The Caribbean Poetry Project is sponsoring the upcoming conference “The Power of Caribbean Poetry – Word and Sound,” which will take place at the University of Cambridge (148 Hills Road, Cambridge) on September 20–22, 2012. Attendees will be able to experience a stunning line-up of poets from Barbados, Jamaica, and Canada and, as well as popular British Caribbean poets.
Speakers and performers will include John Agard, Beverley Bryan, Christian Campbell, Kei Miller, Mervyn Morris, Grace Nichols, Velma Pollard, Olive Senior, Dorothea Smartt, and special guest Linton Kwesi Johnson, who will be celebrating his recent 60th birthday at the conference.
Academic papers, lectures, table discussions and workshops include: approaches to teaching Caribbean poetry; Caribbean landscapes; Caribbean poetry and music; carnival and all that jazz; celebrating the work of Caribbean poets; ecocriticism and Caribbean poetry; gender in Caribbean poetry; origins and histories of Caribbean poetry; poetry as emancipation; and new perspectives on Brathwaite, Smith, Walcott, and other poets.
The Caribbean Poetry Project is a pioneering collaboration between Cambridge University Faculty of Education, the Centre for Commonwealth Education, and the University of West Indies at Mona (Jamaica), St Augustine (Trinidad) and at Cave Hill (Barbados). Through a joint research and teaching programme, their three-year project will encourage engagement with Caribbean poetry, and improve the teaching and learning of poetry in both British and Caribbean schools. Advisors include John Agard, Edward Baugh, Kamau Brathwaite, Mervyn Morris, Andrew Motion, Olive Senior, and Benjamin Zephaniah.
[Many thanks to Vladimir Lucien for bringing this item to our attention.]
Photo of Linton Kwesi Johnson (by Collin Patterson) from http://www.lintonkwesijohnson.com/linton-kwesi-johnson/
For more information, you may contact Morag Styles (ms104@cam.ac.uk) or Bryony Horsley-Heather (bsjh2@cam.ac.uk) and/or see http://caribbeanpoetry.educ.cam.ac.uk/ and http://caribbeanpoetry.educ.cam.ac.uk/resources/CPP_ConferenceBrochure_v9h_01Jun12.pdf
LKJ has been a force in both music and the spoken word for over 30 years. I had the pleasure of attending a few of his readings and concerts during that period, and his work will remain as a powerful voice for social, racial and economic justice for all time… Thank you repeating islands for keeping these voices on our radar.
By: rjampro on June 29, 2012
at 7:41 am