Kamau Brathwaite and Christopher Okigbo

The Author: Curwen Best is Senior Lecturer in Popular Culture and Literary Studies in the Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. He is an authority on Caribbean popular culture. His published books include: Barbadian Popular Music (1999); Roots to Popular Culture (2001); Culture @ the Cutting Edge (2005); The Politics of Caribbean Cyberculture (2008).

• Contents: Brathwaite and Okigbo in Overview – Grounding: Background, Context, and Scope – Language, Culture, and the Artist – Creative Pathways in Selected Poetry by Kamau Brathwaite and Christopher Okigbo – The Okigbo Music: A Study of ‘Distances’ – The Kamau Brathwaite Music: Ritual and Tuk Aesthetics – ‘Something Like a Mass’: Ritual and Ceremony in Okigbo’s ‘Heavensgate’ and ‘Limits’ – ‘I Could Not Hear the Drum’: Masks and the Importance of Return – X/Self and the Second Trilogy: Harmony and Departures – Return of the Town Crier?: Okigbo’s ‘Path of Thunder’ and Labyrinths – Okigbo and Brathwaite in Cyberspace.

«Scholars have started constructing courses on ‘The Literature of Global Africa’. For such a course a volume which combines Christopher Okigbo with Kamau Braithwaite is worth considering for required reading. Here is poetry which both soars high and digs deep.» (Ali A. Mazrui, D.Phil., (Oxon), C.B.S., Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, SUNY)«Written with clarity, conviction and what is even better, a calm excitement. It is insightful, and with its ‘multi-tracked’ approach to Kamau and Okigbo, definitely breaks new ground.» (Prof. Gordon Rohlehr, Professor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago)