CARIBBEAN HYBRIDITY: LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN

JOHN AGARD’S POETRY

by

Leanna M. Hall

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts with

Honours in English

Acadia University

April, 2017

© Copyright by Leanna M. Hall, 2017

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This thesis by Leanna M. Hall

is accepted in its present form by the

Department of English

as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Arts with Honours

Approved by the Thesis Supervisor

__________________________ ____________________

(typed name) Date

Approved by the Head of the Department

__________________________ ____________________

(typed name) Date

Approved by the Honours Committee

__________________________ ____________________

(typed name) Date

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I, LEANNA HALL, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia University to

reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a

non-profit basis. I, however, retain the copyright in my thesis.

_________________________________

Signature of Author

_________________________________

Date

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Table of Contents

Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ix

Chapter 1: Introducing Identity ............................................................................................1

Chapter 2: Imposing Identity .............................................................................................19

Chapter 3: Repressed Identity ............................................................................................33

Chapter 4: Hybrid Identity .................................................................................................45

Works Cited .......................................................................................................................57

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ABSTRACT

This thesis will examine various poems by the British-Caribbean poet John Agard in

order to consider his manipulation of language as a way to understand the fluidity of

identity. The thesis will argue that Agard’s poetry calls for a rethinking of identity;

instead of referring to identity as a fixed state, it should be looked at as a process. In this

way, the identity of any group of individuals cannot be rooted to a single influence, but

rather a myriad of cultural authorities. Theorist Stuart Hall and his essay, “Cultural

Identity and Diaspora,” will provide the framework for the exploration of the major

influences on Caribbean identity. Like Agard, he positions identity not as “an already

accomplished fact, we should think, instead, of identity as a production which is never

complete” (Hall 222). Hall’s image of identity as a production suggests that the

respective influences on identity are a representation of its fluidity. The three influences

outlined in Hall’s essay will be analyzed thematically to prove that the ‘roots’ of an

individual’s identity can better be explained in terms of ‘routes’ of movement and

change. Within each influence there is a key transformation of the linguistic culture of the

individuals which, therefore, acts as a signifier of the evolution of identity. As a result,

the language and consequently the identity of Caribbean individuals are best represented

in terms of hybridity.

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCING IDENTITY

“Challenging society is part of your ammunition as a poet…Once your poem is released

into the world, you no longer have any control.” (Agard, 2016)

John Agard’s Guyanese upbringing has gifted him with a plethora of poignant

topics, allowing him to mix cultures, mesh languages, and create hybrid identities within

his poetry. In order to verbalize his dedication to his Caribbean heritage, he invented the

term “poetsonian” which is a derivative of a calypsonian, who is the musical

administrator of the popular tradition of tropical calypso. Agard wishes the term to be “a

signal to people that a poet is not just a person dishing out a cerebral pain for the sake of

it, but is actually delighting in language and hoping that delight will become infectious”

(Agard 2016). His numerous collections cover a broad scope of territory in both their

form and their focus. His work is therefore subject to a variety of interpretations, one of

which centers around the concept of identity and how it has been formed by history,

language, and culture. My thesis explores Agard’s concern with three major aspects of

cultural identity: how colonial discourse has given it a voice of resistance, how slave

trade history has given it a depth of origin, and how diaspora has given it a breadth of

diversity. In poems that feature a history of dislocation and disruption, Agard’s Caribbean

and diasporic individuals are caught in a relationship between acceptance and belonging.

This middle-ground then becomes the birthplace of hybrid identities.

The cultural critic, Stuart Hall, describes this struggle for acceptance within

Caribbean identities in terms of roots and routes. My thesis uses his notion of “presences”

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as an organizing principal and theoretical framework through which I examine John

Agard’s poetry. In his seminal essay, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Hall postulates

that identity cannot exist as a fixed object, but rather as an incomplete and unfinished

production. Hall’s idea of production can be understood through two separate aspects that

relate directly to root and route, but that place a great deal more emphasis on the latter.

The first describes identity as “one, shared culture, a sort of collective 'one true self',”

which can be shared by a group that displays similar historical and cultural backgrounds

(Hall 223). Due to the fact that this mode coalesces a group of people under a communal

umbrella, it tends to be a more static and rooted position fixed by generalizations and the

essentializing of identity. As a result, Hall remarks that it is “not the rediscovery but the

production of identity. Not an identity grounded in the archaeology, but in the re-telling

of the past” (224). The second form of identity “challenges the fixed binaries which

stabilize meaning and representation and show how meaning is never finished or

completed, but keeps on moving to encompass other, additional or supplementary

meanings” (Hall 229). In contrast to the previous position, this facet of identity describes

the Caribbean individual as being the product of multiple origins and therefore as routed.

Although this form of identity is realized uniquely among subjects, it is not free from

connections to the African past and subsequent European impositions. Within the essay,

Hall furthers the second position of a routed identity by inserting it into different

influential periods of Caribbean history, namely “Présence Africaine, Présence

Européene, Présence Américaine” (230).

Along with applying Hall’s theoretical concerns to Agard’s poetry, I use his

metaphorical presences as an organizing principle for the succeeding chapters. However,

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I have rearranged his chronology, beginning with the European presence, moving on to

the African, and then the New World/American. Hall’s central concern is with the

multiple influences on cultural identity, so he begins at the source, or roots, and then

describes the impact of colonial contact. My reordering will allow for a conceptual

understanding of identity as it was experienced historically in the Caribbean.

Consequently, it recognizes the devastating impact of colonial violence, a physical

presence that occurred prior to and was responsible for the slave trade that uprooted so

many Africans from their homeland. Agard refuses to forget the impact of this encounter,

its rupturing of African identity and relocation in the New World. The Europeans first

brought Africa to the Caribbean via the slave trade. The rebellion from the imposition of

colonial identity, therefore, allowed for a rediscovery of the African motherland and

resulted in the hybrid individual of the Caribbean New World. In effect, Hall’s

concluding remarks on modern black film makers could equally apply to John Agard; as

such, they aptly summarize the concerns of my thesis: “This is the vocation of modern

black cinemas: by allowing us to see and recognise the different parts and histories of

ourselves, to construct those points of identification, those positionalities we call in

retrospect our 'cultural identities'” (237).

My second chapter situates Agard’s poetry within the framework of Hall’s notion

of Présence Européene, and the violence that erupted from within the contact zone of the

colonizer and colonized. Agard’s poetry constantly revisits the effects of the colonial

encounter on Caribbean identity. My reading of selected poems in this chapter is guided

by the work of three influential theorists, Franz Fanon, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha,

whose thinking on the confrontation between the colonizer and the colonized can be

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applied to Agard’s work. For example, Frantz Fanon’s psychological perspective on

identity exposes the myth that colonial authority was something intended to better

civilizations; likewise, Agard’s poetry reveals the reality that the European presence did

enact further violence onto various civilizations. Like Fanon, Edward Said is interested in

how the West constructs the Other. His claim that “Orientalism is a style of thought”

recognizes the broader implications of colonial rule beyond that one geographical

location (Said 2). Lastly, Homi Bhabha’s metonymical lens presents the slippage that

exists between the colonizer’s intentions and the colonized person’s actualizations with

regard to emulation of European identity. Agard’s use of both standard and non-standard

forms of the English language visually displays this slippage to readers.

Martiniquais-French psychiatrist Frantz Fanon in his book, Black Skin White

Masks, explores colonial relations in terms of a system of psychological violence on the

part of the colonizer and self-inflicted by the colonized individual. For Fanon, the forcing

of a people to adopt certain characteristics creates self-division, which “is a direct result

of colonialist subjugation” and is a form of oppression accentuated by language (17).

Language is, consequently, used as a tool to enact submission. When a colonized

individual assumes the colonizer’s language, he is not simply transmuting the original

formulation of his lexicon, but he is also metamorphosing into a colonially cultured

being. Agard satirizes this linguistic assimilation in his poem, “Taking the Dogma for a

Walk,” labeling it as a pet-like “dogma” that colonized subjects try to own in imitation of

the colonizer, but ultimately cannot fully control (Alternative Anthem 127). They are

brought close enough to forge a temporary connection and are consequently instructed by

a subtle force until the former primordial self is adequately subdued. Consequently, when

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the subjects achieve a mastery of the imposed language, they also choose to emulate and

therefore project the superiority of the colonial world from which the language

originated. Instead of propagating their own opinion, they are fed the history of the

dominant figure and are expected to do so in humble silence. Essentially, the “colonized

is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's

cultural standards,” including its linguistic principles (Fanon 18).

This psychological phenomenon exists in two facets: sanctification and education.

When a Caribbean individual has mentally prioritized the language and culture of the

colonizer above that of his island, the next step is a refusal to degrade himself by

speaking creole. To complete the sanctification process, this ‘culturally-advanced’

colonized subject visits the colonial epicenter that he perceives as a “tabernacle” that

serves not only to educate him in the right way, but also raise him to a position of

respected status (Fanon 23). John Agard speaks to this process in the poem, “40,” where

he says “you fancy yourself just below the angels / all because of your consonants and

vowels” (Clever Backbone 48). On an educational front, schools are instructed to teach

the Caribbean youth that creole is too colloquial for formal and progressive education. As

Agard explains in poems like “Hide Talking Drum,” the Queen’s English is used as a

tactic with which the colonizer can restrict and control his subject (Weblines 49). Creole

is therefore reserved for speaking down to household servants and people of like status.

However, this sanctifying education is flawed, and the colonizer fails to acknowledge the

improvements the colonized people make as being equal. Although the subjects have

almost reached the epitome of colonial education, they are not considered to be quite as

civilized as the colonizer. Similarly, the subjects experience alienation from their own

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people as they attempt to survive in the Caribbean with a foreign education that is evident

upon their face and their lips: “The fact that the newly returned Negro adopts a language

different from that of the group into which he was born is evidence of a dislocation,

a separation” from the essence of his identity and he therefore remains ostracized by both

foreigners and locals” (Fanon 25).

Fanon’s account of linguistic violence takes a step further by adding detail to the

situation of the dislocated and transformed individual. He calls this linguistic process of

demoralization “pidgin-nigger” (34). This is an act of psychologically belittling the

colonized through slow speech and child-like vocabulary, implying that a more advanced

method of language would be too sophisticated for their understanding. Agard plays with

this idea in his poem, “Talking to Plants,” where language enforcement is used to try and

promote growth but ultimately is unsuccessful (Alternative Anthem 12). Fanon describes

the act from the perspective of the colonized person as an “automatic manner of

classifying him, imprisoning him, primitivizing him, decivilizing him, that makes him

angry” (32). Moreover, Fanon explains that this colonial tactic was used without any

consideration of the individual’s actual educational status. Even when a Caribbean

individual was educated in the land of the colonizer, he was still degraded in this way; in

essence, pidgin-nigger was a mode of speech meant “to express this thought: ‘You’d

better keep your place’” (Fanon 34). As a result, the colonizer’s fixed concept on the

Caribbean subject was entrenched.

