Creation Fire: A Cafra Anthology of Caribbean Women's Poetry

by Ramabai Espinet (Editor)

Women Poets of the Caribbean — the known and the unknown — speak their unique experience in this exciting new anthology. A product of CAFRA (Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action). and edited by Ramabai Espinet, this work crosses the boundaries of race, class and language in the Caribbean. The work is archipelagic in scope, extending as well down into South and Central America. It contains poems written in English, French and Spanish, as well as a number of Creole languages. Prophetic, revolutionary, tender, tight-lipped or pagan in its celebratory fervor — this anthology slips the knot from the silent cord binding the tongues of Caribbean women. And a great voice comes rushing out, from all the small inland rivers, and down to the vast sea …

Genres: Poetry

371 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1991

About the author

Ramabai Espinet was born in the forties in San Fernando, the second largest city in Trinidad and Tobago that is internationally recognized as that country’s industrial capital. Since she originally migrated to Canada in the 1970s, Espinet has divided her time between the Caribbean and Canada.
Espinet took her first degree at Toronto’s York University and subsequently completed her PhD in Post Colonial Literature with the University of the West Indies. Her academic dissertation “Adieu Foulards, Adieu Madras” explored the role of Euro-Creole women writers based on the works of Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey. She is currently Professor of English at Seneca College in Toronto, Ontario and Adjunct Professor at York University and the University of Toronto, Canada.
A review of Espinet's work and themes shows that, over the years, she has built up an extensive body of work that includes poetry, fiction (adult and children’s), plays and essays. She usually explores themes and issues that relate to her Indo-Caribbean heritage. She also writes about the seminal influence of European empire on identity, class, religion and politics in Caribbean communities.
Espinet sees herself as an activist within women and development movements in Canada and the Caribbean as well as a social commentator on issues that affect the communities that she holds dear. Between 1992 and 1996 she wrote a column for the fortnightly community newspaper Indo Caribbean World and she still contributes essays and commentaries.
Espinet published her first novel “The Swinging Bridge” in 2003. George Lamming, the renowned Caribbean writer has said that this novel is “an extraordinary achievement in the exercise of remembering” and that Ramabai Espinet has “ put the art of memory into the service of an Asian Diaspora whose history from India to the Caribbean traces the secrets and calamities of an Indian family who, in their encounter with other ethnicities, offer an authentic profile of one of the major crises of Modernity. The writing is a model of a certain conversational distinction, natural in tone and highly charged with moral intent”.

Espinet’s first four works were all published in Toronto by Sister Vision Press. In 1990 she edited an anthology of Caribbean women’s poetry called “Creation Fire”. In 1991 she published a collection of poetry, under the title Nuclear Seasons, and then two children's books, The Princess Of Spadina in 1992 and Ninja’s Carnival in 1993.
Espinet developed a performance piece called "Indian Robber Talk" that has been staged in several Toronto festivals. Her poem "Shay's Robber Talk" formed the Afterword in Sherene Razack's Looking White People In The Eye, which was published by the University of Toronto Press in 1998.
“The Swinging Bridge” was longlisted for the 2005 Impac Dublin Award, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer' Prize in the category of Best First Book (Caribbean and Canada Region. It was selected for the 2004 Robert Adams Book Review Lecture Series.

Reviews

[Dax Pessoa]

An intensely excellent exploration of the mind, words and story telling prowess of Caribbean women. A collection of great word smiths who articulate dreams, realities and word sound with ease and grace.
Epic poetry !

[Judith Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems were variable, as to be expected in an anthology of this size, but I loved the fact that the only requirement was to be female and be from, or live in, the Caribbean. This made for a wide variety of poems, from writers of all ages, ethnicities and nations, in a variety of languages, some established writers, many not well known and others who were still students, or even still at school. Great collection.