Geoffrey Philp

April 6, 2011

21 Days/21 Poems: A Commonplace Object

Crumpled Paper

It sounds like what the heel knows

of landscape, the fiery chewing

of autumn's dry and unspared remnants.
That a season should leave itself
exposed so, and I walk it
into a fine grind, a radio's static errancy.

Are we not the world's antenna
always refining the received?
Would that we had ears
to seize glass molecules turning
the melt of it into seeming solid,
or ice forming in trays or weather.
That we could hear the seal
of scab on tissue or the snake's
interlocking scales upon the ground
it elegantly deafens in its stalk.

Because the ear fails, the hand pursues
in the leather of the now
opened sheet a landscape like the moon's
or a still shot of the ocean's faceted maze.
Mirror upon mirror closing like petals
or atoms, a fist of refractions
laid out in wave within wave, crack
within a crack of the paper I crumple
up again and listen to.

"Crumpled Paper" by Ricardo Pau-Llosa. The Mastery Impulse. Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2003.

Ricardo Pau-Llosa is always pushing himself to conjure associations while observing everyday objects, and to use the details to create poems. The poems arise from an attention to the intricacies of the object and influenced by Husserlian Phenomenology, Pau-Llosa contemplates their effect on his consciousness. In "Crumpled Paper," like many of the other poems in The Mastery Impulse Pau-Llosa lifts the object from the quotidian into metaphor.

And the music!: "a fist of refractions/ laid out in wave within wave, crack/ within a crack of paper I crumple."

About Ricardo Pau-LLosa

Ricardo Pau-Llosa is a Cuban-American poet, pioneer art critic of Latin American art in the US and Europe, and author of short fiction. Pau-Llosa was born into a working-class family in Havana. In 1960 Pau-Llosa fled Cuba with his parents, older sister, and maternal grandmother — all of whom emerge in his autobiographical poems of exile and remembrance. He graduated from Belén Jesuit Preparatory High School in Miami in 1971, and went on to major in English (literature) at various universities, among them Florida International University (BA, 1974), Florida Atlantic University (MA, 1976), and the University of Florida (1978–1981). Divorced with no children, Pau-Llosa is also an avid collector of modern, folk, and tribal art from the Americas. He lives in Miami.

Source: Wikipedia

21 Days/21 Poems: A Commonplace Object

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April 5, 2011

"It Takes a Revolution": Guild in Miami

I’ve been invited to give a reading with Guild, a group of eight emerging painters from Miami, who have issued a Group Statement. Article 4 asserts:

...Art which denies skill, originality, and ambiguity is just a one-line joke, a
transparent screed, or yet another pathetic and anachronistic attempt to shock but
who?, we wonder.

Ricardo Pau-Llosa, who will be reading at the Ladder Room Art Gallery on April 10, 2011, at 6:00 p.m., has written an essay which places Guild’s work in context:

Just when it seemed that the practice of artists forming into groups was a thing of the past, and after art itself—and especially painting and sculpture in traditional media—had long been declared irrelevant, a group of eight emerging painters from Miami have assembled and declared, in a ten-point statement that follows, their belief in creativity, originality, ambiguity, and other hallmarks of Art. And they spell it with a capital A—in defiance of contemporary trends which place all culture at the service of political, social, and gender issues. Art, of course, never left its home plate, its role as a portal where passion and ideas converge in a Protean clarity, so the significance of GUILD lies in the originality of the work of its members and in the fact that they are willing to state and embrace the timeless obvious—Art is art; all other obligations attached to it are clumsy instrumentalizations, no different from using a spoon to pry open a jar or a butter knife as a screw driver.

Sounds like the beginning of a revolution….

