Audubon Ballroon (he/him)Edward Archibald Markham (1 October 1939 – 23 March 2008)
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#blackmen #blackpeople #blackcaribbean #blackpoets #blackplaywrights #blacknovelists #blackacademics
was a Montserratian poet, playwright, novelist & academic. He was known for writing subtle, witty and intelligent poetry, which refused to conform to the conventions, and stereotypes, of [british] and Caribbean poetry alike.
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Poetry and other works
A defining characteristic of Markham's work is his tireless exploration of multiple voices and perspectives. In a short introduction to his work entitled "Many Voices, Many Lives" (1989), he wrote:
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"The dramatic revelation that poets [...] in the Caribbean had two voices – nation language and Standard English – released many energies; but we had to be sure that this wasn't to be interpreted that we had only two voices, only two modes of expression [...]
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I was interested in testing the whole range of voices [...] that were possibly real for me" As part of his exploration of multiple personae, Markham often published his works under pseudonyms. In the 1970s, Markham wrote a series of poems (including Lambchops, Lampchops in Disguise and Philpot in the City) in the fictional personae of Paul St. Vincent – a young, black man from Antigua, living in South London – and these poems were published in St. Vincent's name.
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Unlike much of Markham's poetry, the Paul St. Vincent poems are mainly written in nation language. Later, in the 1980s, Markham wrote through the fictional persona of Sally Goodman: a white, Welsh feminist. He argued that in inventing these multiple personae, "the test was to force their creator to accommodate types of consciousness which, at the very least, served to enlarge one area of Westindianness".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._A._Markham
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