is able to play almost all there could possibly be played in any given chorus." - Ralph Gleason

Snowdonia

2008-07-01T15:26:00.002Z

Saturday morning
Climbing through Snowdon in a gust of fine rain
down from devil's kitchen
picking up crytstals
on the shores of Llyn Idwal

Dream on Corbeau Mountain - Live in Studio

2008-06-22T18:54:00.001Z

Dream on Corbeau Montain live in Studio de Meudon near Paris, France. You will find it on Anthony Joseph and the Spasm Band's forthcoming album 'Bird Head Son' to be released in fall 2008.

Featuring :
Anthony Joseph : vocals, Andrew John : bass, Colin Webster : saxophone
Adrian Owusu : guitar, Paul Zimmerman : congas / djembe, Paul Brett : irons / snare / cymbals, Craig 'Cigar' Tamlin : misc percussions, special guest : Joe Bowie on trombone, Jean Paul Gonnod : sound engineer, Julien : engineer assistant, Antoine Rajon : producer.
Filmed and edited by Martin Meissonnier and 'Campagne Première' crew

Two Workshops I'm facilitating in July

2008-06-19T00:17:00.001Z

The King Died, the Queen Died: Understanding Plot with Anthony Joseph

Saturdays 12th & 19th July 12 - 3 pm at Brighton Writers' Centre
£32/£30 concs, Friends of THE SOUTH £30/£28 concs

Plot at times takes on a mysterious quality. This workshop aims to dispel the myths and to show the universality of plotting in storytelling. Participants will work individually and in groups, examining the relationship of characterisation to plot, generating stories and taking part in writing exercises which will develop suspense and tension in their fiction.

To book and for more info : http://www.thesouth.org.uk/workshops.html#event8

Sounds of Poetry

Music and poetry course to commemorate the Windrush Anniversary.

Work alongside musicians to create work in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the arrival of 492 Caribbean men and women on the Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks in June 1948.

Participants will explore aspects of identity, exile and diaspora and how the influx of Caribbean musicians in particular changed the cultural landscape of the UK, introducing Calypso, Ska and Reggae to Britain.

Tutor: Anthony Joseph

Wednesdays 9, 16, 23, 30 July
7pm – 9pm

Nettlefold Hall
Norwood High Street
West Norwood
London
SE27 9JX
[TRAIN] West Norwood

Number of places: 8
£50/£30 concessions

For more info and to book spaces contact :

Spread the Word
77 Lambeth Walk
London
SE11 6DX
Phone: (+44) 020 7735 3111
Fax: (+44) 020 7735 2666

http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/index.php?id=events&event=565

Root Strata - circa 78

2008-06-10T01:11:00.004Z

Cesaire

2008-04-17T23:50:00.007Z

1913 - 2008

I was introduced to Aime Cesaire's work circa 1994, in particular Cahiers..., I came via the surrealist movement, into negritude and the depth of Caribbean feeling. In my most recent book, The African Origins of UFOs one of the 3 sections that comprise the text - that deals with a return home from exile is called 'Journal of a return to a floating Island', again inspired by Cesaire's seminal work of diasporic identity. A floating island, this is how I still see home; as an island afloat in the sea of memory. Aime inspired that title. He inspired us all, diasporic poets, not simply poetically but politically.
Came home tonight after guesting with the Heliocentrics at Cargo, and then Mulatu Astatke came on with his rolling soul and I knew that that was the closest we would get to see someone like Fela. Came home to read Aime Cesaire passed. May spirits build nests in his beard.

Spasm Band Textology

2008-03-19T02:04:00.005Z

Spasm Band at Cargo March 2008, pic by Lexxie.
More pics from Cargo Mar 11 08

Early next week The Spasm Band go to Paris to play at the Banlieues Bleues Festival. The next day we go into a sky lit studio on the outskirts of Paris to record our new album with a 10 piece band which includes Joseph Bowie, Keziah Jones, Adrian 'Sun Blooz'Owusu and Jamika Ajalon. The legendary sophomore album blues is upon us but we are blessed by the weight of heavy music and liquid textology.