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21 Days/21 Poems: Prejudice

Half-Caste

Excuse me

standing on one leg

I'm half-caste

Explain yuself

wha yu mean

when yu say half-caste

yu mean when picasso

mix red an green

is a half-caste canvas/

explain yuself

wha yu mean

when yu say half-caste

yu mean when light an shadow

mix in de sky

is a half-caste weather/

well in dat case

england weather

nearly always half-caste

in fact some o dem cloud

half-caste till dem overcast

so spiteful dem dont want de sun pass

ah rass/

explain yuself

wha yu mean

when yu say half-caste

yu mean tchaikovsky

sit down at dah piano

an mix a black key

wid a white key

is a half-caste symphony/

Explain yuself

wha yu mean

Ah listening to yu wid de keen

half of mih ear

Ah lookin at yu wid de keen

half of mih eye

and when I'm introduced to yu

I'm sure you'll

understand

why I offer yu half-a-hand

an when I sleep at night

I close half-a-eye

consequently when I dream

I dream half-a-dream

an when moon begin to glow

I half-caste human being

cast half-a-shadow

but yu must come back tomorrow

wid de whole of yu eye

an de whole of yu ear

an de whole of yu mind

an I will tell yu

de other half

of my story

“Half-Caste” by John Agard.

In “Half-Caste,” John Agard reverses the idea of “miscegenation” to repudiate the notion that his so-called “half-caste” is unnatural. He reveals the fallacy by a process of reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate the limited viewpoint of those who would deny his humanity,” I half-caste human being/ cast half-a-shadow,” by a series of questions:

when yu say half-caste/

yu mean Tchaikovsky

sit down at dah piano

an mix a black key

wid a white key

is a half-caste symphony/

While it may seem as if the speaker in the poem is a victim of prejudice, by his repetition of the words, “Explain yuself,” he turns the question around so that it become a method to refute the racist epithet. By implication, the speaker fully embraces his identity with even a bit of humor, “Excuse me/ standing on one leg/I'm half-caste” for he is as natural as England’s “half caste” weather.

About John Agard

John Agard (born 21 June 1949 in British Guyana) is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in the United Kingdom. Agard grew up in Georgetown, British Guyana. He would love to listen to cricket commentary on the radio and began making up his own, which led to a love of language. He went on to study English, French and Latin at A level, writing his first poetry when he was in the sixth-form. Leaving school in 1967 he taught the languages he had studied, and worked in a local library. He was also a sub-editor and feature writer for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle, publishing two books published whilst still in Guyana. His father settled in London and Agard moved to the UK with his partner Grace Nichols in 1977, settling in Ironbridge, Shropshire. He worked for the Commonwealth Institute and the BBC in London. His awards include the Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry in 1997 and the Cholmondeley Award in 2004. Agard was Poet-in-Residence at the National Maritime Museum in 2008. His poem "Half Caste" has been featured in the AQA English GCSE anthology since 2002, meaning that many GCSE students (Aged 14 – 16) study his work for their GCSE English qualification. Agard now lives in Lewes, East Sussex.

Source: Wikipedia

Photo: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/library/2007/10/poet_in_residence.html

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21 Days/21 Poems: Prejudice

April 4, 2011

Versions Galore! : Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot

I'm experimenting with the new features of Blogger, which allow for different views of content. If you use Chrome browser, you can install Chrome extension to see the versions of the blog:

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/view/flipcard

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/view/mosaic

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/view/sidebar

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/view/snapshot

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/view/timeslide

I’m leaning toward Snapshot. But any way you take, Lorna Goodison looks gorgeous!

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21 Days/21 Poems: Motherhood

Mother, the Great Stones Got to Move

Mother, one stone is wedged across the hole in our history

and sealed with blood wax.

In this hole is our side of the story, exact figures,

headcounts, burial artifacts, documents, lists, maps

showing our way up through the stars; lockets of brass

containing all textures of hair clippings.

It is the half that has never been told,

and some of us must tell it.

Mother, there is the stone on the hearts of some women and men

something like an onyx, cabochon-cut,

which hung on the wearer seeds bad dreams. Speaking for the small

dreamers of this earth, plagued with nightmares, yearning

for healing dreams

we want the stone to move.

Upon an evening like this, mother, when one year is making way

for another, in a ceremony attended by a show of silver stars,

mothers see moon, milk-fed, herself a nursing mother

and we think of our children and the stones upon their future

and we want these stones to move.

For the year going out came in fat at first

but toward the harvest it grew lean,

and many mouth corners gathered white

and another kind of poison, powdered white

was brought in to replace what was green,

And death sells it with one hand

and with the other death palms a gun

then death gets death’s picture

in the paper’s asking

“where does all this death come from?”

