Human Rites: Selected Poems 1970-1982

by E.A. Markham

`Human Rites' presents a varied selection of poems by E.A. Markham, whose work has gained many admirers both in Britain and abroad in recent years. By bringing together poems from several small-press publications and including recent and uncollected material, `Human Rites' illustrates all aspects of his considerable range. Markham's imagination is allied to a strong sense of reality, and imbued with a deep sense of comedy. His work encompasses explorations of his West Indian background, love poems, poems on historical, social and political themes, and his special brand of ironic humour in the `Lambchops' poems which are as effective on the page as they are in performance at poetry readings. He is, as Gavin Ewart wrote of `Love, Politics & Food' (1982), `a writer of great intelligence and vitality' who `can command a very powerful wry political comment.'

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

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