Moving from the psychological to the philological, theorist Edward Said explores

the structure, historical development, and linguistic relationships of ethnic prejudice

between the Orientalist and the Orient. While these terms are typically restricted to the

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Eastern world, Said uses them in a broader sense to refer to any colonizer-colonized

relationship. He explains in his book, Orientalism, that Empire often constructs the

subjects’ sense of self, portraying them unfavourably as the ‘other’. Whether the

comparison is of skin colour, educational aptitude, or attainable wealth, the colonized

population indubitably ranks lower than the European. This comparison then acts as a

standard by which to assess and therefore justify the need for colonial supervision. Agard

satirically illustrates this in a poetic binary of black and white. Two early untitled poems

each have seven thematically opposed lines; the black poem speaks of darkness and pain

while the white speaks of peace and purity (Travel Light Travel Dark 10, 11). This

comparison speaks to a plethora of colour-related issues, including lost history, silenced

voices, and self-acclaimed superiority. Said expounds upon the idea, saying: “It remains

the Orientalist’s job to piece together a portrait, a restored picture as it were, of the Orient

or the Oriental; … circumventing the unruly (un-Occidental) nonhistory of the Orient

with orderly chronicle, portraits, and plots” (151). In terms of linguistic prejudice, Said

says that the colonizer sees language as a means to formulate identity. He uses various

references to theorists Renan and Lecy to explain that “ideological tenets encourage the

reduction of a language to its roots; thereafter, the philologist finds it possible to connect

those linguistic roots … to race, mind, character, and temperament” (Said 150). This

connection then breeds epistemic violence of the subjugated people. Instead of trying to

understand a culture and all its complexities, Orientalists dislocate the ethnicity’s

characteristics, one from the other, thus rendering their identity into an uninhabited land

that can be claimed.

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Through the process of proving that the colonial subject is biologically,

philologically, and intellectually subordinate to the West, colonizing countries meant to

erase anxiety and doubt from the minds of potential settlers. By displaying the natives, or

in the case of the Caribbean, the residents, as complacent and cooperative, the colonizer

was able to sell the dream of an easier, dream-like life in paradise. This ideology,

therefore, not only paved the way for racism, slavery, and violence, but also for the

promise that through the Orient the colonizer could obtain wealth, status, and significance

that was not possible in Europe. Due to the fact that “Orientalists are neither interested in

nor capable of discussing individuals; [but] instead artificial entities, perhaps with their

roots in Herderian populism,” they are able to publish successful propaganda back to the

home front assuring potential settlers of the advantages of populating the Orient. (Said

154). This is accomplished by simplifying the colonized subject and making them out to

be nothing more than another species of harmless fauna. By using a series of scientific

terms, ideological approaches, and invented realities, the Orientalists were able to convert

the personalities of people into the qualities of objects, a multi-faceted culture into a

tourism brochure. Agard displays the resulting impact on the colonized through poems

like “Palm Tree King,” where the individual is interpellated by the settlers’ stereotypical

knowledge of paradise (Mangoes & Bullets 36).

For theorist Homi K. Bhabha, the key concepts of mimicry and ambivalence are

conditions that circulate around the colonizer-colonized relationship. In his essay, “Of

Mimicry and Men,” Bhabha explains that mimicry happens when the colonizer identifies

certain characteristics that he wishes his subjects to emulate. During the imitation

process, however, the subject is subconsciously inserted into a state of limboed identity,

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where the person he is trying to imitate exists in direct opposition to his very essence. An

illusion of roots, therefore, creates a mimetic culture that operates in a weird kind of

stasis between a complete actualization of the colonizer’s qualities and the colonized

person’s submissive attempts to be as close to it as possible. In this way, colonial

mimicry “emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power

and knowledge …[and] is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a

difference that is almost the same but not quite” (Bhabha 126). Similarly, ambivalence

also provides an element of difference in the colonizer-colonized dichotomy, yet the

variance in this case is better described as slippage. The colonial power attempts to fulfill

the civilizing mission of creating a convincing double of itself and its culture, but they

end up generating an unsettling and unintentional mockery of the same. Bhabha explains

that “this area between mimicry and mockery, where the reforming, civilizing mission is

threatened by the displacing gaze of its disciplinary double,” creates a slippage that

upsets colonial authority (127). Agard uses the device of humor to relay this intense

relationship between the mocked colonizer and the conscious potential for subject

rebellion. In the poem, “Prospero Caliban Cricket,” Agard cleverly uses characters from

Shakespeare’s The Tempest in a cricket match, where suddenly Caliban, the slave,

possesses the convincing, game-changing authority (Travel Light Travel Dark 41).

While mimetic ambivalence undermines colonial authority, it also questions the

narrative of colonial representations as a whole. Consequently, Bhabha surmises, “the

ambivalence of mimicry does not just ‘rupture’ the discourse, but becomes transformed

into uncertainty which fixes the colonial subject as a ‘partial’ presence” (127). Agard

ruptures the colonial canon in his poem, “Dr. Johnson, a Jamaican and a Dictionary,”

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through form and context. He writes the poem in the sonnet form of empire,

Shakespeare’s famous 14 lines, but then completely skews the rhyme scheme. Moreover,

colonial authority becomes uncertain when Dr. Johnson, the maker of the Queen’s

English Dictionary, is ironically assisted by a Jamaican servant. Agard implies the idea

that colonial discourses were influenced by the “primitive” people it was meant to

educate (Alternative Anthem 142). Similarly, the scientific language of empire was

impacted by people of colour, as Agard points out in “The Ascent of John Edmonstone”

(Alternative Anthem 28). Consequently, the rupturing of authority affects the identity of

the colonized through what Bhabha calls the “metonymy of presence” and partial

representation. The metonymy of presence is comprised of “strategic objectives” that aim

to accomplish a prohibited desire (Bhabha 130). The individual experiences a substituted

identity which, if it was ever fully achieved, would be paranormal and unable to exist as a

logical process. Dr. Johnson’s servant has achieved the desired colonial educational goal

and therefore exists as an unspoken anomaly who is excluded from history because he

subverts it. These hybrid people exist as a partial representation of themselves and of

their conquerors. Bhabha expresses that “partial representation rearticulates the whole

notion of identity and alienates it from essence” (129). These two factors represent a

psychological dismembering of the colonized individuals’ sense of self; they lose the

blueprints of their being.

My third chapter will consider a selection of Agard’s poems that seem to

acknowledge Stuart Hall’s assertion, “Africa, the signified which could not be

represented directly in slavery, remained and remains the unspoken, unspeakable

'presence' in Caribbean culture. It is 'hiding' behind every verbal inflection, every

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narrative twist of Caribbean cultural life” (230). He calls this “site of the repressed”

Présence Africaine. In several of Agard’s poems, including “Sugar Cane’s Saga,” and

“Caribbean Eye over Yorkshire,” he adopts standard English and conventional structures,

while subverting the very linguistic culture he is using (Travel Light Travel Dark 35,

Alternative Anthem 125). But can one really reclaim cultural roots while speaking the

language of the colonizer? In his book, Caliban’s Voice, Bill Ashcroft considers whether

identity can be reclaimed while using a language that is so “deeply inflected with the

troubling questions littering that liminal space where identity and culture mingle and

scrape against one another” (101). Ashcroft compares two African authors, Ngugi wa

Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe, who have opposing views on language choice. Ngugi’s

stance is that because the imperial system selectively imposed the English language, “The

colonized tongue becomes a province of the elite and thus the language itself reproduces

colonial class distinctions” (Ashcroft 104). It is for this reason that Ngugi is adamant on

using his African language in his writings, rather than English. In this way, he feels that it

is possible to reclaim one’s roots and give power to the African culture that was uprooted

by colonial English. Achebe, on the other hand, acknowledges that although English has

had a destructive past, it is “how the language is used that counts” (Ashcroft 106). Hall

explains that language was not simply used to communicate, but rather “languages were

spoken, in the stories and tales told to children, in religious practices and beliefs, in the

spiritual life, the arts, crafts, musics and rhythms of slave and post-emancipation society”

(230). Poems like “Journey Shango,” display the ways in which language, can exist as an

integral part of cultural identity particularly in this case through the reinsertion of African

folklore into daily song and dance (Mangoes and Bullets 14). English, for Achebe, is a

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language that acted as a unifying factor that brought together a variety of African people

who before had no means of inter-tribal communication. Achebe insists that the colonial

dissemination of language can be subverted and reversed by colonized individuals. This

linguistic reversal results in the creation of a new identity for the postcolonial subject that

Ashcroft defines through the theory of “the Creole continuum” (Ashcroft 114-116). This

theory, which he borrows from theorists Derek Bickerton and John DeCamp, aims to

explain the complexity of Caribbean dialects. Ashcroft states, “the creole continuum

disrupts many traditional and structural ideas about language. It undermines static models

of language formation, overturning those notions of language, which, either implicitly or

explicitly, regard ‘standard’ English as ‘core’” (114). Creole is not just an additive form

of English; instead, it is an alternative language form that can stand on its own.

Moreover, its difference and variance across the Caribbean enacts the dismissal of the

fixed standards of language, thus making language a tool that actualizes the concept of

fluid identity. Ashcroft states that creole “reminds us that a language is a human

behaviour and consists of what people do rather than what models a linguistic theory can

construct” (115). Agard’s poetry puts the behaviour of the post-colonial Caribbean on

display so that readers can witness the uprooting of the colonizer’s imposed identity and

the subsequent discovery of a sense of rootedness not in an ancestral homeland, but in an

ever-evolving concept of linguistic fluidity.

Caribbean poet, critic, and historian Edward Kamau Brathwaite also helps to

explain this fluid identity in his book, History of the Voice. Aligning himself with Achebe

and Agard, Brathwaite refers to the Caribbean linguistic identity as “the process of using

English in a different way from the ‘norm’. English in a new sense as I prefer to call it.

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English in an ancient sense. And sometimes not English at all, but language” (5). In his

brief history, Braithwaite illustrates the four branches of Caribbean language: English,

creole English, nation language, and ancestral languages (5-6). In order to explain this

succinctly, I wish to combine Braithwaite’s chronology with Paul Gilroy’s image of a

ship that he develops in The Black Atlantic, to illustrate the two major shifts in language.

The first influential ship made a trans-Atlantic voyage all the way from the west coast of

Africa, launching the era of slavery. Braithwaite calls the language of the slaves “nation

language”, which is “the language which is influenced very strongly by the African

model, […] in its contours, its rhythm and timbre, its sound explosions, it is not English

even though the words, as you hear them, might be English to a greater or lesser degree”

(13). However, this initial ship is not restricted to Africans only. “Atlantic Libation” is a

poem featured in Agard’s Travel Light Travel Dark collection; it details the troubled

crossings of not only the ships carrying Africans, but also the ships that sailed Indigenous

Caribbean people to their death (30-31). The next ship that signifies the introduction of a

creolized English is historically illustrated through the MV Empire Windrush, which set

sail from the West Indies to the United Kingdom in 1948, bringing with it some 500

Caribbean immigrants and the language of creole. The arrival of the colonized subject to

the colonial epicenter might seem counter-productive, but Agard’s poetry illuminates the

powerful counter-colonial impact it had not only on the English language, but also on the

English people. The poem, “From Britannia to Whom It May Concern” features a somber

if not apologetic letter from England to its colonies that are now inhabiting the shores of

the Kingdom (Alternative Anthem 122). It is important to understand that while these

branches have their respective start date, usually sparked through a specific historical

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event, the sprouting of a new branch does not signify the termination of the previous

languages. Agard writes often of the Caribbean individual’s complex history and how the

languages from a variety of different influences continue to contribute to their identity.