Mother, stones are pillows

for the homeless sleep on concrete sheets.

Stone flavors soup, stone is now meat,

the hard-hearted giving our children

stones to eat.

Mother, the great stones over mankind got to move,

It’s been ten thousand years we’ve been watching them now

from various points in the universe.

From the time of our birth as points of light

in the eternal coiled workings of the cosmos.

Roll away stone of poisoned powders come

to blot out the hope of our young.

Move stones of the sacrificial lives we breed

to feed to suicide god of tribalism.

From across the pathway to mount morning

site of the rose quartz fountain

brimming anise and star water

bright fragrant for our children’s future

Mother these great stones got to move.

“Mother, the Great Stones Got to Move” by Lorna Goodison. To Us, All Flowers Are Roses. University of Illinois Press, 1995.

The typical poem in which motherhood is the theme usual limits itself to scenes of domestic conflict. But Lorna Goodison’s canvas is much broader than that. Summoning the great reserve of spiritual strength from the lineage of Caribbean women, Goodison confronts the imperial history of the Caribbean, political tribalism and drug trafficking as equally oppressive forces in the lives of the powerless for whom she speaks.

Yet the voice in the poem is never shrill. Slowly, determinedly the cadence builds, oracle-like, until the plea becomes palpable: “Mother these great stones got to move.”

About Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison was born in Kingston, Jamaica, one of nine siblings, and was educated at St. Hugh's High School, a leading Anglican high school in Jamaica and the Jamaica School of Art, before going to New York to study at the Art Students League. She had also been writing poetry since her teenage years; some early poems appeared anonymously in the Jamaica Gleaner.

In her 20s, back in Jamaica, she taught art and worked in advertising and public relations before deciding to pursue a career as a professional writer. She began to publish under her own name in the Jamaica Journal, and to give readings at which she built up an appreciative audience.

In the early 1990s, Goodison began teaching part of the year at various North American universities, including the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan.

Goodison's most recent book is a memoir, From Harvey River (2008). She has published eleven collections of poems: Tamarind Season (1980), I Am Becoming My Mother (1986, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Americas region), Heartease (1988), Poems (1989), Selected Poems (1992), To Us, All Flowers Are Roses (1995), Turn Thanks (1999), Guinea Woman (2000), Travelling Mercies (2001), Controlling the Silver (2005), and Goldengrove (2006). Goodison has also published two collections of short stories, Baby Mother and the King of Swords (1990) and Fool-Fool Rose Is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (2005).

She has also exhibited her paintings internationally, and her own artwork is usually featured on the covers of her books.

In 1999, Goodison was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica for her contributions to literature.

Goodison describes poetry as "a dominating, intrusive tyrant. It’s something I have to do--a wicked force".

Poet and literary scholar Edward Baugh says that "one of Goodison’s achievements is that her poetry inscribes the Jamaican sensibility and culture on the text of the world". Apart from issues of home and exile, her work also addresses the power of art to explore and reconcile opposites and contradictions in the Caribbean historical experience.

Source: Wikipedia

Image: http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/7-february-2006/making-life/

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New Ebook: Forbidden @ Smashwords and Amazon

Guest Post by Tony Williams.

Finally, after many years of struggle I’ve managed to get my first novel published. For the past eighteen months, I’ve been using my blog to inform writers about new developments in the book trade and to urge them to consider non-traditional publishing options now available, especially ebooks. I’ve now decided that after ladling out advice so generously, it’s time to take a dose of my own medicine. My book is titled Forbidden, but more about that later. First, let me tell you about my self-publishing journey.

It turned out to be quite easy and uneventful. Over a period of just two days, I was able to have my book available for sale as an ebook in the Kindle Store and at Smashwords. Here’s how it works.

When you sign up, upload your manuscript and cover to the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, http://kdp.amazon.com it takes up to 48 hours to be vetted for proper formatting and then it is listed for sale in the Kindle Store. With Smashwords, it took about two hours in a queue before going live on their website. If you want it included in their premium catalogue for sale in other distribution channels, you have to wait about a week for further vetting (this time manually) and approval. I got the green light for inclusion. Smashwords has already shipped it to the Apple iBookstore, the Nook (Barnes & Nobel) Kobo, Sony and Diesel and it should be on sale there in the next two weeks.