Rubber Orchestras

2008-02-26T02:09:00.008Z

Presence Africane

I visit rubber orchestras – Ted Joans

Joan’s velvet
landscape
disorients
shadow/s
expresses its form
as electrical forests

Cesaire’s
virgins
of presence
promises
metamorphasis
initiates
itinerant parades
becoming
engines of cease-
less and fugitive

transperence

engines of
Egypt and suprise

-----------------------------------------------------
From a recent experiment with surrealist technique.
Unfortunately the formatting has been lost so you can't
experience the spacing and tabbing which is as much
part of the poem as the words themselves. I will try
to correct it, eventually. Although I think it also
works well as it is.
-----------------------------------------------------

A poem is a machine made of words - William Carlos Williams

New Poem from 'Bird Head Son'

2008-02-16T02:54:00.006Z

NURSE

Nurse?

Nurse who used to goal keep for Hilltop United?
Knock knee Nurse who brother was a gangster
an get shoot up down south in San Fernando?
Nurse from Febeau?
Nurse who used to ride with Loaf and Lochan?
An carry ting to chook man? Nurse,
he mother was a teacher.

He self.

Crossing by South Quay in front Royal Bank
where the drag mall used to be. He
poor and humble down in this ketch arse town
where man killing man like mapepire.
He neck like a straw in the bottle he holdin.

Rollin

It like a swan.
In the bitter light.

And the verbs of his eyes: sun wash that out.

..............................

This is a work in progress but it may get included in my fortcoming collection 'Bird Head Son'. More about the title another time. This was started in Trinidad last August, it was my 1st time back in 6 years and I saw an old badjohn I used to know, crossing a port of spain street in the late afternoon light.

Curtis

2008-01-22T02:05:00.001Z

when I see curtis in august dat yellowbone day after de rain in five rivers

leaning against dat blue wood door and he show me he sore foot how it ban up

say it pain him like hell and creak the hinge so ah peep it how it bandage

and how foot fly does zoot there so in his earthen room with the linoleum and smoke

I never did know dat 2 month later I getting this message in winter

when the cold have teeth and the grey does come down like a ol’man resting after lunch.

it choke me right here so and a couldn’t ‘ven talk

never thought it would hol’ me so

but no matter how you stretch and bend it

family come first

that same curtis we did love the same rockers and roots

that was heavy down in 79

is he who uses to ram bass on eight track and tape tape gi mi

is he one dusk in new street by the ravine say fellas leh we go an get some dead

dead as in chicken fried! and had us walk all round the indian farmlands of tacarigua

past unfinished villages and the unprimed masonary of slow houses

red brick dust and the dirt road we trod

seeking the smell of burning oil

and creole seasoning

and was take curtis take us to some backyard place like a slaughtery

and buy up a few bag a frozen fowl

and we now glum and despondent but laughing all the way home about how we been got

dead mean chicken live or dead back then but dead mean curtis dead today

and today I put on my long coat and went out into the night to teach

and all the while feeling the rumble of this dead

this sudden tug as if curtis and I were attached by some tough gossamer web

that sudden so it snap

and he gone reeling

reeling

that august day I snap him leaning on the brown bottom door, he had plans

said he woulda break down the ol house he father built with my mother and rebuild it

because the wood was rot and the rain did leak and this land is ours

and I wondered then, wee poopa , but you foot

you foot like it weeping black rain and I know sorefoot from long time

when it so it doh heal

mother mabel from champs fleur had one a bad one that never heal

it use to run pus

and she often bouce it on a bench when she ketch spirt with goblet in hand

in church on Sunday night

is curtis he father give the keys to the truck when forklift did jook out he life on the port

and curtis turn man

see him they

he did always love car an mechanical thing

Dr Roi Kwabena 1956 - 2008

2008-01-15T11:00:00.002Z

Dr Roi Kwabena born 23/7/1956 Trinidad died 9/1/2008 England

I never had the good fortune of meeting Dr Kwabena but I was introduced to his work via a mutual friend. Another Trini poet man done.

LETTER FROM SEA LOTS

“........only five pounds yuh send?
bread, sugar an’ milk gone up.........
buses doh run.... water still go
now severe-threat in charge ah de water in maraval
so we looking out fuh poison...

money hard to come by....we down here suffering
sure..we have gas, oil, menthanol....
....steel, an’ sugar exporting..
buh mangrove still vamping...
factories not hiring.....even race horse protesting....
crime rampant as jurors hunted
laws improvising an’ english q-cees hustling..
buh teachers’ money still owing...

yuh ask for news? any news is sad news.....
doubles-man an’ market vendors still on de run
kidnapping an’ family murders add to dis shame
while meh OLE gran still worried sick ‘bout she pension...

cable an’ wireful, wid sure-hell come back...
even powertake an’ brit grasp follow fashion
buh maxi still accept short change
yet parts expensive..so only insurance profittin’
as sprangers still roam in de night

de only difference is de den opposition
must now salute for de independence parade...

senator..ah sure yuh would ah like tha....”