One such poem included in the collection Mangoes and Bullets is entitled “I Can’t Hear

You Man,” which is written primarily in creole, but also includes lines of standard

English, with inferences to, and examples of, an African nation language and culture like

the invoking of the African god of the storms, “shango” (21-22). In this way, the idea of

fluidity, which is so important to Gilroy’s description of diaspora and Brathwaite’s

thinking on language, is upheld through a complex history of cumulative languages and

intertwined identities.

My final chapter looks at how Agard’s poetry combines traces of European

conquest and African exile together to evoke the kind of hybrid Caribbean identity that

Hall situates geographically in the New World, or Présence Américaine. The Ciboney,

the Arawak, and the Carib tribes were the first people to inhabit the Caribbean

archipelago. They remained as far removed from each other as possible until Columbus’

ship collectively interpellated them as Indians, shipping the majority of the population to

mines in Hispaniola to work (Gascoigne 1). The iconic 1492 ship brought with it the

dawn of imperial languages and the colonization of the Caribbean. Consequently, the

ancestral languages were slowly suppressed as their importance and value to the Western

powers decreased. Agard dedicates his poem, “We the Forgotten Names,” not only to the

lost native identities, but also the debased prominence of native languages (Travel Light

Travel Dark 46). The resulting effect was the eradication of the understanding of a key

part of Caribbean identity. As Agard explains in his poem, “Half-caste,” essentially, the

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Caribbean people developed a new hybridized identity made up of recognized ethnic or

cultural groups that they do not fully understand (Half-caste 11-13). Unlike the first

position of rootedness, this identity is not fluctuating due to a lack of a physical place;

instead, this routedness thrives on an acceptance of belonging to a multi-faceted place.

Hall gives this new identity a presence that he says is “Américaine” due to its linkage to

the distinctiveness of the New World: “It is the juncture-point where the many cultural

tributaries meet, the ‘empty’ land … the space where the creolisations and assimilations

and syncretisms were negotiated” (234). However, it is important to note that this

juncture is not a final resting place, but rather a temporary meeting place due to the fact

that this Présence Américaine prides itself on migrational movement. The population of

the Caribbean, which is a part of the New World classification, is therefore in a constant

state of evolution. The culture alone can “testify to the complexities entailed in the

process of trying to represent a diverse people with a diverse history through a single,

hegemonic 'identity'” (Hall 235). Agard speaks to this complex past in the poem,

“Remember the Ship,” where he alludes to histories of colonialism and slavery, but also

brings in the diversity of the individuals that those histories produced (Travel Light

Travel Dark 59-60). Furthermore, he brings the “ship” into “citizenship” and challenges

how New World individuals must deal with the legalities of belonging. Essentially,

Caribbean individuals evolve to a state where they can possess an ever-changing hybrid

identity. Instead of adapting to each physical place they inhabit, hybrid individuals absorb

that place into their being, adding yet another part to their whole. Recognizing the

difference between each aspect of identity, therefore, becomes a harbinger of a new form

of self. Consequently, hybridized identities are constantly routing and rerouting

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themselves through transformation and difference. Speaking of his own Caribbean

identity, Hall claims that “by allowing us to see and recognize the different parts and

histories of ourselves, to construct those points of identification, those positionalities we

call in retrospect our 'cultural identities'” can often result in the creation of a uniquely

new being (237).

Theorist Ramzani explains the concept of hybridity further in his book, The

Hybrid Muse, by linking it more specifically to literature. He attributes the work of

postcolonial poets like Agard to be the result of “the hybridization of the English muse

with the long-resident muses of Africa, India, the Caribbean, and other decolonizing

territories of the British empire: “Postcolonial poets have dramatically expanded the

contours of English-language poetry by infusing it with Indigenous metaphors and

rhythms, creoles, and genres” (Ramzani 1). The coalescing of various cultural

backgrounds in the New World allows for the learning and even adoption of multiple

identities. While having both an English muse and a native muse may seem

contradictory, diasporized individuals make it possible to be inspired by both as a result

of their routed identity. Essentially, by “belonging to multiple worlds that are transformed

by their convergence, postcolonial poets indigenize the Western and anglicize the native

to create exciting new possibilities for English-language poetry” (Ramzani 2). Agard

relates this idea of conglomerated identities, muses, and languages in his lengthy poem

entitled “Water Music of a Different Kind” (Travel Light Travel Dark 22-28). Ramzani

relates that the best way to record this mixing of muses is to use the “metaphor of

hybridity as a potent lens through which to explore interculturation in the postcolonial

world;” this metaphor can be explained as an “intensified hybridization of already mixed

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and politically unequal cultures where native represents a prior knotting together of

diverse strands as does the amalgamation British” (6). In order to illustrate Ramzani’s

point, I wish to relate the metaphor of hybridity to my personal experience. I was born

and raised on the island of Bermuda; while it is not technically a part of the Caribbean,

many locals and even foreigners often refer to our heritage as a melting pot of cultures.

We still practice many aspects of the colonizer culture, but have found a way to morph

them into African tribalism and Native traditions in the realms of dance, food, and music.

The metaphor of hybridity allows for the formation of a middle ground “between oral

practices and imported literary forms; [it] reclaims Indigenous histories landscapes and

traditions and constitutes imagined communities in the wake of their threatened colonial

destruction” (Ramzani 3). These sorts of poems derive their strength from their style,

depth, and flow and these postcolonial poets do not categorize their work under one

heading, but rather they deploy the stylistic techniques to produce a multi-leveled

interpretation of the subjects they discuss. The writing style is “resonant and compelling

in no small part because of their figurative reach, verbal dexterity, tonal complexity and

their imaginative transformation of inherited genres, forms, and dramatic characters”

(Ramzani 4). Moreover, there is a depth that is given through the Indigenous and colonial

histories. An example of this depth can be seen in the poem, “Fly?” where Agard tells of

the Caribbean individuals’ struggle to free themselves from the shackles of their past

(Mangoes & Bullets 18). While hybrid identities might unite under the dismantling of

colonial rule, differences between cultures are still recognized. By giving a “voice to a

past that colonialism has degraded, garbled, and even gagged,” the present becomes a

mix of nation languages, ancient cultures, and pluralistic identities (Ramzani 9).

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In her article, “Doing voices: Reading language as craft in black British poetry,”

Rachel Gilmour refers directly to Agard: “Poetry here, in the hands of the ‘poetsonian’,

becomes a craft that can travel between languages and art forms; cross the ocean between

the Caribbean, the US, and Britain; navigate between sound and form; draw poet and

audience together; and carry out offshore raids on prose” (344). Agard’s poetry exposes

how colonization interrupted national identity, altered nation language, and imposed

conflicting facades onto its subjects; it also “works to challenge monolithic notions of

British culture, language, and national belonging” (Gilmour 345). Agard supports

Gilmour’s challenges in the poem, “Enemy,” where a mirror is set in front of the

accusatory individual in order to expose the plethora of similarities between him and the

person he is incriminating (Travel Light Travel Dark 90). One benefit of this analysis that

is especially crucial to the lives of modern-day Caribbean citizens is that, “Such

approaches — resistant assertion of linguistic difference, historical legitimation, even

strategic linguistic essentialism — also constitute combative responses to mainstream

attitudes to creoles as “jungle talk” lacking in expressive precision, abstraction, and

complexity, and often (whether explicitly or implicitly) linked to inchoate fears of crime

and disorder” (Gilmour 345). The validation of identity through language makes it

possible for hybridity to then be actualized for Caribbean individuals. As Gilmour states,

we “need to make of poetry a space of collective belonging; to draw together poet and

audience in a relationship of engagement and exchange” (346). Agard calls the people of

the New World to unite under the alternative anthem of the poem, “Listen Mr. Oxford

Don” that gives autonomy to a multi-faceted cultural identity (Alternative Anthem 16).

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CHAPTER TWO: IMPOSING IDENTITY

Stuart Hall’s Présence Européene is one of three metaphors that he uses to

describe the relationship between language and cultural identity in the Caribbean.

Although Hall places Présence Européene second in his argument, I begin with it as a

lens through which Agard’s poetry explores the complex relationship between the

colonizer and the colonized. The colonizer’s ostensible goal within this lens “interrupts

the innocence of the discourse … by introducing the question of power” to mold the

colonized people into a civilized duplicate of his own culture (Hall 232). This process

featured an uprooting of the original identity of the individual and the imposition of

foreign identity. Fanon, Bhabha, and Said show that colonial efforts were “almost but not

quite” meaning that the resulting imitation was not as successful as it was envisioned to

be (Bhabha 126). While Agard’s poetry does not explicitly mention any of these

theorists, his use of satire and subtle humour begs for a questioning and consequently a

deeper analysis of the way in which language was taught and spoken in formerly

colonized areas. However, Présence Européene is not just about a recognition of a

constructed selfhood; it also addresses the undeniable truth that traces of colonial culture

are imprinted onto Caribbean identity. The European presence is thus actualized as a

metaphor for power that soon becomes evident in the lives of the colonized subject;

“power has become a constitutive element in our own identities” (Hall 233). Présence

Européene is therefore the scene of the “splitting and doubling” and recreation of the

Caribbean identity as it finds ways to subvert certain aspects of European culture, while

adopting others (Hall 234).

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Hall definitely attributes the idea and implementation of power in the Caribbean

to the colonizer: “Europe belongs irrevocably to the play of power, to the lines of force

and consent, to the role of the dominant in Caribbean culture” (232). Agard makes a play

of his own by using the flexibility of language to turn a serious aspect of colonial

power—dogma—into a comic exploration of how that same power is doubled and

fumbled by the colonized. The term, “dogma,” which can be defined as a standard that is

declared by an authority to be canonized truth, can be applied to colonizer culture. In the

poem, “Taking the Dogma for a Walk,” Agard creates a link between owning a dog and

asserting one’s dogma. Unlike a typical domesticated canine, the speaker says that the

“dogma has been known / to settle for a human bone” (Alternative Anthem 127), meaning

that it has the tendency to turn against those who try to control it. In this way, Agard

illustrates the fickle nature of the colonizer-colonized relationship. When the dogma

revolts, it is no respecter of person, it does not distinguish between the darker person over

the lighter; instead, it snaps at the authority that attempts to impose it, as well as the

authority that tries to adopt it: “A dogma can turn on its owner. / … A dogma can bite the

hand that feeds it” (Alternative Anthem 127). Another interesting factor of colonial

relations that this poem reveals is its susceptibility to change. Although the dogma boasts

of an authoritative foundation, it often undergoes changes as it traverses through different

times and new cultures. Sometimes these changes come at the expense of the authority

that believed in it in the first place as the dogma joins other dogmas, thus losing its

purity. The most difficult part of this for the colonizer is that he cannot control where and

when the amendments are made because he has imposed certain cultural beliefs onto

individual identities: “Then dogma joins dogma in heat, / This can happen on your own

21

sofa / or in front of an entire street” (Alternative Anthem 127). Once again, the rebellious

dogma is no respecter of opinion; there is no manual for how and when it might

transform. When it does, it further disrupts the belief system within which it was

developed and exposes the colonizer’s desire to keep the imposition of his dogma private

and the colonized’s yearning to make his acceptance of the dogma public: “This can

happen on your own sofa / or in the front of an entire street” (Alternative Anthem 127).