The paperback edition is available via the UK-based website CompletelyNovel.com (CN) and is printed and distributed by the POD printers Lightening Source. The set up is the same – sign up with CN, upload your manuscript and cover to their website and thereafter it immediately goes on sale.

I’m currently based in St Lucia, light years away from the global publishing hubs of North America and London. With a laptop and an internet connection it took me about twenty minutes max. to sign up and upload my book for publication on each of the three platforms. I found their instructions easy to follow. And it’s free. To get the paperback sold through multiple distribution channels including Amazon.com, I had to subscribe for a CompletelyNovel ‘Pro Plan.’ It cost me US$190 a year (or US$21.99 a month). It’s a lot cheaper at the Amazon affiliate Createspace – a flat fee of $35. I found out too late.

My biggest challenge was having the manuscript and cover formatted to their individual specifications. Since I’m hopeless with formatting, I hired a graphic artist recommended by Smashwords to format my ebook. For US$65 she formatted the manuscript and cover for both Kindle and Smashwords. It’s also good for the other ebook retailers. I paid CompletelyNovel.com to format the paperback. A St Lucian graphic artist (Mageesa Boudhar) designed my cover. Altogether, I spent about US$300 for formatting and cover design.

What I now have to sort out is how to get multiple paperback copies to interested bookstores in the Caribbean in a cost effective way. It turns out that this is easier and cheaper to do if the bookstores are in North America or the UK where Lightening Source have their printing operations.

I also discovered, much to my surprise, that I have to pay the IRS 30% of my royalties on sales made in the US. It doesn’t matter that I’m not a US citizen, or that I’m not based in the US. Both Amazon and Smashwords warned me up front that they are mandated by law to withhold taxes from my earnings and submit them to Uncle Sam. The only way around it is if you are a citizen of a country whose government has signed a Tax Exemption Treaty with the US government. You would automatically qualify for full or partial exemption from tax withholdings on your earnings. You have to apply for a foreign tax number by submitting a W-8BEN form. The IRS then issues you a foreign tax ID, which you have to submit to Amazon and Smashwords. Thereafter, they’re no longer required to withhold taxes on your royalties. That’s the only way to fend off the taxman. To view countries that have tax treaties with the US, see this PDF file: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p901.pdf

Apparently only three Caribbean governments had the foresight to negotiate tax exemption treaties with the US on behalf of their citizens - Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Barbados, although it’s still not clear to me from the abovementioned document that writers are included in the exemptions. For the rest of us in the English-speaking Caribbean, we’re evidently been left out in the cold.

I haven’t been able to confirm whether CARICOM and the OECS are aware of this and, if so, whether they ever attempted to negotiate a US Tax Exemption Treaty collectively with the US Government on behalf of their citizens, instead of the individual governments going about it in a piecemeal fashion. I intend to follow up and find out.

My novel, Forbidden tackles the sensitive issue of race within the context of a Caribbean island whose residents, over time, have bought into the ideals of colourism; the preference for lighter skin tones, and the tendency to regard fair-skinned people as more desirable. It also examines to what extent religion has contributed to this world view and looks at how the Church and the Bible have shaped Black people’s self image and our sense of self worth. It is controversial and I knew from the start this would further limit my chances of ever being published.

Nevertheless, I believe in it. I also think it addresses issues that people grapple with from day to day, and not just in the Caribbean. Many other societies and cultures struggle with the issue of colourism, not to mention matters of faith. My book, however, is an attempt to have a conversation with my brothers and sisters from the Caribbean. Now, consider this.

The English-speaking islands of the Caribbean have a population of approximately 5.444,762 (CIA World Factbook 2009 estimates). Add to this a further 7.3 million people of Caribbean descent I’ve estimated (through research) to be living in the Diaspora – altogether some 13 million people. I haven’t even included African, African-American, Black British and Black Canadian readers.

