In Caribbean literature there has always been a vigorous strain of oral composition existing alongside the written tradition. Think of the slave and indenture songs of sorrow and survival, folk tales, the Anancy stories, calypsos and road marches, reggae lyrics, and the more recent dub and performance poetry. Such as these have always fertilized the more artful but often more effete written tradition. It is a little strange that it took such a long time for the oral tradition to be given the sort of recognition due to it in literary studies and anthologies. The Mighty Sparrow, Kitchener, Bob Marley, Paul Keens-Douglas, Rudder and Guyana’s own John Agard, Marc Matthews and Ken Corsbie and many others emerging since, at their best are poets as well as performers and must take their place in the literary pantheon.
But no one West Indian did more to dissolve the elite prejudice against dialect, “nation-language,” the vernacular way of expressing things than Louise Bennett of Jamaica. When she was a girl, in love with reading and bewitched by poetry, a teacher gave
