Edward Kamau Brathwaite

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Lawson) Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born in Bridgetown, Barbados) on May 11, 1930 is a Barbadian writer, poet and dramatist. His poetry explores the African and Caribbean roots of his country and his people. The "nation language" that he proposes is a new type of poetry linked with those themes.

He was born to humble parents, and he attended many schools, including Harrison College, Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Sussex University. In 1955, he travelled to Ghana, shortly after independence, where he worked for the Ministry of Education until 1962. Then he moved to Kingston in Jamaica where he taught history at the University of the West Indies and established Savacou the journal of the Caribbean Artists Movement (1966-1970): he was its secretary-general. Since the 1970s he has taught at many United States schools and published many scholarly works. Currently, he teaches comparative literature at New York University.

In 1968, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex, and in 1994, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

His travels gave him knowledge about African culture and traditions and its pre-colonial identity, which then he decided to use in his poetry.

Brathwaite was married to Doris Welcome from 1960; they had one child. He is a widower.

[edit] Selected works

Four plays for schools (1964)
Odale's Choice (1967)
Masks (1968)
Islands (1969)
Folk Cultures in the Slaves in Jamaica (1970)
The Arrivants (1973)
Caribbean Man in Space and Time (1974)
Other Exiles (1975)
Days & Nights (1975)
Black + Blues (1976)
Mother Poem (1977)
Soweto (1979)
Jamaica Poetry (1979)
Barbados Poetry (1979)
Sun Poem (1982)
Third World Poems (1983)
History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1984)
Jah Music (1986)
X/Self (1987)
Shar (1992)
Trenchtown Rock (1993)
Roots (1993)
Dream Stories (1994)
Born to Slow Horses (2005) (winner of the 2006 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
DS (2): dreamstories 2 (2007)