The third element of the colonizer-colonized relationship that this poem speaks to is the

way in which people “begin to resemble / the dogma they keep for companion”

(Alternative Anthem 127). While this might seem to support colonial imposition, it in fact

promotes the opposite. The aim of the colonizer is to create an imitation of the ideal.

However, the dogma reflects the good and the bad of colonial culture in an unbiased

fashion. Without meaning to, the colonizer creates a system that amplifies his faults while

trying to replicate his successes. As with Bhabha’s “almost but not quite” claim, the

colonized people consequently participate in accentuating the flaws of the colonizer,

while creating a second-rate representation of his good qualities “with toothsome

conviction” (Bhabha 126, Alternative Anthem 127). Consequently, the characteristic of

power shifts from the individual imposing the dogma to the individual trying to imitate it.

Language and the ability to speak are key manifestations of power. The European

colonizers often tried to force the standardized imperial tongue onto the Caribbean

people, hoping that it would civilize them and contain their interpersonal relations.

According to Fanon, the colonizer claimed that the “colonized is elevated above his

jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards”

(18). Essentially, in the mind of the colonizer, the savage subject becomes more civilized,

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or cleansed, through the process of linguistic and cultural assimilation. Agard’s poem,

“40,” speaks to the evolutionary success that comes with the mastery of language: “On

the scale of talk you claim the highest rung / You – upright Homo with your globe-

trotting tongue” (Clever Backbone 48). The language referred to, however, is not your

average creole or English derivative, but rather the mastery of the colonizer’s canonized

language. As Agard demonstrates, the colonizer’s goal was to sufficiently “Hide talking

drum / in skin of English words,” so that the colonized heritage is masked by

standardized language (Weblines 49). Creole is, therefore, internalized and marginalized,

only to be spoken on a colloquial basis, while English is supposed to be the language that

is taught in schools and spoken on a daily and formal basis.

Hall regards the European conquest and subsequent colonialization as a case that

“is endlessly speaking – and speaking us” (232). The Caribbean individuals were not only

forced to learn and speak a foreign language, but were also interpellated and subjugated

by this same language, thus involuntarily allowing it to speak for them. However, Agard

demonstrates that linguistic education via compulsion is not a teaching method that

encourages natural growth in his poem, “Talking to Plants” (Alternative Anthem 12). The

reference to plants stands in as a metaphor for people. Judging by the role of the narrator

and his caring for the plant, it can be further inferred that this is a metaphor for the

process of educating colonized people. The metaphor allows Agard to address some

serious assumptions made during the re-education of the colonized subject. First of all,

the narrator is given the advice that if he speaks English to the plants, then they will

grow. He chidingly adds the phrase: “we presume / that all plants speak English”

(Alternative Anthem 12). This sly additive is Agard speaking directly to the colonial

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belief that assumes that the best way to create a civilized nation is through English

instruction. The contingent alternative would be to find a combination or a method that is

able to combine the European language with a dialect that is more familiar to the

individual. The poem then moves on to address another stereotypical assumption

embedded in colonial discourse. As Fanon addresses with his phrase “pidgin-nigger,” the

colonizer often imposed a label of mental inferiority onto the colonized person that had to

be combated through slow and drawn out speech: “Speak slowly, watch them bloom. / If

necessary shout out each syllable” (Alternative Anthem 12). The resulting assumption

was similar to the application of terra nullius that many colonizers, especially those in

Africa, used to justify their seizure of native land. The justification was that the tribal

people would be ready and willing servants for the settlers. Likewise, the poem states that

the plants are “ready vessels / for a showering of the Queen’s vowels” (Alternative

Anthem 12). This places the colonized in a mode of voluntary passivity which, due to the

fact that it is untrue, fosters the growth of nothing other than rebellion. Agard’s final

stanza features the narrator envying his neighbour’s plants, which are spoken to in their

mother tongue and are growing beautifully. The concluding implication is that growth

stems from a multi-ethnic root; while English can bring people together, as Achebe

suggests, it should be taught in tandem with the person’s other languages. Language

should be the site of mixing, of freedom, and of community, instead of being a tool to

uproot and replace other cultural influences.

A major part of Présence Européene is the way in which the colonized group is

meant to stand as a symbol of achievement and conquest for the colonizer: “In terms of

colonialism, underdevelopment, poverty and the racism of colour, the European presence

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is that which, in visual representation, has positioned the black subject within its

dominant regimes of representation” (Hall 233). The more that symbol mirrors the

colonial culture, the better the colonizer’s efforts are justified. By demeaning the colonial

subject’s mental capacity, the colonizer is able to warrant the need for colonial

supervision. If the colonized group needs assistance to achieve “civilized status,” the

colonizers could assert their role as instructor with relative ease. With this came racial

propaganda that demonized the black, while presenting the white as being heavenly.

Agard’s colour poems at the beginning of the collection, Travel Light Travel Dark speak

to this as he diametrically opposes “a poem dressed in black” with “a poem dressed in

white” (10, 11). A binary is consequently created within the reader’s mind that is similar

to the mindset portrayed by the colonizer. On the one hand, the poem dressed in black is

linked to a dark history, whereas the poem dressed in white seems to produce a calming

and peaceful presence. Black becomes personified as “Night’s troubadour” who is set on

retracing and rediscovering the identities of the people colonial conquest erased from

history (Travel Light Travel Dark 10). He is aided by the “raven’s quill” who wants no

help from charitable donors, but instead wants to hear only the voices silenced by an

imposed language (Travel Light Travel Dark 10). On the other hand, white becomes

personified as an “angelic host” who becomes the saviour of the fallen (Travel Light

Travel Dark 11). She finds assurance in the “shimmers in the halo of the blank page” as

her dove-like qualities give amity to troubled hearts (Travel Light Travel Dark 11). This

dangerous binary creates a disparity between the identities of the colonizer and the

colonized. Edward Said explains that these “ideological tenets encourage the reduction of

a language to its roots; thereafter, the philologist finds it possible to connect those

25

linguistic roots … to race, mind, character, and temperament” (150). No longer is the

separation simply linguistic; it is now also tenured by a visual variance that paves the

way for a plethora of stereotypes and acts of violence that would brutally sever the

colonized individual’s sense of self.

Although the colonizers attempted to weed out all of the seemingly invasive

cultural ties between the colonized and their origins, they were unsuccessful, and the

resulting harvest of imitations existed in hybrid forms of the colonizer’s image: “In terms

of popular cultural life, it is nowhere to be found in its pure, pristine state. It is always-

already fused, syncretized, with other cultural elements” (Hall 233). The stark difference

between Caribbean subjects and the English settlers served to create stereotypes with

long-lasting effects. Not only were colonial subjects belittled by settlers during the

colonial and postcolonial periods, but that mindset was also transported into the

neocolonial era. Both of Agard’s poems, “Stereotype” and “Palm Tree King,” display the

most recent form of Caribbean stereotyping that is fueled by tourism. Settlers, in this case

short-term settlers in the form of tourists, have a preconceived notion of what the

Caribbean identity should look like and act like. In the first poem, the persistent repetition

of demeaning phrasing and verbal tone linked to the Caribbean soon causes the “native”

to internalize the belief that he is “a full-blooded / West Indian stereotype” if he chooses

to practice his culture (Mangoes & Bullets 38). Modes of dress and drink, as well as the

ways in which dance and demeanor are performed, are generalized and correspondingly

systemized as the routine. The visitors, however, find it extremely intriguing and, as the

narrator of “Palm Tree King” explains he does not want to “disappoint these culture

vulture,” the speaker proceeds with the formulaic routine (Mangoes & Bullets 36).

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Despite the colonized group’s realization of the ways in which they are used by the

colonizer, the relationship becomes reminiscent of a more complex issue due to the fact

that the stereotypical acts are actually valid parts of the Caribbean culture. So, “not

wanting to sever dis link / with me native roots,” the subject of “Palm Tree King”

continues to practice the very acts that pigeon-hole his identity in a desperate effort to

hold on to what he believes roots him (Mangoes & Bullets 36). It is important to observe

that in both poems Agard includes a rebuttal section where the subject is given the

opportunity to subvert the authoritative system. In “Palm Tree King” the last five stanzas

show the Caribbean subject turning the questioning back upon the tourist with poignant

phrases that inspire contemplative reasoning concerning the plight of the Caribbean

individual. Furthermore, these questions are left open so that, in Fanon’s religious

diction, the culprit that started the sin must also be the candidate sent to sanctify it: “Find

the solution / and you got a revolution” (Mangoes & Bullets 36). The rebuttal in

“Stereotype” is much shorter and located in the final stanza. Throughout the previous

lines the narrator acknowledges that he accurately fits the stereotypical mode; however,

in the final lines he aims to silence those who believe that is all he is capable of: “that’s

why I / graduated from Oxford University / with a degree / in anthropology” (Mangoes &

Bullets 38). The severing of roots, coupled with the imposition of colonial standards,

leaves the Caribbean subjects in a paradoxical state where they exist in persistent

contradiction as a stereotype as well as an unconventional being.

The Caribbean individuals’ state of inconsistency ironically becomes the grounds

for the recognition of their power. Even though power was the tool of the colonizer, the

processes of mimicry and ambivalence have caused power to “become a constitutive

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element in our own identities” (Hall 233). This acquisition of power coupled with a

failure to fully replicate the colonizer suddenly becomes a weapon with which the

Caribbean subject can fight back against authority. In order to illustrate this reversal of

the power dichotomy, in his poem, “Prospero Caliban Cricket,” Agard extracts two

diametrically opposed characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and places them into

the Caribbean culture. True to his humorous nature, Agard makes a cricket match the

setting for the colonizer versus colonized battle: “is cricket is cricket in yuh ricketics / but

from far it looks like politics” (Travel Light Travel Dark 41). The first thing Agard does

is set up the stereotypes typical in colonial discourse for each player and insert them into

cricket terminology. Caliban, who is going to be doing the bowling, is positioned as

coming from “beyond de boundary” (Travel Light Travel Dark 41). Literally, it means

that the bowler is running in from the outskirts of the field to throw the ball; however,

metaphorically speaking, Agard is telling us that he is coming from beyond the Western

world. Prospero is subsequently characterized as a pompous authoritarian, “thinking

Caliban is a mere lad / from a new-word archipelago / and new to the game” (Travel

Light Travel Dark 41). It is interesting, however, that Agard includes a stanza that lends

itself to Bhabha’s theories of ambivalence and slippage. Right after Prospero’s apparent

confidence in Caliban’s inferiority, readers see him invoking the muse of cricket creator

“W.G. Grace / to preserve him” (Travel Light Travel Dark 41). Even in Agard’s parody

of these relations, he makes certain that he emphasizes that colonial authority had some

significant flaws. As Homi Bhabha points out in his article, “the ambivalence of mimicry

does not just ‘rupture’ the discourse, but becomes transformed into uncertainty which

fixes the colonial subject as a ‘partial’ presence” (127). In some cases, this partial

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presence can rupture authority to the point that it can actually use its power against the

colonizer. The actual reversal of roles happens midway through the poem as Caliban

bowls the first ball to Prospero’s bat. At this point, Caliban’s ball becomes an

“unpredictable whip” that has somehow chained Prospero’s foot to the ground (Travel

Light Travel Dark 41). From this moment forward, Caliban assumes the control of the

game and Prospero must play defensively if he is to prevent himself from being bowled

out. Similar to Agard’s other poetry, a key factor to the retention of Caliban’s power is

the support from people who are equally oppressed. It is the crowd who is rocking and

egging Caliban on, “shouting Power” (Travel Light Travel Dark 42). It is this

encouragement that gives Caliban the gusto to keep playing and the sensation that “he is

breathing a nation” of like-minded usurpers of colonial authority (Travel Light Travel

Dark 42).

