E. A. Markham

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(Edward) Archie Markham (born October 1, 1939) is a poet and writer, born in Harris, Montserrat, and mainly resident in the United Kingdom since 1956. He is known for poetry in both 'nation-language' (patois) and standard English, for short stories and a comic novel; he has used the pseudonym Paul St. Vincent and other personae, and defies simple classification as an author. He has edited two significant collections of Caribbean writing, and several literary magazines. His first work was in drama.

His family was large and relatively prosperous. He attended grammar school in Montserrat, and read English and philosophy at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He started academic research into seventeenth century comedy at the University of East Anglia, and then in London. In 1969, while lecturing at Kilburn Polytechnic, he formed the Caribbean Theatre Troupe, which toured Monserrat, Saint Vincent and other parts of the Eastern Caribbean. They performed The Private Life of the Public Man and Dropping Out is Violence.

He then worked in France for two years. His Lambchops poems, written as Paul St. Vincent, started to appear in the mid-1970s, and assume the perspective of a young urban Caribbean man. He would also use the voices of Sally Goodman, a Welsh feminist, Philpot and Maureen, and the character of Pewter Stapleton, an unimpressive academic, in his novel and stories. He built up a reputation gradually as a poet, through small press and chapbook publication.

He joined for a time the performers The Bluefoot Travellers. In the later 1970s he taught in Manchester, then had writing fellowships in Hull and London (on a C. Day Lewis Fellowship).

In a long itinerant period he took a position for two years 1983-5 in Papua New Guinea, working for Enga province. He followed that with two years editing Artrage, the magazine of the Minority Arts Advisory Service. He spent 1988-91 at the University of Ulster as a writer-in-residence; he edited Writing Ulster.

He has lived also in Germany and Sweden, and in Britain, in Ipswich and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He has served in both the Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society.

He was awarded the Certificate of Honour by the Government of Montserrat, in 1997.

As of 2004 he is Professor of Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University, and directs the Hallam Literature Festival . He edits Sheffield Thursday magazine, and runs its competitions, for poetry and short stories.

[edit] Works

Crossfire (1972) poems
Mad and Other Poems (1973)
Merely a Matter of Colour (1973) edited with Arnold Kingston, on the Ugandan Asians
Lambchops (1976) poems, as Paul St Vincent
Lambchops In Disguise (1976) poems, as Paul St Vincent
Philpot in the City (1976) poems, as Paul St Vincent
Love Poems and Maze (1978) poems
The Lamp (1978)
Pierrot (1979) story
Masterclass (1979) poems
Games and Penalties (1980) poems
Love, Politics and Food (1982) poems
Family Matters (1984) poems
Human Rites: Selected Poems 1970-1982 (1984)
Lambchops in Papua New Guinea (1986) poems
Living In Disguise (1986) poems
Something Unusual (1986) stories
Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies and Britain (1989) editor
Hugo versus Montserrat (1989) for hurricane relief, edited with Howard Fergus
Towards the End of a Century (1989) poems
Maurice V.'s Dido (1991) poems
Letter from Ulster and the Hugo Poems (1993) poems
Ten Stories (1994)
Misapprehensions (1995) poems
The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories (1996) editor
A Papua New Guinea Sojourn: More Pleasures of Exile (1998) autobiographical
Marking Time (1999) novel
Fragments of Memory (2000) poems
A Rough Climate (2002) T. S. Eliot Prize shortlist
Taking the Drawing Room Through Customs: Selected Stories 1970-2000 (2002)
John Lewis & Co (2003) poems
The Selected Poems of Paul St. Vincent and Sally Goodman (2003)