Philip Sherlock (1902 - 2000), "Jamaican Fisherman," Ten Poems (Georgetown, Guyana: Miniature Poets Series,
edited and published by A. J. Seymour and Kykoveral, 1953).

This is used as an example for the rhetorical

Louise Bennett (1919 - 2006) humorously rejects the reconnection with Africa in this poem

This is an example of African survival. Moore, op. cit., pp. 174-175, reprinted in Brathwaite, Creole Society, pp. 224-225, 329-331

"In 'William Saves His Sweetheart,' the folk imagination is again concerned with
water,62 but this time its expression is entirely in intransigent non-English or, as I
prefer to call it, nation-language, since Africans in the New World always referred
to themselves as belonging to certain nations (Congo, Kromantee, etc.).68 Here
there are no African word-fragments or phrases as in the hounfort, but the tonal
shape of the language, its rhythm changes, structure, contours of thought and im
age, eruption into song/dance/movement, make it clearly recognizable as African
speech-form"

This is an example of African survival. Adapted from R. B. Le Page and David De Camp, Jamaican Creole (London: Macmillan, 1960).

"The descriptive/dramatic power of this passage is typical of the excellence of 'A
Quality of Violence', but as Salkey approaches the central and most sacred ex
periences of the tonelle, his knowledge and involvement falter, to be replaced by
passages that ring more of melodramatic brass than responsive silver"

"The tonelle is the inner area of the hounfort. On the floor or ground are to be found the vèvè (symbols) of the gods to be welcomed, and at the center of the tonelle the poteau-mitan: stick, whip or ladder
of god."

This is from 'A Quality of Violence' (1959) by Andrew Salkey (1928 - 1995), used as an example of African survival

Vera Bell, "Ancestor on the Auction Block," The Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature,
ed. A. L. Hendriks and Cedric Lindo (Kingston, Jamaica: The Arts Celebration Committee of the
Ministry of Development and Welfare, 1962). Another example of African survival

In the poem on the left, Sherlock is used as an author of African Survival


"Philip Sherlock in " Pocomania" (1958) betrays this psychic dichotomy in a crucial choice
of words. namely, the use of grunt, instead of trump, to describe the deep rhythmic
intake/expulsion of breath which precedes possession"

"Mabrak" by Bongo Jerry is used as an example of 'groundation', a style characteristic of the literature of African expression

"Groundation or groundings (verb: to grounds) is a term for a rap session. But since the word/idea
(contributed by Rastafari) comes from the experience of religious possession, its ripples of meaning reach
further than the idea of simple, secular "grounding."

Una Marson (1905 - 1965) has published Moth and the Star in 1937


From Donell: "Marson was the first black woman invited to attend the League of Nations at Geneva in 1935 and there met with the Abyssinian delegation. She was so provoked and outraged by Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia that she immediately offered her help to Dr. Charles Martin, Abyssinian Minister to the United Kingdom, and went on to work as a secretary to Selassie. Marson’s empathy and devotion to the Abyssinian/Ethiopian cause was so extreme that by late 1936 she returned to Jamaica in a state of acute distress and depression. Back in Jamaica, Marson’s political Pan-African sensibilities found renewed strength and expression in both her journalism and creative writing.
Working on the team of the newly founded political weekly Public Opinion, she wrote stridently of the need for Jamaicans to embrace their African ancestry with pride."