By: Kimberly Ramkhalawan
May 13, 2022
Perhaps it can be said that without intellectual minds such Kamau Brathwaite and Gordon Rohlehr there would be no West Indian literature discourse. And while this is the thought of by many University of the West Indies students across the region, a reflection of the impact both men have had on the academic area of study was done through the eyes of Guyana-born Professor Emeritus, Gordon Rohlehr, who was known for his close friendship with the Barbadian poet, at the 8th Annual Kamau Brathwaite Lecture in Cultural Studies entitled “Bridges of Sound: Travelling with Kamau Brathwaite.”
Both men, while starting their lives in separate Caribbean nations, would cross paths upon Kamau’s arrival at Mona in 1963 and while during Rohlehr’s lecture, admitted he did not take this upcoming poet seriously, as he was teaching renaissance European history and had an interest in the Perinne Thesis, Rohlehr said a reckoning would come later on when they would meet later on in England.
There Professor Rohlehr recalled the early beginnings of the Caribbean artists movement, CAM, a body of Caribbean intellectuals that would gather to share their poetry, writings, ideologies and thinkings they had come to have of back home, a coalition he gives Kamau the credit in establishing.
Rohlehr reminisced on the early beginnings they had at Jamaican historical and cultural sociologist Orlando Patterson’s flat, where several of them met with other Caribbean minds such as Douglas Hall, and others. He says their friendship began to blossom there following a request to be present at one of these meetings. To Rohlehr’s surprise as to how anyone had even known about his own works at the time, the invitation to attend had come from Trinidadian Poet John La Rose.
Rohlehr says by then Brathwaite had already amassed a great amount of poetry, with much of it based during his time and experiences in Ghana with some reflecting upon the Caribbean. He spoke on the influence of Kamau on his writings of calypsos where he sought to show the work of the Mighty Sparrow as going places Caribbean Poets had not explored in their writings as to the use of vocabulary, to what the professor found some logger heads with Braithwaite over. Two letters detailing the dialogue that took place between the two poets, were later published in Caribbean Quarterly. Rohlehr is known for his numerous articles on Sparrow’s calypsos, and his authored books including ‘My Whole Life is Calypso: Essays on Sparrow’ recently released in 2015.
Also present during the distinguished lecture series held virtually was Dr Christian Campbell, who happens to also be a poet. In leading the conversation with Professor Rohlehr, Dr Campbell spoke to both intellectuals Kamau and Rohlehr offering the pedagogy to teaching Caribbean literature, in a way of bringing what he termed ‘discredited knowledges’ to light and a place of recognition and the way we see ourselves as Caribbean people.
Rohlehr says their friendship grew even more when he began to dissect Kamau’s 1967 Rights of Passage publication, chronicling his first impressions of the book, later sharing the notes with him.
But years would go by and both men would have to return to their universities at home following their postgraduate scholarship studies were over. However, at that time, Rohlehr said he opted to return to Mona campus based on what his scholarship had deemed he did post his postgraduate in the UK. He recalls at the time that there was not a West Indian section, while authors such as Naipaul and Walcott were only appended to a few courses, while Jamaican Poet at the time of the island’s independence was placed in the library’s section of humour.
Later on he would return to the St Augustine Campus where he took up an English Literature appointment, and where he would later commence his round-breaking work on Caribbean literature, calypso and its culture, becoming known for his extensive collection of lectures, and poems and other content on these topics.
Rohlehr also reflected upon political activist Walter Rodney also being on campus in Mona with Brathwaite and how the publications of Rodney’s ‘The groundings of my brothers’ and other New world group formed by Trinidadian author Lloyd Best created much conversation, to which Brathwaite took the decision to perhaps include it as being part of the southern version of CAM’s journal Savacou. He said this would give space to the airings of the political upheavals, growth and development specific to the Caribbean. This was something Rohlehr said he could not risk his name being associated with, as he did not want to take away credit from Kamau, the originator of the Savacou journals, which started abroad. He however, teamed up with Best’s New World for several of his later publications.
As to the future of literature and capturing Caribbean essence in this artform, Rohlehr expressed his lack of hope for it, ending with the words of Kamau ‘denuded into silence’ and says while there is pessimism, we as Caribbean people need to continue working against it, “work inspite of it and what can create from the negativity he says is a realistic assessment of our societies that lies in front of us’.
However, Campbell says while Kamau’s quote ‘But my island is a pebble It will slay/ giants/ but never bear children’, in another breath his Calypso poem also mentions that ‘The stone had skidded arc’d and bloomed into islands’ giving us some positive hope that another Kamau Brathwaite can emerge later on.