However, Hall notes that traces of colonial power extend past physical positions

of authority and begin “traversing and intersecting our lives at every point” (233). This is

made obvious in the manifestation of language. One such manifestation can be seen in

the disruption of the colonial canon which Agard addresses in the poem, “Dr. Johnson, a

Jamaican and a Dictionary” (Alternative Anthem 142). The poem pays tribute to the

forgotten Caribbean man who helped define and record the English language. Agard

chooses to narrate the poem from the perspective of Dr. Johnson, who, according to

Agard, saw his negro manservant Francis Barber, as “less a servant than an adopted son”

(Alternative Anthem 142). In order to verify that Agard’s portrayal of Johnson is accurate,

I cross referenced it with an article by the general editor of the Yale Boswell Editions,

Gordon Turnbull. His account claims that “Johnson’s aims, in both his choices connected

29

with early schooling in London for Francis, would seem to have been not just to provide

him with an education close to home, but [were] also, characteristically, charitable”

(Turnbull 486). Adding onto the generosity of Dr. Johnson, Turnbull also goes on to

supply information about a substantial inheritance that was left by Johnson to Barber and

his family. This uncharacteristic behaviour of a European learned man towards the

Caribbean subject creates a slippage in the schema of colonial authority. Agard seems to

suggest that Barber was in fact complicit in the process of exposing the colonized to

English. Should this be the case, the imposition of standard English would therefore serve

as a celebration of black intellect, rather than white supremacy. Moreover, the fact that

Johnson allowed for and even encouraged Barber’s help in the completing of the English

dictionary creates a level of irony that verges on the brink of mockery in terms of the

“role of the dominant” (Hall 232). Although Agard strayed from his usual sarcasm within

the narration of this poem, he still manages to include a challenge to the European

presence via the poetic form. While allusions are made within the text that Francis Barber

disrupts colonial authority, relaying these inferences in a Shakespearean sonnet definitely

presents an upset to European power.

Another manifestation of linguistic power is introduced in the realm of science.

Agard uses scientific language in “The Ascent of John Edmonstone,” to relay the

importance of a black taxidermist to “evolution’s white ladder” (Alternative Anthem 28).

This tribute is dedicated to John Edmonstone, a Guyanese freed slave who taught Charles

Darwin taxidermy. Agard chooses to write it as though it is narrated by Edmonstone

himself in order to provide a greater connection between the reader and the subject

matter. A focus on the three instances of rhyming lines serves as a thematic outlook for

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Agard’s message of exclusion, importance, and equality in the respective sections. The

first three stanzas expose the exclusionary tactic used by the realm of science on the

premise of race. Though he made key contributions to one of the most influential books

in modern science, The Origin of Species, Edmonstone is relegated to the “footnotes

where history / shows its true colours,” which are actually darker than one is made to

believe (Alternative Anthem 28). The second section of the poem brings the footnotes into

the main text, if you will, by highlighting the importance of Edmonstone’s contributions.

Edmonstone, speaking in the first person, validates his claim to scientific recognition by

linking it to a person, place, and milieu. Due to the fact that Edmonstone was hired as

Charles’ personal tutor, the best proof of the matter would be to ask if “Darwin will

remember me” (Alternative Anthem 28). Another possibility would be to check the

mailing record which would situate Darwin and Edmonstone’s residences a “few doors

apart on Lothian Road” (Alternative Anthem 28). If a tertiary source of validation is

needed, Agard remarks that the socio-cultural milieu of the area fostered “No mention

then of savage races” (Alternative Anthem 28). The third and final section portrays a

climate of equality by using the language of evolutionary science. Darwin and

Edmonstone are described as “each other’s missing link,” insinuating that they not only

complement each other, but that they also complete each other. There is a homo erectus

inference made as the two are labeled as being “upright on the chain,” suggesting that

they are both of equal intellect and physical development. They are finally termed as “a

pair of wingless apes,” suggesting that while there is no freedom to fly away from their

situated ethnicities, there is a common ground found in the existence of humanity.

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Colonial influences are an irrevocable piece of the Caribbean identity puzzle. The

violence with which the Queen’s English was enforced left a permanent scar on the

Caribbean identity. At the same time, the tongue they were forced to adopt from the

colonizer did not fit properly, nor did it quell their desire to achieve belonging within the

imposed cultural milieu. Poet Marlene Nourbese Philip speaks to this conflict in her

poem, “Discourse on the Logic of Language”: the mother tongue which is supposed to be

familiar becomes a foreign entity under colonial rule. With the imposition of English onto

the subject, language quickly becomes a “l/anguish / anguish / --a foreign anguish”

(Philip 12). As we will see in the following chapter, this conflict is not simply resolved

with a retreat to the former mother tongue. Instead, colonial persistence uproots the

individual to the point where there is confusion as to what a mother tongue even is: “I

have no mother / tongue / no mother to tongue / no tongue to mother / to mother / tongue

/ me” (Philip 12). Even though its destructiveness severed the subject’s direct connection

to a homeland, it also equipped the individual with the sense that identity can exist in a

state of fluidity, where connections are multifold and transitory.

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33

CHAPTER 3: REPRESSED IDENTITY

Rethinking the Caribbean identity through Hall’s Présence Africaine allows for

the bleak realization that the roots that once held tribes and people groups together are no

longer grounded in a physical place. Hall explains, “The original 'Africa' is no longer

there. It too has been transformed. History is, in that sense, irreversible” (231). Hall is

speaking directly to the uprooting event of slavery and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that

enacted a physical, mental, and emotional separation of the African from the familiar. In

this way, “Présence Africaine is the site of the repressed. Apparently silenced beyond

memory by the power of the experience of slavery” (Hall 230). Although slavery was a

time that many wish to forget and erase, it was no less an era in history that has

contributed to the essential composition of the modern Caribbean individual. It is

important to note that Hall is not saying that the African presence was lost entirely, but

rather that today it exists in a different form. He says, “Africa, the signified which could

not be represented directly in slavery, remained and remains the unspoken, unspeakable

'presence' in Caribbean culture… It is the secret code with which every Western text was

're-read'. It is the ground-bass of every rhythm and bodily movement. This was—is—the

'Africa' that 'is alive and well in the diaspora' (Hall 230). This revived form of African

roots exists in tandem with traces of Présence Européene to create a new form of identity

politics. English can be a way in which the Caribbean individual can subvert the

colonizer, promote island culture, and even unify African, European, and Caribbean

influences to create hybrid identity. The African presence, consequently, becomes a scene

for rerouting of identity.

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Agard’s use of Standard English is not, however, the only system of language that

he deems as effective in his representations of Caribbean identity. Agard also speaks to

the Caribbean linguistic history that is not only able to track the development of speech in

the islands, but also the evolving nature of individual identity. The poem, “Atlantic

Libation” uses a large amount of imagery to paint a picture within the reader’s mind of

the historical importance of the Atlantic Ocean, and reroutes the birth of the colonized

culture to an in between place, rather than a fixed territory. The use of a variety of

figurative language creates a sense of relevance not only to the plight of native Indians,

but also to the equally oppressed Africans. Agard justifies his image-laden method

through Aboriginal culture, saying “Since water, according to the native Indians, / is not

without feeling;” the water, therefore, was a part of the ordeal and has its own story to tell

(Travel Light Travel Dark 30). This story appeals to the sense of touch as it brings

“healing in any language” (Travel Light Travel Dark 30). A physical impression is

garnered through imagery directed to the sense of touch and taste. By referring to the

history etched into its waves as “baggage” and “tainted cloth,” the personified Atlantic

Ocean wants readers to feel the weight of past sins (Travel Light Travel Dark 31).

Similarly, readers are meant to taste the ocean’s bitter pain when it says “the salt of

myself sprinkled in libation / to flavour the course of the new bloodstreams,” this salt is

both seasoning future generations and preserving the memory of the atrocities endured by

various ethnicities on Atlantic waters (Travel Light Travel Dark 31). Visual imagery is

displayed in the poem through colourful examples of double entendre. At the beginning

of the poem, the Atlantic is visually described as “green darkness,” which is literally a

reference to the hue reflected from its high Sargasso seaweed content. However,

35

thematically it is meant to cause suspicion about its mysterious and unknown depths.

Towards the end of the poem, the Atlantic’s sharing of its history is seen as a “silver

lining,” which is euphemistically a symbol of a hopeful future for the Atlantic’s history,

and yet the sea seems greyest or most silver in the middle of the gloomiest days, rather

than at the end of them (Travel Light Travel Dark 31). Perhaps some of the most

important and poignant imagery appeals to the sense of sound. In the first section, an

anonymous narrator is imploring the Atlantic to “say something between the crescendo of

its tides” so that it may aid history in the retelling of its darkest moments (Travel Light

Travel Dark 30). When Atlantic does find its voice it refuses to stop talking, saying that

“a minute’s silence” would call for a “breathless elegy” from a like party (Travel Light

Travel Dark 30). In addition to bringing the reader directly into the poem, Agard also

invests the Atlantic with metaphysical properties that allow it to become personified as

the narrator. The implied idea is that because the ocean has been a key player in the

“blighted passage” of both groups, it has a sense of omniscience that cannot be rivaled by

the accounts of human beings. To further this point, Agard ends the poem with a stanza in

which the waters and their knowledge are revered above religion: “an ocean knows the

meaning of freedom” (Travel Light Travel Dark 31). Atlantic even labels itself as “a

cross for continents to bear,” saying that it has a responsibility to present itself to

“history’s sacrificial altar” (Travel Light Travel Dark 31). Even the title, “Atlantic

Libation,” reimagines the Atlantic as a drink offering to a deity perhaps in hopes of

garnering mercy and favour upon the oppressed groups from the gods (Travel Light

Travel Dark 30). As Paul Gilroy writes in his book, The Black Atlantic, focusing

attention “on the middle passage, on the various projects for redemptive return to an

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African homeland, [and] on the circulation of ideas” will help the modern Caribbean

culture to understand the slippage between old African and new African identity (4). The

old Africa is restricted to a pre-slavery tradition, whereas the new Africa is active in the

interworkings of the everyday island life. However, we are encouraged to remember the

past so that “the new bloodstreams” of the next generation can taste the bitter salt of

history and live in light of that memory.