Roi Kwabena (from Selected Poems)

and that new day's coming soon...

2008-01-07T03:04:00.000Z

Dulwich Park, Jan 2 2008

NUMOON

2007-12-20T12:06:00.000Z

Pic by Nailman

Just played at an amazing festival in Rotterdam. The Numoon Festival, with Ursula Rucker, Joseph Bowie (defunkt), Bembe Segue, Mark de Clive Lowe, Kain the Poet. Collective improvisation with the Numoon Orchestra conducted by Hanyo van Oosterom.
I was there from Friday to Sunday in cold Rotterdam. Went walking round the block and came upon Kain in a record shop buying a TS Eliot album. Kain has long been an inspiration to me, ever since a friend gave me The Blue Gureilla LP, which every spoken word artist must hear.
The whole vibe of the fest was beautiful. The people were open and warm, the music; and it was all about the musiC - was spellbinding with Halle, Colonel Red, Spoonface, Pan Africans, even the Silent Disco where folks dance round with headphones. For me though the performance that moved, shocked and had me deepened was Kain. Deep is not the word for what he did.
I guess you can tell a festival is special when there is no merchandise stall and DJ Gea is spinning Louis Armstrong.
The concerts were filmed and will be shown in the Netherlands on New Years Eve I believe, it will also be available to view online at www.numoonlab.tv
For more info on the Numoon Lab see : www.myspace.com/numoonlab

there are some pics from the festival at http://flickr.com/search/?q=numoon

and thanks to Hanyo, Bembe, Mark, Gea, Spoonface and his band, Joe Bowie for making it so special. I gotta be there next time!

Footnote: There is nothing that can prepare you for a performance by Kain the poet. It is a life changing, soul intensifying experience. Watch out for the blue Guerilla.

Reading at Borders

2007-12-01T01:31:00.000Z

The Grimore of Grimalkin

2007-11-30T22:23:00.000Z

My co-host at La Langoustine est morte has just had this, her debut collection published by Salt. Read her.

Besides an inveterate love of language which makes you write “her malachite décolletage,” whatever else you need to be a good poet is here. It could be sounds. Come right in; don't step gently then.

BERNADETTE MAYER

Sascha Akhtar repels ghosts with this text and liberates the word from the burden of meaning. These poems are spells and sonorous soundings that have the power to frighten, seduce or enchant. Akhtar aspires to magic. This is a timeless and vital collection from a poet willing to transcend the liminal.

ANTHONY JOSEPH

For more reviews and info see http://www.myspace.com/saschaakhtar

Acoustic Avant Gardism CD

2007-10-31T00:41:00.000Z

Ronnie McGrath - Acoustic Avant Gardism - streams of consciousness poems for neo-surrealists (Ankhademia Press 2007, 15 track CD)

Footprints
more abstract than flower stems
set their homes in dusty bookshelves (Perpendicularities..)

All you hipsters, so-called blak dada intellegenics, performance poet dons having portraits taken leaning against brutal doorways, all you post modern poem writers suffering sick in attics waiting for something new, here it is. This is mouth music for your mind, shifting paradigms with the blistering texture of words and abstract Jazz feeling. It MUST be heard.
For copies contact Ronnie at info@ankhademia.com - do it now!

I just got back from doing a reading with Ronnie McGrath in Acton. It was the reading, of all the readings I've done this year, that I was most excited about. Because of course I love Ronnie's work - we share an estatic aesthetic sensibility - a vision of the liminal, also because it was billed as 'The Black Avant Garde' - as such as this, a historic event, a forum for experimentation. And the response from the audience was a beauty-full thing/one woman said how she felt her whole body open up, had a physical reaction to the poetry, exposed her vulnerability.We are attempting here to re-locate, re-design and re-focus the meandering nature of our legacy as it wanders narrow to the edge of definition and installation in time by kente cloths and black fists. More soon!

