CULTURAL ACTIVIST
Dr. Roi Kwabena was born in the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago in 1956.
As a cultural activist, he has lectured, performed and conducted workshops at the request of numerous governments, city councils, universities, schools, libraries and cultural bodies across the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa.
Thousand of youngsters and adults, including pensioners have benefited from his offerings. Many of his publications are considered vital reference materials for understanding the diverse cultural experiences of southern peoples. A former Opposition Senator in his place of birth, he was recently appointed Birmingaham City's Poet laureate for 2001-2002.Roi Kwabena is expected to perform in various venues internationally, regionlly and nationally coinciding with the publication of his new collection of poems & Cd. “Whether Or Not“ and “Y42K“. Both feature his immutable style of intriguing Dialogue, Dramatizations and Drumology.
BIRMINGHAM'S POET LAUREATE FOR 2001-2002 ANNOUNCED
Cultural activist Dr. Roi Kwabena is the new Poet Laureate 2001-2002 for the UK's second city : Birmingham. The announcement was made on last Saturday (20th Oct) at the current Birmingham's Book Festival at the Central Library Auditorium in Chamberlain Square.
Last year's Laureate Roshan Doug presented the award on behalf of the panel of judges which included the Information Director of the Arts Council of England, the Deputy Head of the City Council, BCC's Cabinet Member for Leisure & Culture, Poets Lemn Sessay, Roshan Doug and the Director of the current bid to establish Birmingham as the Cultural capital of Europe.
On acceptance of the award, Roi acknowledged the sacrifices and support of his relatives and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic.
WHETHER OR NOT
Poetry/ History
Roi Kwabena
Introduction by Dr. Lauri Ramey
After-word by Terrance Brathwaithe
110 pgs / B&W-PBK- Coloured Cover Distribution Rights: World Wide
RRP: £9.60
Special rates
USA/Canada/New World-Caribbean
Wholesale prices available on request
RAKA Books is proud to announce the release of the long awaited new collection of selected poetry by Trinidadian born poet and cultural activist Dr. Roi Kwabena.
A formal launch+Reading took place at Waterstones High Street Branch in Birmingham,UK on Tuesday 18th September which was well attended.
This unique collection consists of six sections that address issues of historical and cultural significance in relation to the Caribbean experience in the region and the wider Diaspora. Topics include responses by of the poet to the little known heritage of Caribbean Indigenous peoples; Caribbean Politics; Capital Punishment; Carnival;World Peace; Third World Debt Crisis; Global Warming; Disappearing Children; Murder/Suicides & the under-estimated value of cultural diversity in his place of birth.
Whether Or Not includes a concise glossary as well as the lyrics to the Spoken-Word Internet MP3 hits: Cascadura ,West India and Obeahman,. The latter poem/track has been on the charts for the past year (at number #5) at famed US based Internet music provider Rioport.com
download
A FREE MP3 TRACK
Copies of the Spoken word CD : Y42K by R.K features spoken word, and music and drumology on the BluePlanet label.are available on order by email.
The poem: Forgive us our Debts was also included on the CenterPoint compilation CD album in support of the Jubilee 2000 campaign against the Debt crisis of developing countries.
Roi Kwabena is available internationally for Lectures, Readings, performances, panel discussions, signings, workshops etc. He is keen to promote cultural and functional literacy at festivals, cultural programmes, libraries, schools, universities and public venues.
WHETHER OR NOT
A REVIEW BY LENNOX RAPHAEL
Roi Kwabena's is celebratory poetry. He celebrates not only himself and the spirit of the time, the joy of being now & alive to the pulsating rhythm of the imagination, he salutes 'geographical' wonders & emotions, places & feelings that evoke/provoke memory in new ways of seeing the familiar. His is also a lyricism of re-naming, re-claiming, valorizing, putting the common-place in a proper ( and literary) perspective; the true baptism.
look,
take back these identities
you gave my wind-swept
volcanic rocks
st croix
st kitts
st eustatius
st vincent
st thomasthese names of saints
made hallow by some
christian praise ... yet
who have never, ever trod
our shores, bitten by sand-flies
nor mosquitoes
dem never even feel a hurricane
or even sucked mango or sugarcanelook, ...., we reclaim
ataiij
xaymacaayay
wadadli
liamaiga
aloi
yulema
playground of julica
our rainbowI like the tone, the style, the outer-beingness & the inner saturation of civilizations & movements & the calypsoness of the semiotics, a style,a rhythm, an easy-going saga-thing line that is the stitching of the best of VS Naipaul, & (Samuel) Selvon, & Mustapha Matura, Trinidadians all of them, as is Kwabena, the Trinidadianess everywhere, the celebration of worlds, a picong, give&take&laugh, a message, slap & smile, a new criticism, calling a spade a spade (no pun intended) & knowing that spade is not shovel & shovelis not fork, celebrating life in language, doubles, erecting a civilization (without borders) in language, a structure of Time where everything isnamed 'whether or not' you like it so.