Part of Hall’s Présence Africaine resists the idea of forgetting the atrocities of the

dark colonial history of the Caribbean’s African influences: “We must not collude with

the West which, precisely, normalises and appropriates Africa by freezing it into some

timeless zone of the primitive, unchanging past” (231). Agard supports this resistance

with poems like “From Britannia with Concern,” where the motherland of imperial

conquest laments upon its own history. The poem is written in seven, three-line stanzas

with periods at the end of each stanza indicating a complete thought. This elegy, written

in the personified first person, reflects on triumphs and consequences of colonization in

its vast empire. Britannia begins its retelling with a description of the height of the British

empire when it “manipulated maps with sword and cross, / Shifted boundaries with seal

of royal ink” (Alternative Anthem 122). This speaks to its existence as a great world

power, dominating oriental conquests and imperial scrambles for territory and natural

resources. The very next stanza, however, shows the consequences of not living up to the

responsibility that comes with acquiring territory: “Africa’s blood still haunts my

monuments” (Alternative Anthem 122). In order to add to the motherland’s hopelessness,

it answers the question of whether or not it can “turn from history’s looking-glass” with

the “bitter past” given to it by its acquisition of sugar. The sweet foreign luxury was

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enjoyed at the expense of the hands of millions of slaves living and working in brutal

conditions. Once again, the sea is seen as a unifying entity; however, in this case it acts as

a “girdle” pulling together the folds of empire and at the same time exposing the “guilt”

that comes as a cost from this union (Alternative Anthem 122). If there is any optimism

within the poem, it would be the fact that Britannia has “learnt how the sun sets on

empires / And the voiceless voice their righteous fires,” meaning that the motherland now

understands that reasons other than monetary benefit should factor into the annexation of

territory and that imposition can never fully restrict and erase a person’s culture

(Alternative Anthem 122). One could surmise that justice has been served to the

motherland with the advent of diaspora, where formerly colonized people are returning to

the colonial epicenter to live. As the speaker says in the final stanzas of the poem, “Now,

old ruptures bless me with hybrid webs […] I must prepare my cliffs for new

homecomings” (Alternative Anthem 122). With this influx of new inhabitants comes the

introduction of new languages: “My streets pulse with a plurality of tongues” (Alternative

Anthem 122). English is no longer a pure and pristine language; instead, a myriad of

cultural influences permeates its syntax and diction, causing it to exist in many hybrid

varieties. Ironically, the motherland which used to promote a mono-linguistic society

now must prepare its corner shops and breakfast nooks for the tsunami of freed dialects.

A major part of this ingrained African identity is concentrated on language; it is

performed through language in Agard’s poetry as he uses English as an instrument to

subvert colonial authority. To do this, Agard employs forms and standards of language

that mirror proper English, all the while conveying a postcolonial, anti-imposition

message. Even though it should be noted that the poet often uses complete sentences with

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all the necessary punctuation, the focus seems to be directed more to destabilizing

language rather than form. “Sugar Cane Saga,” for example, includes various literary

devices such as personification, allusion, and diction that are quite formal in nature in

order to talk about a historically dark period for both European and Caribbean peoples.

The object of discourse, the Sugar Cane plant, is personified as the narrator who sets out

on a first-person diatribe meant to educate readers about “the bitter in my sweet” history

and the impact that left on his identity (Travel Light Travel Dark 36). The Sugar Cane

thus acts as a metaphor for the Caribbean subject. In order to accentuate the far-reaching

impacts of sugar’s influence, Agard inserts allusions into the text that add context and

depth to the cultures impacted by the product. For example, Sugar Cane “rustled in

Persian breeze,” “waved my tassels in Egypt’s furrows,” and “Kama, the love-god -- /

honeybees his string / flower tips his arrows / and I Sugar Cane his ready bow” (Travel

Light Travel Dark 35). In these examples, the Caribbean islands have been influenced by

the Asian and African societies. To show that the language has also experienced change

from these societies, Agard includes epigraphs from cultural proverbs: “as the Chinese

say, don’t expect / Sugar Cane to be sweet at both ends” and “Yuh can’t suck cane and

whistle – a reminder from the Caribbean proverb” (Travel Light Travel Dark 35). In

addition to this cultural heterogeneity and the varied language registers, Agard’s more

stiffly formal diction creates an inference that colonial exploitation is responsible for the

Sugar Cane’s “double-edged tongue” (Travel Light Travel Dark 36). This linguistic split

between the mother tongue, shown through the references to original cultures, and the

imposed language inflicts a degree of pain onto the colonized subject.

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A close reading of the poem, “Caribbean Eye over Yorkshire,” also speaks to this

conflict with using standard English in the Caribbean culture. The poem is riddled with

potent personifications, metaphors, and vivid imagery that reveal Agard’s message of the

coloured history behind the Caribbean identity. But it is worth remembering the question

posed by Bill Ashcroft that if English is “deeply inflected with the troubling questions

littering that liminal space where identity and culture mingle and scrape against one

another,” can it be used in the reclaiming of the repressed African culture (101)? As

mentioned in the introduction, author Chinua Achebe believes that it does not matter

what language is used, but rather “how the language is used” to portray the individual’s

identity (Ashcroft 106). Although this version of Caribbean history is told in standard

English, it still has the ability to place the Caribbean individual in a place of power

through the use of certain literary devices. The narration of the poem is spoken via “Eye”

which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The eye could be a personification of the

eye as a solitary object. In this case the Eye is visualized as an entity that possesses all the

human faculties, which allows the reader to see him physically “perched,” mentally

“christened,” and audibly “tuned in” (Alternative Anthem 125). Eye can also be analyzed

as a replacement for the first-person pronoun of which it is a homonym (Alternative

Anthem 125). As a result, the double entendre of the eye creates another reading of its

use; the poem can make sense figuratively, since eyes are often used as a synecdoche for

the entire body. To further complicate interpretations of “Eye,” Agard includes a plethora

of visual imagery. There are colours like “Caribbean blue,” “silver birch,” and

“blackbird” that respectively represent major themes of Caribbean history. The first is a

direct reference to the archipelagos’ iconic geography, with its crystal clear waters and

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sunny days. But the blue sea also represents the tears instigated by the sea and the lives

that were lost in the crossing of its waters during the slave trade. The second reference

speaks to the exploitation of the Caribbean for gold and “silver,” as well as the colonial

tactics for keeping control like beatings with the “birch.” The third colour has both a

nominal reference to colonized people, as well as negative spiritual connotations when it

is paired with the bird. In popular folklore and the Christian Bible, the blackbird is seen

as a symbol of temptation, death, and uncleanliness: “These are the birds that are

regarded as unclean and not to be eaten because they are unclean: the eagle, the vulture,

the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven” (Leviticus 11:

13-15). Agard not only uses the complexity of language to subvert colonial power, but

also to insert the African heritage into the Caribbean. Hall emphasizes that this new use

for the English language is used in every aspect of the island’s culture: “languages were

spoken, in the stories and tales told to children, in religious practices and beliefs, in the

spiritual life, the arts, crafts, musics and rhythms of slave and post-emancipation society”

(230). No longer is English the representative of a static imposition of colonial standards,

but rather it is used to describe and celebrate the many influences on Caribbean identity.

Poems like “Journey Shango,” illustrate how language can be usurped of its

power, turned on its head, and used as a representation of Caribbean vigor and fortitude.

In these cases, the elements of music—the beat, the rhythm, and the instruments—are

given a story in which their perspective resonates with that of the oppressed Caribbean

individual. In “Journey Shango,” Agard gives the power of language to the drum that has

been transported to a new and unfamiliar land (Mangoes and Bullets 14). The drum and

its beats thus act as a metaphor for the diasporized individual who is attempting to

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cultivate his culture amidst foreign ideologies: “On new ground we scatter old drum

seeds / letting them shape the destiny of sound” (Mangoes and Bullets 14). Because the

land is unfamiliar to the planter, he has no knowledge of how successful the end product

will be. Nevertheless, he plants the seeds in faith that the harvest will be worth the wait.

He knows the resulting harvest of the drum seeds will not be identical to the yield

harvested in the homeland, and he decides to remove his influence from the growth

process. The destiny of sound is thus left to grow according to the surrounding elements:

“Thunder roots new voice in steel / and lightning seams metal with song” (Mangoes and

Bullets 14). Consequently, what is created resembles the drum of the homeland, but also

possesses distinct qualities that were adopted from the land it immigrated to. While this

new phenomenon has classified the drum as a new hybrid form, it does not root it to the

new world, but instead it becomes routed with the traveling of its many seeds which go

behind the various planters: “follow us / across strange water to stranger earth” (Mangoes

and Bullets 14). The journey of the drum and the planting of new drum seeds speaks

directly to the way in which the language that characterizes the Caribbean identity is in a

constant state of evolution, always adding different aspects of the foreign cultures it

encounters.

One such dialect is representative specifically of the Caribbean—creole—which

blends languages from a variety of different cultural sources, and encompasses the

movement, rhythm, and song of island culture. The language is often demoted by

institutionalized standards to a form of slang that is a subset of English. While the two

have recognizable similarities, creole also includes other languages. For example,

Papiamento is a creole spoken in Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao and is derived from the

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Portuguese and Spanish languages. There is such a plethora of creoles in the Caribbean

that a multi-sourced origin for the umbrella language must be the conclusion. Kamau

Brathwaite attempts to describe the phenomenon as “English in a new sense … English in

an ancient sense. And sometimes not English at all” (5). Ashcroft also recognizes this,

asserting that creole’s indeterminate origin “reminds us that a language is a human

behavior and consists of what people do rather than what models a linguistic theory can

construct” (115). The poem, “I Can’t Hear Yuh Man” adequately exemplifies the webbed

nature of creole and the diverse culture which it represents (Mangoes and Bullets 21-22).