poem in process no.112

2007-10-21T01:40:00.000Z

Five Rivers, Trinidad Aug 07

Untitled

Jack Spaniard nest
wrap up under galvanise
cross cut teak/appropriate
- a horner man beeps – fish man – scale hand - fish van
an plastic flowers an the pink thick drapes
the dog
panting on the roof
daylong
day come
an all these hills
all these hills an holy mountainsides
green an purple
ablaze
wit the gospel radio that on all day
an alright –
all these things like umbilical vine.

my sister
my sister with the sling of love
my sister
my sister
with the muddy gust of tears
our mother
who art in heaven…
with the acolytes and the wooden crosses
crossin hell yard in the stingin
stingin rain

|||||||

Metonymy

2007-10-16T01:59:00.000Z

The origin of the work is not the first influence, it is the first posture: one copies a role, then, by metonymy, an art: I begin producing by reproducing the person I want to be.
- R. Barthes

Home is an island...

2007-09-26T21:12:00.000Z

Indeed. And so much has come and gone. Finished my MA, been on tour, from France to Morocco to Germany to New York, New Jersey, been on travels reading and chanting the Voodoo funk with The Spasm Band at a multitude of festivals and it was all good experience. In the process now, of writing new material for the next album.

Been to Trinidad, first time home in 6 years and 3 weeks went like a green blur, gone, head won't turn left enough to view her, went up and down the east west corridor, eating good food and drinking wild rum, had to wait till the last friday night to taste some wild meat in Diego Martin, generally illegal and protected species in the battle hills of Paramin where time stands still and there is a concrete road that leads to Maracas Bay, those blue hills and rainforest where torrential rain blew and years ago my brother and I walked along the long asphalt all the terrible way home, went to my grandmothers grave and found it overgrown with razor grass and rayo and a sadness pulled my face down, there in the misty avanues between tomb and cathedral bush and bush and the heat of this island : Home is an Island.

By the end I had to ask, how many photographs can you take? How many roads can you drive a rented car along? How many embraces can you keep? How can you consume this place, keep it in my secret underlung so that it won't fade and even now I am filled with the sad blues of longing. I miss Trinidad yes, of course, but what is more, I miss the person I was there.The person I begin to become after 3 weeks there, when my skin gets its colour back so that I pass unnoticed.

At the barbers, same one I went to in 2001, in Cantaro village, in fact the last barber I went to since then, him, thick foot and balding himself, always grinning, he shaved my head with a razor blade and then sprayed some stinging shit on my head and said, 'Dis go sting lil bit' and when I really ketch the burn so he say 'Dat is to let you know you in Trinidad'

And I saw my brother and my father...my brother was not the clinging embrace I needed and I sighed, same old struggle. My father...in his stiff pressed security guard uniform, aloof and under a guise of mischeviousness,he laughs, but under that bridge a muddy river flows...embrace him.. his whole self, rum, his bible and the lash of it.

Here then, there are some more photos here at his Flickr set

Will Alexander

2007-04-25T23:48:00.000Z

I was in New York recently reading at the Bowery and at Rutgers University. I met a deep brother from LA there, a spellbinding and radical poet called Will Alexander. Radical in the sense that his work challenges the reader in a way not often encountered. It creates its own self sufficient universe, what my friend James Oscar used to call 'the metaphysics of another world', a world in which the nomenclature of scientific fact and poetic possibility and resonance co-exist within the same strope. It is a difficult work which in places reminds me of some of Nathaniel Mackey's work - 'Splay Anthem' - it does not give up its secrets easily, yet anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Brother Will from Los Angeles, his poetics bringing to mind what Mingus said about Raashan Roland Kirk, that those who think he's all about a gimmick should just listen to him with their eyes closed. And this, reference to Alexanders' Canticles, with the back cover blur by Eliot Weinberger who says 'His erudition and vocabulary, like MacDiarmid's are vast:read Alexander with a dictionary and you'll see how precise he is.'

yes

poetics

its force

jettisoned by "hypotaxis"

by...paratactic co-ordination

& fire

From Will Alexander's The Stratospheric Canticles.

Spew and Revolution – The Revolutionary impulse in Caribbean Poetics (Excerpt)

2007-04-25T11:18:00.000Z

This is an excerpt from a longer essay, if anyone would like to read the full text please email me.

