ConVERSations with Nathaniel Mackey

by Edward Kamau Brathwaite

Literary Criticism. African American and Caribbean Studies. Kamau Brathwiate's CONVERSATIONS WITH NATHANIEL MACKEY is based on the transcript of his discussion with Nathaniel Mackey at Poet's House in New York City. Brathwaite expansively elaborates on Mackey's (and audience member's) knowledgeable inquiries; his answers are layered with subsequent ruminations arising from his lifelong engagement with world literature and expressive cultures. A multiphasic drift, CONVERSATIONS WITH NATHANIEL MACKEY combines elements of biography and autobiography with poetic discourse on Caribbean literary history and negative effects of colonial domination. Brathwaite splices dialog with poetry, criticism, and instrictive imaginary voices in his now distinct and characteristic Sycorax 'video style' format. Both Brathwaite and Mackey have several titles carried by SPD. Mackey's ERODING WITNESS is newly available, along with WHATSAID SERIF (City Lights) and DJOBOT BAGHOSTUS'S RUN (Sun & Moon) Brathwaite's BLAC

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1999

About the author

Edward Kamau Brathwaite is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.

Brathwaite held a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex (1968) and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and was a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum.

Brathwaite is noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770 - 1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language.

Reviews

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

33 ‘The ‘meaning’ of the Caribbean was in that humble repetitive ritual actio(n) which this peasant woman was performing. And she was always on this journey, walking on the steps of sunlit water, coming out of a continent which we didn’t fully know how to understand, to a set of islands which we only now barely coming to respect, cherish and understand.’

141 ‘that the release of the poem [...] release the disasters…’

167 ‘But the very concept of writing has alter, and it’s as if I’m gone back to the Middle Ages, in a way, and I’m trying to create those things that they did - what-do-you-call-them? Scrolls? that kind of tone. And the computer gives me that opportunity. To release the pen from the fist of my broken hand and begin what I call my ‘video-style’, in which I tr(y) make the words themselves live off - awy from - the ‘page’, so you can see [...] like see their sound - technology taking us ‘back’, I suppose, to the Urals - which is why I continue to think of the MiddleAges - what was ‘happening’ in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Islamic world of the ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS when the written word could still hear itself speak’

208 ‘A counter-cry for redemption, visibility - re-muralization, if you like - out of morass with all the ugly connotations of that word and I think now not only of the Library of Alexandria and the Kilimanjaro of X/Self, but of Sbronitza/Bosnia-Herzegovina, of Somalia, South Africa (it never became Azania?), more recently [Jan 96] Haiti (agai(n)) and Rwanda. All these sufferations we familiar with thru the video of television, are experienced in this -anelike devastation. And people are expressing about it and against it in these little signals that they have put up upon some wall or bus or subway or on a motorcar; on their bicycles as they glide past, you know, And somewhere I feel that this poetry, whatever you might think of its texture … the message of i/(t), the essence of it, increasingly becomes imbedded upon th(e) wall of memory - the only ancient way it has always been preserved; the only way that it can be shared within the shadow of the ruins…’

214 ‘And 'DreamHaiti' reads 'sea' - all these sounds and movemants of that - almost cut loose, along metal, th(e) sides of the ship, adrift in a sinking corrial, adrift towards Africa; Senegal, Gorée, the smell of all that slick and swish and salt, dungeon sounds, drones, Toussaint dying in th(e) corial of Mt Blanc, underground, underwater movement of shipdeck, immanence of shipwreck, dechoukaj, movemant from Kenscoff to Irish Town and back again;.harlequins of pitch and toss of tin and politician, the tinnin sounds of politicians, poets, writers, isolation and the sounds of drowning etc etc’

273 ‘because, as I say, the bamboo is no longer there and I have the image of this mountain of mud How do you write poetry about a mountain of mud? That is what I’m really askin you, you see. Poetry is traditionally written about beautiful bamboo that becomes a flute How do you write a poem about a mountain of mud which was the bamboo? And it’s not simply that it’s a mountain of mud but is the replacement of that bamboo with that mountain. That’s the prob Do you become deaf? dumb? blind? antiballad, antebellum? And do you remain that way? And if you remain that way, what are the consequences for metaphor/of metaphor? What kind of metaphors come out of [high pitch] hnmmmm - what kind of vibration? What kinds of new words are formable? become formidable? What kind(s) of form become possible…’

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the Press of XCP: Cross-cultural poetics, this book is a wild ride by two of our greatest poets.