There is here an inner archaeology, an excavation, digging deeper & deeper, discovering levels of being, the art of seeing.
arrows of fish bone
spears
harvested from stoneThe literature of history as a mocking pretender.
Kwabena's approach stimulates. Are things what they are, what they seem, because of who we are, how we feel, where we are? My first feeling after going through Kwabena's 'whether or not' is it must be read by others, mustget around - and not be just for my pleasure here in Copenhagen on this autumn spring morning in August, and when I read of
saints who have never, ever trod
our shores, bitten by sandflies
nor mosquitoesI can think only of the vacation I spent recently in Kastellorizos, Greece, where the mosquitoes were awesome, inspired, truculent, not much buzz, but a lot of bite, as though, having lost their buzz to the cicadas, their bite (&after-effects) would be pure revenge.
One is impressed by a deep feeling for others (in Roi's Kwabena's world& imagination), a caring beyond the line, so the style is a style also of compassion, a generous & compassionate voice, and a place.
holy mother .... full of grace
we move in haste ....- and, in the midst of all of this, Sour Chutney, the story of indrani and dhanraj, the story of the virginless bride, 1849 to now, Calcutta to the Caribbean, sex, salvation & suffering, simply told, searing, just enough pain to make innocence rhetorical.
the vengeance of kali
surely going to fall
on the family of ramdhanie......ah cha ...
So the poet celebrates life & love and ' the unlucky blow' that imprisons the dhanraj in us,, no matter where we are; and reading these selected poems is like having a map spread out before me, a map of the world, and there is the Caribbean, the civilization of the Amazon, Africa, India. Europe, China, Birmingham.
stare at the
mocking shadows
on corporation street
devouring british beef ...The poet celebrates by entrance - by entering the lives of others, the world-making-breaking others, by giving all souls equal play, an all-inclusive fete of feelings & ideas & trigger for thinking& dreaming and, well, one does have to say it, 'whether or not' is a stimulating dish, all these people-building, nation-building ingredients, and stirring the pot, well, the poet knows how to stir the pot, the light touch, the deep stir, hitting the spoon on the edge, tasting, scentedness, the sacred in the everyday, and Kwabena knows how (effortlessly) to make words taste like EATMORE ....... that's his mission
.... people as ingredients, making people come alive. stirring the pot of life, making nothing burn too much, and knowing when to lower the fire,
.....it's the morning of light
we see, beyond
the broken dispersed
fragments
of our aspirationsand one could very well echo the poet's clarity:-
Your nerve was
not only
in veinI have been reading works by writers from the Caribbean, and by Caribbean I mean a world stretching from Mexico thru Central America into the West Indies beyond the Caribbean seas thru Venezuela into Brazil, the Amazonic mother lode I do read Naipaul, and anything written by him is worth reading, and is deserving of literary respect, and not to be taken lightly; and Naipaul is to be valued (or praised) for the sheer brilliance with which he clings to his calypsoness as style; and I must confess that reading Whether Or Not is my first experience in as many years as experience has letters that I have settled down with the work of a Caribbean writer; and, yet, this would not be altogether true because I recently read aloud, to my daughter, Papaya, Never Trouble Trouble, a delightful book of stories for children by Roi Kwabena:
so, the moment is kwabenized; and I look forward to a book by Kwabena that would be one story having nothing to do with the Caribbean, in terms of focus, only that the writer is Caribbean, and using the personal Caribbean experience as a seedbed of styles, which is the challenge today, to go outside the self, to discard (& ignore) identity, to put the future behind us, and to excavate with the intent of finding other selves, a castaway on the deserted island, imagination, to leave paradise behind & to tread the secret pathways beyond what is called 'Caribbean Literature' & the fiction of magic, into the mourning ground, beyond cultures & languages & memories that are invisible to the naked view, beyond the public self, whether or not rain falls on Sunday or sun shines on Friday, the artist going beyond compassion to exploring the possibilities & landscapes of the self as a literary paradise.
