Cultural Meanings of Figurative Speech in Contemporary Caribbean British Poetry

Abstract

Abstract This essay combines close reading and contemporary cultural theories, in order to explore several figurative patterns in which individual and collective identity are shaped in contemporary Caribbean British poetry. In the context of the post-war multicultural Great Britain and of the transatlantic cultural traffic connected with the Caribbean, the poetic discourse has become a site of cultural negotiation and visionary expression. It will be shown that none of the values associated with multiculturalism, transculturalism or cosmopolitanism are taken as fixed, but they are rather options and positions on the continuum global-local, as well as facets of an emerging complex cultural reality. The authors included in the present analysis – three Guyanese poets, David Dabydeen, Grace Nichols and John Agard, and the Barbadian Dorothea Smartt – display a great awareness of contemporary cultural change, best rendered using a culturally hybrid poetic language.

Keywords

• Carribean British poetry
• multiculturalism
• transculturalism
• cosmopolitanism
• David Dabydeen
• Grace Nichols
• John Agard