Rough Climate

by E.A. Markham

The rough climate' of the title reflects the encroaching unease that many people feel about the circumstances of their lives. In his seventh collection (and his first for seven years) E.A. Markham draws attention to the euphemisms and other abuses of language which help to coarsen this climate. As well as poems about his native Montserrat, focusing on the devastating effect of the volcano, there are poems on many aspects of life in England and Europe, and two entertaining, partly autobiographical prose pieces, Taking the Drawing Room through Customs and In Other Words , which also make an informal commentary on the background to the poems. Born in 1939, E.A. Markham has lived mainly in Britain and Europe since the mid-1950s. He has built houses in France, worked as a media co-ordinator in Papua New Guinea and directed the Caribbean Theatre Workshop, as well as holding various academic posts. He has edited anthologies of Caribbean writing for Penguin and Bloodaxe.

120 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Edward Archie Markham FRSL was a poet and writer, born in Harris, Montserrat, and mainly resident in the United Kingdom from 1956. Known for poetry in both "nation-language" (patois) and standard English, for short stories and a comic novel, he sometimes used the pseudonym Paul St. Vincent and other personae, and defies simple classification as an author. He 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 also lived in Germany and Sweden, and in Britain, in Ipswich and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He 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 Professor of Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University, a position he held until his death, he directed the Hallam Literature Festival. He also edited Sheffield Thursday magazine, and ran its competitions for poetry and short stories.

Markham died of a heart attack in Paris on Easter day, 23 March 2008, at the age of 69