Linguistically, the poem is a mix of creole and standard English, with lines like “When I

crouch over” followed directly by “with mih head inside a pan / no use talking to me

man” (Mangoes and Bullets 21). Structurally, it is written as if it were to be sung, or

chanted rather, with no stanza breaks or punctuation, but with a repeating chorus every

few lines. This not only causes the reader to hone in on the meaning rather than the

aesthetic pleasure of the poem, but it also speaks directly to the orality and musicality of

Caribbean culture. Thematically, the poem deals with cultural influences and historical

mechanisms that have shaped the narrator’s identity. There are a number of references to

Africa, in particular its religion and folklore. The African god of thunder, Shango, is used

as a sort of muse at the beginning of the poem: “Shango fingers / playing havoc with mih

brain” which sets Africa up as a primary source for the pan man’s identity. The god of

iron, Ogun, is also referenced as an infiltrator of dreams, bringing protection in the dark

moments in Caribbean history: “the only gun / ah carrying / is Ogun / dream of iron / on

new ground” (Mangoes and Bullets 21). The trickster of African folklore, Anansi, is also

alluded to in connection with the pan player’s history: “because mystery is pan father /

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like spider web self” (Mangoes and Bullets 21). However, Africa is not the only source

for this Caribbean musician’s identity; the Christian God and his heaven is also spoken

of. The lines, “I making a rounds / of the heavens / watching God full-eye” recognize the

fact that although Christianity was an alien religion, it nonetheless is an undeniable part

of pan man’s being (Mangoes and Bullets 21). In terms of the historical shaping of pan

man, the poem draws reference to the Middle Passage, where the Africans went “across

the water / dodging” death and disease. Slavery is alluded to in the line “So you could

brandish / yuh whip / how much you wish,” though it is important to note the speaker’s

voice is confident and almost taunting, suggesting a kind of opposition to colonial

authority often found in postcolonial writing (Mangoes and Bullets 21). Independence is

then compared to “a hurtful growth” that speaks to the struggle to reinstitute cultural

values and individual worth into a community that had only known a colonial standard of

living (Mangoes and Bullets 22). Finally, pan man ends his diatribe on a positive note, as

“earth / move with love / groove with light” and turn in favour of the Caribbean

(Mangoes and Bullets 22). This change, he explains as an internal decision: “ah learning

to embrace another sun” (Mangoes and Bullets 22). This could either mean he has

learned to live under the same Caribbean sun with a new perspective, or that he has

literally moved to another land, thus speaking to the diaspora that so many Caribbean

individuals take part in. Agard ends the poem by telling readers that whatever home pan

man chooses, he takes with him his heritage and his culture: “searing / the rim / of mih

eye / is no ordinary sweat / Is Shango sweating fire / to a kiss of steel” (Mangoes and

Bullets 22).

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This chapter has aimed to show that although the African motherland is no longer

rooted directly to the Caribbean individual, it has still managed to represent itself in

various aspects of the individual’s linguistic and cultural identity. Agard’s poetry has

taken Hall’s notion that Africa “remains the unspoken, unspeakable 'presence' in

Caribbean culture,” and given it a boisterous voice as well as an undeniable manifestation

in the life of the Caribbean subject (230). The combination of the illusion of roots from

Présence Européene and the intangible roots from Présence Africaine thus create a new

caveat in identity politics. The Caribbean identity exists without a concrete origin, but is

instead upheld through a series of cumulative languages and conflicting influences. The

resulting individual can best be explained by Hall’s Présence Américaine, which will be

discussed in the following chapter.

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CHAPTER 4: HYBRID IDENTITY

Hall’s third exploration into the influences on identity is formulated in Présence

Américaine, the site where the other presences converge. Instead of the Caribbean

identity being sourced from one place or one event, Hall’s presences suggest that a

conflation of history can create a new understanding of identity entirely. This new

identity recognizes that it exists as a hybrid or an amalgamation of influences and origins

that “testify to the complexities entailed in the process of trying to represent a diverse

people with a diverse history through a single, hegemonic 'identity'” (Hall 235). Hall’s

Présence Américaine, therefore, recognizes that identity is a process that is still in

progress; it cannot be tied to a physical place, but instead thrives in the movement

between places that allows a person to constantly rename and redefine their ever-evolving

being. He chooses to link the uniqueness of this new individual to the idea of the New

World of the Americas because it was and still is a “juncture-point where the many

cultural tributaries meet” (Hall 234). Although Présence Américaine is linked to a

physical meeting place in this quote, it is a temporary place that the individual passes

through, a place where “the creolisations and assimilations and syncretisms were

negotiated” between the myriad of available cultures (Hall 234). These negotiated

presences appear in the poetry of Agard in the form of language and themes that help to

further analyze the “continuous displacements” of Caribbean identity (Hall 234). Agard

highlights the linguistic hybridity by integrating English and creole into certain poems, at

times to challenge and subvert stereotypes and at other times to simply celebrate creole as

a viable language. Unlike the use of creole in the previous chapter, the creole of the

diaspora is not evoked from a site of repressed African culture, but is rather used as a

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cultural identifier of Caribbean hybridity. His multicultural themes that speak to history,

ethnicity, and autonomy not only aid in the understanding of the Caribbean individual,

they also seek to authenticate the fluid identity that the Caribbean possesses.

Although the history of Présence Américaine is still connected to the origins of

the middle passage and slavery, as well as the impacts of colonial imposition, there is

also an emphasis on the history of place. The history of the New World has its own dark

history of exploitation, rape, and slavery even before the arrival of Africans. In this way,

“Présence Américaine continues to have its silences, its suppressions” (Hall 234).

Agard’s poem, “We the Forgotten Names,” is a tribute to the native Caribs who inhabited

the archipelagos before Columbus’ fateful landing in 1492 (Travel Light Travel Dark 46).

The poem, written in unrhymed couplets, centers on the premise that though the Carib

people might have been eradicated by conquest and erased from colonial history, they

“still follow in canoes of spirit / wherever [their] children endure horizons” (Travel Light

Travel Dark 46). Taking this theme of preservation of a forgotten culture into account, it

is interesting, then, that Agard chooses not to include any native terminology in the

poem. This could simply be dismissed as an easier way in which to convey the message;

however, the easy-way-out is not a tactic that Agard is particularly fond of. Theorist

Jahan Ramzani proposes that the use of the English language to speak about other

cultures expands “the contours of English-language poetry by infusing it with Indigenous

metaphors and rhythms, creoles, and genres” (Ramzani 1). Agard chooses to relate the

language of the Caribs to his readers through a complex system of imagery using specific

characteristics of native culture. He lets readers see the natives as growing wings “from

the crown of bird, tree, stone,” lets them feel the “long-tailed cuckoo” feathers used to

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navigate, and lets readers hear how native “tongues took joy / in dreaming of new

homecomings” (Travel Light Travel Dark 46). Agard draws the readers’ focus to a

linguistic phenomenon that cannot easily be put into words. The language of the natives

was and is so ingrained in their culture that words are often better seen and felt rather

than heard. Moreover, when they are heard, like in the latter quote, the emphasis is not on

what is said, but rather how it is said and how that creates a response within the identity

of the speaker. It is therefore appropriate that Agard closes the poem with “We the

forgotten names lost in history’s log / rewrite ourselves on a page of bone -- / our buried

syllables surface from the sea’s ink” (Travel Light Travel Dark 46). The strategy to

reclaim native history is not to add to the canon that oppressed them, but rather to

deconstruct it completely by using words to appeal to the physical and the emotional

spheres, rather than solely the mental. Moreover, the recognition of the native ancestors

allows for a greater complexity of Caribbean’s cultural identity.

Instead of one or two origins, namely Europe and Africa, the Caribbean subject

can now add a third influence on their identity made possible by their migration to a

previously inhabited land. As a result, any one individual can have a variety of different

language and appearance traits, which makes it hard to pigeon-hole them into binary

categories of race and dialect. Hall states that it can only be described as “what is

uniquely— ‘essentially'—Caribbean: precisely the mixes of colour, pigmentation,

physiognomic type” (235-6). At certain points in history, people of this mixed

background were referred to as “other,” meaning that their impure lineage somehow

discredited them from fully belonging to either origin and they had to therefore exist

outside of both spheres. Agard addresses the plight of this hybrid individual in his poem,

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“Half-caste,” where he advocates for the other, challenging the idea that they are any less

human than a person with a clear linear heritage (Half-caste 11-13). The entire poem is

unapologetically written in creole with the narrator speaking directly to the audience,

repeating the phrase, “Explain yuself / wha yu mean / when yu say half-caste” without

considering the possibility that he might need to explain his own language (Half-caste

11-13). In this way, the language becomes its own challenge to any authority that would

deem it as improper or an unsuccessful attempt at a European language. It harnesses the

power by demanding answers from the aggressor; the linguistic representation, therefore,

invokes courage, confidence, and resistance in the oppressed individual. Thematically,

Agard challenges the aggressor by referring to a series of social amalgamates that are

considered as established and valid entities in their own right. His use of the term “half-

caste,” which refers to a person of mixed descent, is imposed onto inanimate objects in

the realms of art, weather, and music. The objects become metaphors for the hybridity of

the Caribbean subject, who “belonging to multiple worlds that are transformed by their

convergence … indigenize the Western and anglicize the native to create exciting new

possibilities for English-language poetry” (Ramzani 2). For example, in his challenge to

music, he targets the famous composer Tchaikovsky, who “sit down at dah / piano / and

mix a black key / wid a white key,” and yet his resulting masterpiece was not referred to

as “a half-caste symphony” (Half-caste 12). Agard’s absurd comparison serves to

highlight the Caribbean individual whose identity is racially split between black and

white descendants. Having supported his challenge with convincing examples, Agard

closes the poem by daring the aggressor to alter his perspective on the ‘othered’

individual. If this is accomplished, the narrator pledges to “tell yu / de other half / of my

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story,” this second half being the truth behind the superficiality of first impressions and

appearances (Half-caste 13). The Caribbean identity is validated in this poem as

stereotypes and categories are challenged and dismissed. The encouraged focus

acknowledges humans as being fully human, regardless of their apparent differences, thus

destabilizing a colonial or hegemonic definition of the term, “human.”

Like the previous influence Présence Africaine, Caribbean diversity in the New

World is also impacted by the historical event of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave

trade. They were both key factors in creating and strengthening the Caribbean identity as

it relates to the movement between physical places. This idea of movement by the

“modern or postmodern New World nomad, [means they are] continually moving

between centre and periphery” and vice versa (Hall 234). In Agard’s poem, “Remember

the ship,” the first person narrator emphasizes the need to see the Caribbean’s importation

of slaves, as well as its exportation of immigrants as being unifying factors for modern

society (Travel Light Travel Dark 59-60). In order to make his case, the narrator plays

with language to demonstrate the politics of belonging to a physical place: “As citizen /

of the English tongue / I say remember / the ship / in citizenship” (Travel Light Travel

Dark 59). The ship he refers to invokes a muse of history and the literal ships that

transported slaves to the New World. Interestingly, it also makes the allusion to another

important ship, the MV Empire Windrush, which transported Caribbean immigrants to

England. The first ship of slavery brought a plethora of African tribes together for the

first time in a foreign territory that forced them to communicate and develop together.

Slavery, consequently, becomes one of several starting points for Caribbean identity:

“I’m here to navigate-- / not flagellate / with a whip of the past” (Travel Light Travel

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Dark 59). The second ship provides a reversal of colonial conquest and settlement; in the

poem, it helps in “charting life’s tidal / rise and fall / as the ship / of the sun / unloads its

light” (Travel Light Travel Dark 60). Like the colonizers centuries before, the formerly

colonized Caribbean immigrants now make the passage back to populate the colonial

motherland. The “ship / of the night / [and] its cargo of stars,” which is a reference to the

slave ships, had essentially come full circle (Travel Light Travel Dark 60). This

transportation of people also provides an influx of new languages and dialects that not

only disrupt Standard English, but also make history persistently relevant for the English

citizen, “for language / is the baggage / we bring-- / a weight / of words to ground / and

give us wing” (Travel Light Travel Dark 59). Essentially, remembering the ship and its

historical and linguistic elements will better England’s shores and “diversity shall sound

its trumpet / outside the bigot’s wall” (Travel Light Travel Dark 59). Agard cleverly

includes this biblical reference that alludes to the story of the impenetrable walls of

Jericho that were felled as a result of the people’s shouts and the sound of their trumpets.