Perhaps not immediately, but in the long run, I believe authors who have digitized their books will have a better shot at tapping into that diverse demographic. Physical books will always be there. Many readers still prefer them. But if your aim is to try to reach as many readers as possible among a demographic that is so widely dispersed, physical books just don’t cut it. Their comparatively higher cost doesn’t help either.

If technology provides you with a mode of delivery that is, for the most part, accessible and free, and you’re sure that your work is polished and edited as well as it can be, and it is appealing, why look a gift horse in the mouth?

Marketing and promoting is going to be hard work. It’s always been, even for established writers who are increasingly expected to do their bit in promoting their work. Personally, I’m game for the challenge. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

But new writers like me aside, Caribbean writers locked into deals with traditional publishers will sooner or later (if they haven’t done so yet) have to contend with the issue of what to do with their titles which have gone out of print, or are likely to. What do you do if your publisher is unwilling or reluctant to invest in new editions of your book, even while seeking to maintain control of it and your current and future work? At present, most traditional publishers are insisting on pocketing 75% of all ebook sales. Amazon and Smashwords are offering indie writers up to 70% and 85% respectively on sales made directly from their websites. Third party sales still earn you more than you get from traditional publishers.

These are all indications of how book publishing is undergoing dramatic change, forcing writers and publishers alike to face up to the reality that they have to adapt and consider options that, in the past, they probably wouldn’t have given a second thought.

In one of the most thought-provoking articles on publishing I’ve read yet, writer and blogger, Dean Wesley Smith advised in his recent post Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: the Myth of Security: “... don’t think that just because you are an indie publisher and in control of your own covers that you have security. You don’t. And don’t think that just because you sold a big book deal to a traditional publisher you have security. You don’t. So maybe get the security from learning the business and enjoying the writing. For me, doing a job I love is the real reward.”

This is precisely how I feel.

Forbidden is available from Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/46947 and the Kindle Store http://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-ebook/dp/B004S2CPMW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=A1TQLU46ZJXED5&s=digital-text&qid=1300758886&sr=1-1

The paperback is available at CompletelyNovel.com http://www.completelynovel.com/books/forbidden (USA) will soon be on sale at Amazon.com and other retailers worldwide.

About Tony Williams

Tony Williams was born in Castries, Saint Lucia. From a young age, he set out to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. He started as a news reporter with the Government Information Service in 1977, soon after leaving secondary school. A few years later, he left journalism to take over the management of a family-owned banana plantation. Ten years later, he gave it up to return to journalism and went on to become the editor of the Crusader newspaper in Saint Lucia. He was subsequently awarded a Reuters Fellowship in journalism at Green College, Oxford University. In 2007, he gave up full time journalism to devote more time to creative writing. Along with freelance journalism, he does consultancy work and speechwriting part time. He’s the creator of Caribbean Book Blog.

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April 2, 2011

21 Days/21 Poems: "Saturday Mornings" by Malachi

Saturday Mornings

We trekked one by one

Up sharp stone paths

Through devil wisp

And serpent valley

Every Saturday morning

To gather fire wood

In the St. Catherine mountains

Every boy, over seven

Climbed the mountains

With machete in hand

Making songs, some so long ago

That they became “Big Boy stories”

That kept us laughing through

Macka juk

For we couldn’t afford

Shoes then.

But that didn’t stop us

From climbing mountain peaks

And ketch Massa Gaad a sleep.

“Saturday Mornings” by Malachi

Photo: Ian Gage

About Malachi

Malachi was a James Michener Fellow at the University of Miami’s Caribbean Writer’s Institute, where he studied poetry under Lorna Goodison and playwriting under Fred D’Aguiar. An alumnus of Florida International University, Miami-Dade College and Jamaica School of Drama, Malachi was one of the founding members of Poets In Unity, a critically acclaimed ensemble that brought dub-poetry to the forefront of reggae music in the late 70s and carried it forward for a decade. Malachi has also performed as an actor, and is an accomplished writer, publishing and performing his own plays and poetry. He has also garnered critical attention for his performances in other theatrical productions and on radio, television, and live theatre.