We spew ourselves up, but already underneath laughter can be heard.
– Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

In the chapter ‘On National Culture’ of his 1963 book, The Wretched of the Earth, the Martiniquan author and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon argues that within a colonised nation, the artistic output of the native writer evolves through three distinct phases. In the initial phase Fanon suggests, that the writers output reflects his assimilation of the occupuying culture, the literature produced in this period corresponding to concurrent trends and styles in the literature of the colonising country.

In the second phase Fanon suggests that the writer becomes ‘disturbed’ and ‘decides to remember what he is’. The writer attempts to write about his people, but since he is not, as Fanon points out ‘ a part of his people’ (Fanon, 1982:179) he observes the people externally. During this period, the writer attempts to reconstitute himself by incorporating childhood memories and the mythologies of the ‘native’ culture into his work. But the aesthetic tools and techniques he uses are those borrowed from the coloniser. The writer looks to the past for inspiration, unable to fully engage with the ‘now’ of the people. As a result his writing becomes melancolic, a literature of longing. This transitionary phase can be traumatic for the writer, as Fanon suggests,

Sometimes this literature of just-before-the-battle is dominated by humour and by allegory; but often too it is symptomatic of a period of distress and difficulty, where death is experienced, and disgust too. We spew ourselves up, but already underneath laughter can be heard. (Fanon, 1982:179)

As a result of this internal struggle, the writer eventually re-emerges with a deeper nationalistic conviction, as ‘an awakener of the people’, stirring them into action, becoming a spokesperson for the revolution and validating the potency of the national culture by joining with the people in their struggle against the occupying forces. The third phase of the indigenous writer’s artistic evolution, which Fanon calls ‘the fighting phase’, (ibid), is therefore characterised by a revolutionary or national literature.

This essay will focus on this revolutionary impulse as it manifests in Caribbean poetry and attempt to show how innovation in Caribbean poetry reflects this idea of revolution. I will also discuss the work of a selection of Caribbean poets in an effort to show how innovations like Negritude, Surrealism, nation language and Dub poetry are all results of this revolutionary impulse. Using Fanon’s analysis as a framework, I intend to show how innovation in Caribbean poetry cannot be separated from the socio-political history of the region.

The history of the Caribbean thus far, has been a history of flux and mutability, diaspora, exile and colonialisation. Centuries before Christopher Columbus arrived in what he mistook for the West ‘Indies’, indigenous Indians - the Tainos, Arawaks and Caribs had transversed the arc of islands that form the Caribbean, from the tip of Florida in the north to Trinidad in the south, at the top of mainland South America. These indigenous societies were destroyed with the coming of the Europeans. And in their wake came millions of African slaves. After the abolition of slavery in the mid 19th century, Chinese and East Indian indentured labourers were drafted in to support the colonial economies. This kaleidoscopic array of imported cultures has given the Caribbean its particular, unique character where Europe seems to blend with the ‘new world’.

But this blending has come at some expense. The break up of the colonial empires during the mid 20th century precipitated a period of political and economic instability in the Caribbean. During and after World War two, several thousand West Indian men and women arrived in the UK to help rebuild the British infrastructure. The benefits were mutual.

Writers from the Caribbean, at least those who wished to make a living from writing, have also in most cases been forced to leave the Caribbean for the US or Europe where their chances of having their work published or finding work were greater. This urge to leave has always played an important part in Caribbean ideology.

As the poet and social historian Edward Kamau Brathwaite wrote in the literary journal Bim in 1957,
‘I want to submit that the desire (even the need) to migrate is at the heart of West Indian sensibility, whether that migration is in fact or by metaphor.’
Whilst in personal conversation he has suggested that a Caribbean person only becomes a Caribbean person when they leave the Caribbean.’ .

During the period immediately after the abolition of slavery precious little, if anything, existed of what can be called Caribbean writing, at least not as we know it today. It must be remembered that at this time, slavery was still a recent memory and the literature of the Caribbean was produced by Europeans, and at least in the British Caribbean - by the English landowners and educated creoles. Although much of this work was set in the Caribbean, it was not a Caribbean literature but what Brathwaite calls a ‘tropical English’ .

Many of the writers who published fiction and poetry during this period were white English, born in the Caribbean, but educated in England and so intrinsically removed from the experience of slavery, and from the life of the African slave that the work they produced for the most part merely used the Caribbean as an exotic backdrop for their stories and poems. Very few were able to give a convincing picture of life in the islands, often attempting, unsuccessfully, to transpose the plantation experience to the English shire whilst using the models of Dryden, Pope and Byron.