A breaking of dividing walls thus creates a “kinship that knows / no boundary / of skin”

or tongue (Travel Light Travel Dark 60). By using the two ships to collectively represent

Caribbean identity, Agard supports Ramzani’s claim that the Caribbean is an “intensified

hybridization of already mixed and politically unequal cultures where native represents a

prior knotting together of diverse strands as does the amalgamation British” (6).

While the New World boasts of a hybrid society, it is also guilty of forgetting the

past completely. History, no matter how dark, must be remembered, must be kept

relevant in order to appreciate the present and protect the future. Ramzani declares that

hybrid cultures need to keep all of their history as it “reclaims Indigenous histories

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landscapes and traditions and constitutes imagined communities in the wake of their

threatened colonial destruction” (3). Agard dedicates a lengthy poem to the insertion of

Caribbean history into the chronicle England’s shores. “Water Music of a Different

Kind” is divided into nine sections, each written in Standard English and aiming to relate

a history that England can both accept and understand. In the introductory section of the

poem, the anonymous speaker gives a brief overview of water’s multifaceted history and

stresses the fact that although water has many avenues to explore there is “no

homecoming door,” meaning that there is no end where history suddenly becomes

irrelevant to water’s existence (Travel Light Travel Dark 22). The speaker then directly

addresses the Thames, which thought that because “the weather has been kind” enough to

distance it from “canefields shedding flames” that it can ignore water’s history (Travel

Light Travel Dark 23). But Agard creates “Water music of a different kind,” a medium

that possesses the power of language in order to evoke the “music of a speechless throat”

and “the muzzled tongue” (Travel Light Travel Dark 23-24). The water of the Atlantic

will thus bring history back to the canals of the Thames. Although the Thames is exposed

as having “bleeding continents / still shackled to [its] sub-text,” it still has the ability to

ignore a history it does not feel on a pleasant “summer’s evening” (Travel Light Travel

Dark 24-25). Again, the Atlantic returns with history in its wake, this time telling the

story of the Caribbean: of “talking drum,” of “all who leapt / with their names / into the

gaping / shelving of the sea,” of “Glass beads [that] ask no questions,” and the story of

“beneficial commerce” (Travel Light Travel Dark 25-26). This retelling of history, along

with a subsequent listing of several slave posts on the African coast that England

operated, seems to jog Thames’ memory that the consequences of its historical

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enterprises are “Not far not far” (Travel Light Travel Dark 26). Thames’ resolution is to

transform its water way into “Rivers of conscience” that sing music of “the blood’s

common spring,” of “mind widening its shore,” and of “a new beginning” where history

is ever-present and ever-relevant to the language of the water (Travel Light Travel Dark

27-28).

One of the issues with Présence Américaine is how it grapples with history. Hall

indicates that “The New World is the third term – the primal scene - where the fateful

/fatal encounter was staged between Africa and the West. It also has to be understood as

the place of many, continuous displacements” (234). The Caribbean often seems

physically situated in the midst of history’s adversities. The overcoming of these realities

makes the realization of cultural identities a difficult process. Agard speaks to the

struggle it is for the individual to try and “Fly?” away from the constraints of their past.

The title of this poem alone acknowledges the desire to escape that inevitably exists next

to the doubt, symbolized by the question mark, that the desire will ever materialize. The

anonymous narrator begins the expression of his struggle by playing with the language,

using the forward slash to mesh together two separate words: “It ain always so easy / to

fly above slum/mess” (Mangoes & Bullets 18). The implication goes beyond the physical

appearance of the “slum” he is in and furthers it to include his inability to accurately

describe his plight because of the “mess” of his language (Mangoes & Bullets 18). He

also confesses his struggle with history itself: “It ain always so easy / to break out of this

damn prison / of history,” “this slave/shadow/chain / clinging like bad/blood / in the basin

of mih memory” (Mangoes & Bullets 18). The slave is an obvious reference to the

trading, selling, and exploitation of Africans. The shadow is a reference to the time of

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colonial occupation when blacks were told to emulate the white man. As was discussed in

the chapter on Présence Européene this attempt at imitation resulted in a second-rate

version of the colonizer, or in this case a “shadow” of what the white man represents

(Mangoes & Bullets 18). The chain symbolizes history as a whole, two major links being

slavery and colonization, while the rest of the links are characterized by a series of

prejudices. A combination of the physical, linguistic, and historic “weight of centuries”

makes it seem impossible for the Caribbean to even dream of flying (Mangoes & Bullets

18). And yet, at the same time, giving a “voice to a past that colonialism has degraded,

garbled, and even gagged,” allows the postcolonial individual to find strength in his

heritage and power in his culture (Ramzani 9). The future seems so very dark and yet it is

this very realization that gives the narrator a moment of epiphany: “black night mek for

stars / and stars born to shine” (Mangoes & Bullets 18). The narrator sees the beauty in

the components that have contributed to his identity. Now that he has acquired self-love,

he is able to let that love shine on the world around him.

Similarly, Hall supports the acknowledgement of Présence Américaine’s role in

helping to actualize the identity of the Caribbean individual: “The diaspora experience as

I intend it here is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary

heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through,

not despite, difference; by hybridity” (235). The individual no longer devalues the

qualities that makes him different. Nor does he reciprocate the interpolation by calling

out the differences in the white man. Instead, he encourages a mutual sharing and

celebration of differences. Rachel Gilmour addresses these concerns when she remarks

that poetry “becomes a craft that can travel between languages and art forms; cross the

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ocean between the Caribbean, the US, and Britain; navigate between sound and form;

draw poet and audience together; and carry out offshore raids on prose” (344). One such

example can be found in Agard’s poem, “Enemy” (Travel Light Travel Dark 90).

Contrary to the inferences the title makes, the poem is centered on realizing the

similarities between would-be foes in hopes that friendship can be a more natural

ultimatum. It is no coincidence that the body parts Agard chooses to unite the two people

are the same that were used to inflict pain upon the colonized individual. The tongue,

once silenced and made to conform to foreign languages, is now given the “gift of speech

and song” (Travel Light Travel Dark 90). The hair, used to distinguish and negatively

represent blacks as golliwogs or wild savages, is said to be like that of the white man.

The fingers that used to grip whips and branding tools are now clasped in prayer. There is

a transformation of negative history, not an erasing but a replacing of the negative

memories with positive experiences. It is also interesting how every physical feature of

the human body is linked to an aspect of a Caribbean island: hair is like a “ruffle of

seaweed,” toes “barnacle an instep,” eyes are “grounded in the skull’s coral” (Travel

Light Travel Dark 90). Agard is not only creating an atmosphere of equality, but he is

making the Caribbean a zone of neutrality, where a myriad of culture can mix and mingle

without restrictions. The Caribbean, a land with such a muddled and muffled history, is

given the welcoming aroma of a new world with hybrid beginnings.

Gilmour’s reference to Agard’s manipulation of sound and form is an

appreciation of his role as ‘poetsonian,’ combining poetry and calypso, often performing

his work in front of an audience and inviting them to engage directly with the

performance. In this way, Agard creates “a space of collective belonging; to draw

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together poet and audience in a relationship of engagement and exchange” (Gilmour

346). One of his more famous oral renditions is of his poem, “Listen Mr. Oxford Don,”

where he is able to coagulate Standard English and creole in such a way that “a concise

peaceful man” could be seen as a dangerous and “a wanted man” (Alternative Anthem

16). The reference to Mr. Oxford is a personification of the Oxford English Dictionary,

which is considered to be the authoritative text on the English language. Because Agard

is using creole to talk directly to the English canon, the poem “works to challenge

monolithic notions of British culture, language, and national belonging” (Gilmour 345).

Moreover, when the poem is recited aloud, certain phrases like “rhyme to riot” and

“human breath” are given extra emphasis through the elongation of syllables and the tone

of voice (Alternative Anthem 16). This poem alone, when presented orally, proves that

Agard’s poetry can speak to all three of Hall’s presences. Présence Européene is seen in

the challenge to the colonizer’s standardized language. Présence Africaine is

acknowledged through the medium of orality as a way to migrate tribal traditions to the

Caribbean. And finally, Présence Américaine is seen in the diasporic nature of the subject

who is a Caribbean immigrant living in “Clapham Common,” an area in south London

(Alternative Anthem 16). By showing that all three presences have an influence on the

Caribbean identity, Agard supports the notion that cultural identity is fluid in nature.

John Agard’s poetry is an incredible tool for the study and analysis of Caribbean

identities by contextualizing his collections within Hall’s three Presences, a nonlinear

progression can be traced that outlines the oppressions faced by collectives, as well as the

importance of language to the individual. Identity, therefore, becomes an amalgamate of

history and language, each contributing integral and unavoidable qualities to the

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Caribbean person. Because the subject is a composition of factors, it becomes extremely

difficult to root the individual to a particular place, time, or even culture. The solution,

instead, is to embrace a sense of routedness when referring to the Caribbean identity,

meaning that the person’s distinctiveness is an ever-moving and intangible presence. This

does not mean, however, that the individual’s identity is so unique that similarities cannot

be found and coalesced around. The Caribbean culture, as hybrid as it is, thrives off of

the linguistic differences of its multi-ethnic people. As Kobena Mercer, a British author

and historian, explains:

Across a whole range of cultural forms there is a 'syncretic' dynamic which

critically appropriates elements from the master-codes of the dominant culture

and 'creolises' them, disarticulating given signs and re-articulating their symbolic

meaning. The subversive force of this hybridising tendency is most apparent at

the level of language itself where Creoles, patois and black English decentre,

destabilise and carnivalise the linguistic domination of 'English’ (Hall 236).

Essentially, Mercer is proposing that the Caribbean is stitched together by the language of

rhythm, dance, music, and song. Together, these facets of linguistic identity talk back to

the oppressions of slavery and colonization of Europe; they evoke the folk heroes and

religious figures of Africa, and in so doing they create a unique language for the New

World.

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Works Cited

Agard, John. Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems. Bloodaxe Books, 2009.

---. Clever Backbone. Bloodaxe Books, 2009.

---. Half-Caste. Hodder Children’s Books, 2004.

---. John Agard: In Praise of Poetry. Mar. 2016, http://vision.ae/art-life/culture/in-praise-

of-poetry.

---. Mangoes & Bullets: Selected and New Poems 1972-84. Serpent’s Tail, 1990.

---. Travel Light Travel Dark. Bloodaxe Books, 2013.

---. Weblines. Bloodaxe Books, 2000.

Ashcroft, Bill. Caliban’s Voice: The Transformation of English in Post-Colonial

Literatures. Routledge, 2009.

Bhabha, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.”

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Brathwaite, Kamau. History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in

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Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard

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Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference.

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