Dannabang Kuwabong Stewart Brown, ed., All are Involved: The Art of Martin Carter Sargasso, No. 10. A detailed analytical review looking at individual pieces in this collection, picking out the highlights. Calls out for even more emphasis on Carter’s stylistics, and new angles from which to approach his writing.
Philip Nanton ‘Paradox and 'the Poems Man'’: Stewart Brown (ed), All Are Involved: The Art of Martin Carter The Caribbean Writer, Vol. 16 Argues that Carter is worthy of serious attention internationally, and values the book for the calibre of its contributors, and for its contribution to the debate about Caribbean/Latin American identities.
Thomas Reiter Stewart Brown, Elsewhere. The Caribbean Writer, Vol. 14
Review praising Elsewhere’s breadth and depth, Brown’s ability to move between England, the Caribbean and Africa, as well as his empathy and sensitivity, as a white man, in dealing with the ‘sins of the (colonial) fathers’.
Philip Nanton Elsewhere: New and Selected Poems by Stewart Brown Journal of West Indian Literature, Vol. 9, No. 1 Analytical review giving an overview of the collection’s three sections, with most attention given to ‘Elmina’ - a long poem about the slave trade in W. Africa. Appreciates the ‘lack of self-grandeur’ in Brown’s approach.
Peter Finch ‘Last Seen in Barbados’: Elsewhere, Stewart Brown Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Vol. 140 Review concentrating on Stewart Brown as a poet who draws upon the language, history, stories, of several geographical locations – England, Wales, the Caribbean, Africa.
Ian Dieffenthaller Elsewhere, Stewart Brown Wasafiri, no. 34 Comparative review (also reviews Weblines by John Agard) focussing on notions of home and exile in the poems, and on Brown’s crossing of national and cultural boundaries.
Vaneisha Baksh Stewart Brown Elsewhere Caribbean Beat Brief review concluding that the poet ‘knows his business’
Adele S. Newson-Horst Stewart Brown, Elsewhere: New and Selected Poems World Literature Today Review finding in the collection a thoughtful response to post-colonial fragmentation.
Bruce Clunies-Ross, Review of Tourist, Traveller, Troublemaker in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist 192 (Dec/Jan 2008/9), pp.104-5 :
Stewart Brown introduces this book as a cohobblopot, which he explains is a Barbadian term for something like a miscellany, but its components have been revised and arranged so that it can be read as a coherent account of developments in English-language poetry in Africa and the Caribbean over the past generation or so. The opening essay suggests there are three ways of seeing "strange places": as tourist, traveller, or resident troublemaker, reflecting the author's own practice as a poet. In the closing essay this distinction is developed with broad reference to poets from Kipling onward, including a full discussion of the work of two contemporaries, John Haynes and Landeg White. These two essays frame a series of detailed accounts of remarkable development in English-language poetry, from the perspective of someone who was on the spot and in many cases associated with the events described. The book thus has value as a primary source – a unique kind of travel report on poetry in "strange places" by a traveller whose own poetry was being influenced by his observations, as the discussion and reprint of his long poem "Lugard's Bridge" illustrates.
The travelling poet's perspective gives Stewart Brown's essays a first-hand authority and depth beyond anything to be found in conventional academic treatments of the subject, and any reader will find plenty of new and illuminating information in this book. We read, for example, about the interplay between English and other languages in West Africa behind the distinctive music of Niyi Osundare's poetry; about the rich variety and depth of poetry in the Caribbean, which extend far beyond the well-known work of Walcott and Brathwaite, about the development of the "Sycorax video style" in which Brathwaite presents his poems, and many other things. Altogether, these essays show a finely-nuanced and complex understanding of the evolution of English-language poetry in Africa and the Caribbean, which upsets the generalising tendencies of postcolonial theory, and justifies Stewart Brown's scepticism about it.
Towards the end of the book, Stewart Brown suggests that "one of the most important roles a literary scholar can play is to spread the word and make it accessible in places and to people it might not otherwise have reached." Tourist, Traveller, Troublemaker does exactly this in a way that deepens understanding and appreciation of the major extensions of poetry in English in Africa and the Caribbean. It is essential, and, in its informal, colloquial style, enjoyable reading for anyone interested in the subject.
Suzanne Scafe, review of Tourist, Traveller, Troublemaker in The Year’s Work in English Studies. (Vol.88, no.1, 2009)
This is not a scholarly collection but a series of conversational pieces that provide a lively insight into the processes of literary production in the Caribbean: it serves as a reminder that, as well as providing the basis for theoretical abstractions, geographical ‘place’ also refers to a material reality.