In 2005, he headlined the International Dub-Poetry Festival in Toronto and he performed at the Love-In Festival in Miami with Richie Heavens and other greats. In 2003, Malachi was a featured performer in Baltimore at that city’s Black History Month tribute to Bob Marley, and at the Manhattan Center in New York. He has also appeared at the prestigious Broward Center of the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He has performed scheduled for the African-Can-Do Festival in Miami on July 26, and also appeared at the Jerk Festival at Markham Park on November 14, 2010. He toured St. Kitts and Nevis in the summer of 2000 to rave reviews.

Malachi has five CD collections to his credit: “Throw Two Punch,” “The Blacker the Berry,” “Middle Passage,” “Luv Dub Fever,” and his latest, “Hail to Jamaica.” He has published one volume of poetry “Black Boy Blue.” Malachi’s poetry has been published in anthologies including: Wheel and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poetry, The Caribbean Writer, The Carrier-Pidgin Journal, and Write in Our Midst. Award winning plays are “Crosses” and “Until Death us do Part.”

For more on Malachi:

www.malachismith.com

www.reggaeconcepts.com dub poetry

www.cdbaby.com/malachimusic

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21 Days/21 Poems: Childhood

April 1, 2011

21 Days/21 Poems: "Flight of the Poui Carpet" by Andrea Shaw

Flight of the Poui Carpet

Yellow fairy blossoms swirl

giggling as they glide

over rooftops and cars,

swoop through branches

and tease birds--

they kiss the grass ,

then frolic all morning.

A spring carpet of fairies.

In Benghazi and Misrata, Bin Jawad and Ajdabiya,

bullets pierce the skies,

screaming past a little boy eating bazin,

a girl eating asida,

hailing an Arab spring .

No magic carpet to whisk them away.

“Flight of the Poui Carpet” by Andrea Shaw

About Andrea Shaw:

Andrea Shaw is assistant director of the Division of Humanities and an associate professor of English at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale . She is a scholar of Caribbean and African Diaspora studies and author of The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women's Unruly Political Bodies. She is also a creative writer. Her creative and scholarly writing have been published in numerous journals, including World Literature Today, MaComére, The Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, Feminist Media Studies, Social Semiotics, and FEMSPEC.She graduated from the University of Miami with a Ph.D. in English and from Florida International University with an M.F.A in creative writing. She is on the editorial board of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal and on the board of the Women’s International Film Festival. She and her husband, Dean Nevins, are owners of Irie Isle Jamaican Restaurant.

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21 Days/21 Poems: Childhood

21 Days/ 21 Poems: Childhood

Instamatic

And here's Catherine

at sixteen months

barely above ground

and yet

so sky-inclined

Daddy, hustling, must yield

to her insistent ‘Bird! Bird!’

or ‘Plane!’or

‘Moon!’ her innocence

sanctifies

object and word.

She grows fast

like us to hustle time

to lose

her skywardness.

"Instamatic," by Edward Baugh. A Tale From the Rainforest, Sandberry Press, Kingston, Jamaica, 1988.

When I first read “Instamatic” in The Daily Gleaner (I had a clipped copy until a few years ago), I was awed by the simplicity and power of the lyric. In a few lines, Baugh captures the innocence of the child, “Daddy, hustling, must yield/ to her insistent ‘Bird! Bird!’/ or ‘Plane!’ and the love of the father, “her innocence/sanctifies/ object and word.” There is also a careful balancing of the words “hustle,” “sky-inclined,” and “skywardness” and the playful use of long and short vowels to contrast the point of view of the father and the child.

“Instamatic” was one of those poems that I kept in memory during the formative years of my children, and it made me appreciate even more their sheer delight and wonder of the world.

Photo: Book Industry Association of Jamaica

Edward Alston Cecil Baugh (born 10 January 1936) is a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott.

He was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and began writing poetry at Titchfield High School. He won a scholarship to study English literature at the University College of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, and later did his postgraduate studies at Queen's University in Ontario and the University of Manchester, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1964. He taught at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies from 1965 to 1967, then at the university's Mona campus from 1968 to 2001, eventually being appointed professor of English in 1978 and public orator in 1985.

Source: Wikipedia

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