During the 1930s and 40s there were a few scattered literary journals, like Bim in Barbados, Kyk-Over-Al in Guyana, Focus in Jamaica and The Beacon in Trinidad which published poetry and prose from local writers. But even at this stage no clear Caribbean character had emerged in poetry. The Beacon for example- considered a controversial left wing journal at the time- published poetry that was very English in character, even if the setting was tropical and sprinklings of dialect were incorporated.

The editors and contributors to the journal were, apart from a few exceptions – one of them being the Marxist philosopher and novelist C.L.R. James - of a minority group of well educated or at least wealthy descendants of ‘near-white’ or Creole land owners. This ‘petit bourgeois’ of early 20th century Trinidad, sought to align themselves with what they thought were the literary trends of the ‘mother country’, producing a poetry which bore pale imitation of the masters of pentameter they sought to emulate. Very little of the poetry collected in these journals was revolutionary enough – either in content, attitude or style – to reach Fanon’s third ‘fighting’ phase of ‘native’ intellectual evolution, remaining set in the first, assimilative phase and what the Black British academic Homi K. Bhabha calls ‘mimicry’.(1994)

Ralph De Boissiere – himself a mixed race middle class Creole- and along with Albert Gomes one of the editors of The Beacon, outlines the problem quite frankly,

They (the whites and ‘near whites’) attached themselves to British culture without becoming cultured. British education was designed to black out negro culture and inculcate a deep sense of one’s inferiority to foreign whites, with whom culture was supposed to originate.

The poetry that The Beacon published is for the most part only of historical interest. The work is flagrantly derivative and neglects the everyday life of Trinidad in favour of an archaic English verse,

The day is up: up rides the sun and we
must out into the sun at sound of horn.
The day is up and some of us must be
dungeoned in offices where webs are born.
For me another task: to stand and see
a maenad wind dancing through a field of corn.
(Mendes, 1932:22)

A revolution in Caribbean poetry occurred eventually, when during the 1930s and 40s, ordinary people decided that their voice should be heard and when writers began to integrate the native folk culture and language into their work, to speak for the people.

One of the first recognisable signs of this came via Martiniquan students based in Paris in the thirties who aligned themselves with Andre Breton’s Paris Surrealist Group.
Two distinct black surrealist groups developed around this time. Firstly, there was the group of Martiniquan intellectuals attached to the Sorbonne which included Etienne Léro, René Menil, J.M. Monnerot and Simone Yoyotte. In 1932 they published a single issue of a journal: Légitime Défense, in which they declared their support for communism and surrealist revolution, celebrated Jazz, denounced slavery, acknowledged their African ancestry and celebrated the cultures of the African Diaspora. They also criticised the black bourgeoisie and published surrealist poetry by several members of the group.

Légitime Défense was immediately suppressed by the French authorities who were anxious not to let any copies reach the colonies. The poetry they published in the journal has been criticised for being in the style of the French movement rather than in the colloquial voice of colonised peoples, but, Défense was nevertheless an historic and highly influential document that gave warning of things to come. As the ‘Declaration’ that opens the journal warns,

This little journal is a provisional tool, and if it collapses we shall find others. We are indifferent to the conditions of time and space which, defining us in 1932 as people of the French Caribbean, have consequently established our initial boundaries without in the least limiting our field of action.

Another black surrealist group developed among students at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, which included the Guyanese poet Léon Gotran Damas, Leopold Sédar Senghor from Senegal and the Martiniquan poet Aimé Césaire. This group established their own journal in 1934 entitled L’Etudiant Noir, which like that of the Sorbonne group, was limited to one edition.
It is in this March 1935 issue of the journal that Aimé Césaire first coined the term, ‘Negritude’ as a way re-appropriating and empowering the word ‘negre’ which the group felt held negative connotations. Although Negritude as a concept can be criticised for being essentialist in nature, it would have far reaching influence and become one of the integral ideas of black liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s.

