Poetry
Slave Song
David Dabydeen · 1984
Synopsis
Fourteen poems written in Guyanese Creole, each followed by its translation into standard English and accompanied by notes, and illustrated with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engravings. In them are heard the voices of the cane plantations, slaves, indentured Indian labourers and present-day peasants, with their labour, their revolt and their thwarted desire. The translations and notes show what English cannot render of the Creole.
Context
Written for the most part during the author's student years at Cambridge and intended to be read aloud, the poems appeared in 1984 from Dangaroo Press, in Denmark and Oxford. The same year the collection received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize; its scholarly notes imitate those of The Waste Land. Peepal Tree Press reissued it in 2005 with an afterword by the author, and Kevin Grant edited in 1997 a critical volume devoted to his work.
Who it is for
For hearing the voice of the Guyanese plantations in its own language, with the support of the author's English translations.
Prizes and reception
Sillages critiques sees in it a response to the silence surrounding slavery and to the lack of poetry written in Creole.
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