it is not enough
[Edward] Kamau Brathwaite is Barbados's most notable poet.
Via some random and unreproduceable link-hopping today, I happened to find out that he has been engaged in a (somewhat one-sided, it would seem) struggle with local authorities to save his home, CowPastor, on the piece of land known as Cow Pasture, in Christ Church. Residents of the area have been asked to relocate either because they are in the airport flight path or because a road is being driven through the land in question, close to Kamau's home and the place where he had hoped to establish a collection of his works and papers and archives and the like. Kamau is vigorously protesting this situation (the most recent updates can be found here) and I understand from a brief perusal of the site that the whole issue has received a substantial amount of attention in international literary circles. Substantial, that is, relative to the amount of attention it seems to be receiving here. I vaguely remember it being given a passing mention in the press earlier this year or maybe late last year, and little else about it since then.
One of the fascinating things (to me) about the Save CowPastor site is reading Kamau's responses to e-mails and other correspondence that he's received about in support of his efforts, and just generally reading what he's written about his desperate struggle (he has spoken/written of immolating himself) to save his home:
I can't apologise for being a poet. I just can't help it. And CowPasture has helped me to a deeper inderstanding, in fact, of what it means to be a poet. Which is why I said in my first grito and I repeat it again - I wd rather die - burn myself to death or receive the massive gorgons of the tractors that between Jan and March tear up all the grass and duncks trees and therefore peace of the pasture and have introduced there, in return, a vandal & insecurity mentality which makes it now all the more easier for me to say what I juss said not because I want to dead but because I want us to live and not die the death of unfriendly frenetic we pavin for ourself like in Soyinka's Road
the road (i repeat) in destroying my house or making it impossible for me to live in it, is also destroying the one chance I had after all these years to have a home which I cd call my own and from which I had planned, when I had settled in it and ingathered the scattered library and archives that I still possess, to begin to give back what I cd to Barbados what I cd best give back - if people wanted it - the sharing xample of my life as a poet and teacher and cultural activist
...
It's all the me I've got. And if Barbados don't want no poets or metaphors in these parts, then I sorry for Barbados. not out of anger. but out of love. Because that too is all we got to get us thru this new millennium.
Via some random and unreproduceable link-hopping today, I happened to find out that he has been engaged in a (somewhat one-sided, it would seem) struggle with local authorities to save his home, CowPastor, on the piece of land known as Cow Pasture, in Christ Church. Residents of the area have been asked to relocate either because they are in the airport flight path or because a road is being driven through the land in question, close to Kamau's home and the place where he had hoped to establish a collection of his works and papers and archives and the like. Kamau is vigorously protesting this situation (the most recent updates can be found here) and I understand from a brief perusal of the site that the whole issue has received a substantial amount of attention in international literary circles. Substantial, that is, relative to the amount of attention it seems to be receiving here. I vaguely remember it being given a passing mention in the press earlier this year or maybe late last year, and little else about it since then.
One of the fascinating things (to me) about the Save CowPastor site is reading Kamau's responses to e-mails and other correspondence that he's received about in support of his efforts, and just generally reading what he's written about his desperate struggle (he has spoken/written of immolating himself) to save his home:
I can't apologise for being a poet. I just can't help it. And CowPasture has helped me to a deeper inderstanding, in fact, of what it means to be a poet. Which is why I said in my first grito and I repeat it again - I wd rather die - burn myself to death or receive the massive gorgons of the tractors that between Jan and March tear up all the grass and duncks trees and therefore peace of the pasture and have introduced there, in return, a vandal & insecurity mentality which makes it now all the more easier for me to say what I juss said not because I want to dead but because I want us to live and not die the death of unfriendly frenetic we pavin for ourself like in Soyinka's Road
the road (i repeat) in destroying my house or making it impossible for me to live in it, is also destroying the one chance I had after all these years to have a home which I cd call my own and from which I had planned, when I had settled in it and ingathered the scattered library and archives that I still possess, to begin to give back what I cd to Barbados what I cd best give back - if people wanted it - the sharing xample of my life as a poet and teacher and cultural activist
...
It's all the me I've got. And if Barbados don't want no poets or metaphors in these parts, then I sorry for Barbados. not out of anger. but out of love. Because that too is all we got to get us thru this new millennium.