All three members of this second group were exemplary poets. And in 1937 with the publication of his collection, Pigments, the Guyanese poet Léon Damas became the first francophone poet from the colonies to forge a distinctly ‘black’ poetic sensibility that went beyond European literary models. And Aimé Césaire, in a 1939 issue of the literary review Volontés published what would be Negritude’s manifesto and what Andre Breton called ‘nothing less than the greatest lyric monument of our time’ – the long poem Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal (Notebook of a Return to My Native Land), from which, this excerpt:

Partir.
Comme il y a des homes-hyénes et des homes-panthéres, je
serais un home-juif
un home-cafre
un home-hindou-de-Calcutta
un home-de-Harlem-qui-ne-vote-pas

(To leave.
As there are hyena-men and panther-men, I shall be a Jew-man
a kaffir-man
a Hindu-from-Calcutta-man
a man-from-Harlem-who-does-not-vote) (Césaire, 1995:84-85)

Cahier examines the impact of colonialism on Césaire’s native Martinique.
But while Cahier is undoubtedly experimental in form and controversial in its subject matter and imagery, Césaire’s language is not the creolese of the colonies but that of the black francophone intellectual. In this way, while it qualifies as a revolutionary work – it can be seen as falling short of being a work of ‘Caribbean’ poetry. Surrealism’s influence on Cesaire has also been questioned. But in questioning Cesaire’s Surrealism critics have sought to apply a rigid definition of what surrealism is and as Robin D.G. Kelly argues in Freedom Dreams -The Black Radical Imagination,
‘The question of his surrealism, however, is generally posed only in terms of Andre Breton’s influence on Cesaire. In this view, surrealism is treated as “European thought” and, like Marxism, is considered alien to non-European cultural traditions.’

Surrealism is by nature, notoriously difficult to define. In ‘Andre Breton- What is surrealism’ Franklin Rosemont of the Chicago Surrealist Group offers the following,

Surrealism, a unitary project of total revolution, is above all a method of knowledge and a way of life; it is lived far more than it is written, or written about, or drawn. Surrealism is the most exhilarating adventure of the mind, an unparalleled means of pursuing the fervent quest for freedom and true life beyond the veil of ideological appearances. (Rosemont, 2001:6)

Surrealism and politics are intertwined and cannot be separated. In fact in can be argued that rather than being an artistic or literary movement it is in fact a political one. The French surrealist were staunch ant-colonialists and supported revolutionary movements throughout the world. They saw surrealism as a necessary insurrection against the empires of Europe and drew much of their political and inspiration from the cultures of colonial Africa and the Diaspora. Many so-called surrealist techniques – automatism, bricolage and the use of dreams for example are found in shamanistic and religious practices of indigenous or ‘primitive’ cultures not only in Africa, but in the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

Andre Breton himself has emphasised surrealism affinity with colonised or oppressed nations and with indigenous or ‘primitive’ cultures.
'Surrealism is allied with peoples of colour, first because it has sided with them against all forms of imperialism and white brigandage and second because of the profound affinities between surrealism and primitive thought. Both envision the abolition of the hegemony of the conscious and the everyday, leading to the conquest of revelatory emotion.'

In many ways Surrealism came late to Europe. The revolution of the mind that in the west was called surrealism had been an integral facet of African thought, and one that was brought with the slaves to the Caribbean and the Americas, one which found expression in dance, religious practices and in music. It can also be suggested that Surrealism, like Jazz, and the Science Fiction written by blacks during the Harlem Renaissance was also a way of distancing the past and coming to terms with their state of exile by forging a new, alternative vision of the world.

Jean Baudrillard - June 20, 1929 to March 6, 2007

2007-03-06T23:27:00.000Z

The transfusion of the real is like a blood transfusion, except that here it is a transfusion of real blood into the exsanguine universe of virtuality. After the prostitution of the imaginary, here is now the hallucination of the real in its ideal and simplified version.

From "Disneyworld Company", published on March 4, 1996 in the Parisian newspaper, Liberation.

repos dans la paix

2007-03-04T00:27:00.000Z

Lunar eclipse peeping over windows in Camberwell, South London. Here we hear no howling, no mountain trails, no dust of the moon gathers this far and yet, our axis is its golden section, proportional, exact and perfect as it watches, eye of the sky, red with such blood.

