Books on Caribbean Writers

Kenneth Ramchand, ed. West Indian Narrative: An Introductory Anthology.  Nelson Thornes Ltd; Rev Ed edition (June 1980)

Laurence A. Breiner, Black Yeats: Eric Roach and the Politics of Caribbean Poetry. Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2007

Laurence A. Breiner, An Introduction toe West Indian Poetry. Cambridge University Press,  2003

Eric Roach, The Flowering Rock. Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 1991

Eric Merton Roach, father of Colin Roach, was born 1915 at Mount Pleasant Tobago. After a secondary education at Bishop's High School, Tobago, he entered the teaching profession. In 1939, he joined the army in Trinidad and served as a volunteer with the South Caribbean forces during World War II. His first poems, some written as Merton Maloney, date from this period. After a short stint in the Civil Service, he worked as a journalist with the Trinidad Guardian and The Nation.  He was also a regular contributor to the BBC Caribbean Voices programme.

At the age of 39, he turned his attention to writing and produced many short stories, poems, plays, articles, and a radio serial. He married in 1952 and in 1954 he left his job to devote his time to writing. By 1960, though he had accumulated an impressive body of work, including many anthologised poems and publication in Bim, Kyk-over-Al and other journals, there were no offers of publication and he returned to teaching.

In 1961, he moved to Trinidad where he worked chiefly as a journalist. In 1973, he again resigned in order to devote more time to his writing. In 1972, he had published a fiercely critical review of the new Caribbean poetry published in Savacou ¾ (‘Tribe Boys vs Afro-Saxons’) and in the absence of the publication of his own poetry of this period, which was indeed much closer in spirit to the Savacou collection than his somewhat intemperate review suggested, he was widely castigated for what were perceived as reactionary views.

Almost equally, he was taken up as a stick with which to beat the leading figures in the Caribbean revolution in the arts by its opponents. In the process, Roach’s own poetry was ignored. In 1974, leaving behind ‘Finis’, a suicide note transformed into art, Roach drank insecticide and swam out to sea at Quinam Bay, itself the subject of a fine poem ‘At Quinam Bay’ full of intimations of wearied ending.

Source: Eric Roach Collection

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Eric Merton Roach, The Flowering Rock: Collected Poems, 1938-1974. Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 1991

This collection brings together for the first time the work of one of the Caribbean's major poets. It collects the poems published in journals between 1938-1973, Roach's early pseudonymous work and a substantial selection of his unpublished poems from manuscript. The collection is edited and introduced by Professor Kenneth Ramchand.

—Publisher, Peepal Tree Press

the most splendid voice of the Caribbean Renaissance (1948-1972) . . . precious confounded Yeatsian & still utterly Caribbean statements.

—Kamau Brathwaite

This is an extremely important book. Before its appearance no literary historian or critic, let alone lover of poetry, will have been able to measure the full richness of West Indian poetic creation. One always suspected that Eric Roach was one of the major West Indian poets. This book consolidates his name in a pantheon which includes at least Claude McKay, Derek Walcott, Louise Bennett, Martin Carter and Kamau Brathwaite.

I think what I respond to most is Roach's passion for the land and the people, both of which are so clearly and categorically West Indian. The intense feeling that informs his best poetry - and so much of the poetry is good - expresses a very specific yearning for a shared identity which will leap over island isolation and bind together our fragmented historical consciousness into a coherent whole.

—Ian McDonald

This first publication of Roach’s poetic corpus is quite simply a major literary event.

— Laurence Breiner

Source: http://www.Peepal Tree Press

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Poems by Eric Roach