Spirit Lash

2007-03-03T00:22:00.000Z

The Spasm Band played another sweaty late Febuary gig in Hoxton at Kungadreads Rooted Music night. Always hard to photograph. Never knew that at this stage of the game we'd still be rocking, and so hard. Yet, as Antoine says, you need a certain maturity to bring this music, this spiritual ja\zz with the drum, with the drum humming in the earth and the bass rattling through the trees, and the solar plexus chanting, the sax scorched and wailing bring people to the edge of danger - one day, somebody go shake up and tumble down to the Spasm sound and then they will ban this music for sureity, like they would in Trinidad, baptist people would gather round and chant this down, but I was born into this, was raised on a steady diet of bells and incense and wooden churches hid in ancient cocoa bush that shook with each spiritual mother testifying on a sunday, when the cattle begin to pull for home from the canefields and the cool breeze would roam round the center post where they drip oil and holy water from goblets of croton so each rhythm I churn though I know it be holy, I do so with fear and trembling but also with love and gratitudes, I know this intimitely and it knows me.

Carnival

2007-02-11T02:35:00.000Z

Every Carnival I get so homesick, the rhythms and the smell of fresh paint from the midnight robber's collection box, but is when I hear that Pan Kaiso I does realise how it wasnt my choice to leave Trini in the first place. I does ask myself - 'Why you lef' Trini boy?'. That Pan Kaiso is the soul of Carnival and so the soul of Trinidad. Lord Kitchener did know that. De Fosto know that. David Rudder know that or witness 'Dus' in dey face'. I leave and it was like being swept away in the torrent of a dream. Cast up in a net and sent, like we always leave our paradise for suffer in the cold of Europe and America, thinking life would be better in these winter wonderlands. Is only now, listening to calypso semi finals from Skinner Park I know how sweet Trini really is. Even with the gun crime and the kidnapping, home is home. Boil corn still hot and nuts man still chanting 'Fresh and S a l t ! And we shivering up in London, missing the mas again. Last year a say next year, this year a say next one. Trini calling me. I keep remembering how it feel like to know a country loves you. To know that you belong. Not nationalistic is just that these islands are elegiac, yes to live there rugged if you don't have coin and I have things to do here first, but that pan kaiso and that biscuit tin drum like it calling me home. So why did I leave? I left because everyone said I should. Because I saw frosty the snowman one xmas morn as a child and it held me, because I used to see skyscrapers on Kojack and Cannon and wonder ways, because my grandmother knew me and the old bull would have to lock horns one day. And it was what everyone was trying to do, to escape.

Baba Kamau

2007-02-07T08:44:00.000Z

The baba, deep teacher, master poet with his black shoes and tam read all of Rights of Passage, in a voice that seduced sleep and a trance in us, in the darkness of the Purcell Room, and his eminent beard, and he neva make a mistake yet, not a sideways step, he stay firm on the rhythm and it beat like the same drumskin he rap out on the pulpit till we were lost in the travelling of souls and movement across waters and landscapes from the Guniea Coast to the rugged shores of Haiti, Trinidad, Barbados and onwards and backwards and how the hurricane rips through the body like a kites jagged tail and Kamau so humble and Kamau so loose limbed and agile with his spirit that when we embraced i felt the sofness of the flesh above his belt.

Sewe Wangala (A Kalenda)

2007-01-30T02:32:00.000Z

- first part -

Sewe wangala bondye ba-mwen, woy
(God, hide the wanga[1] for me)

robber man don’t get me
don’t blow me out down
town
down shantytown
ravine
wey they beat silver fish
and wabeen[2]
on the riverbank
on the riverbank.

we come like ripe
guava when it season
full it ripe
and it drop like
a 12 gauge shot that shatt-
er the rain soaked wings
of our mountain gods

young blood seep up on the sea and float foam
where my brother reel
reel so reel that the paddle broke
and tumble down
cliff and stony crocus bound
with the snakeskin mask and the kid-
nap bush hid in Orinoco navel string
robber man don’t lock my neck round
Piarco
airport roundabout.

island
is my
in-
stance
geographical
silence of my innermost

hide
the
ma
gic
for
me

Robber boy don’t make mud clog the tracks I cross river bank
don’t sell my eyes for sand puppet teeth
don’t seed my seppy for ransom
don’t brug my neck with fisherman’s twine
don’t scope my ruse with barbed river time
don’t fix my suffer with jumbie symposium
don’t grief my root with rumours of wounds

comecomecome
le we pounce on wild quenk and gouti
make we shuffle in the jungles
of port
of spain
le we
lime

spic and span a comin
spic and span mama
hide the magic
form.
e.

______________________
[1] magical fighting stick of a stickfighter
[2] a small ravine fish