September 27th. 2011
A message from Kamau:
To me
Kamau Brathwaite
CP Fri 23 Sept 2011
Dear Tom,
Yr lighthouse website, ‘Save CowPastor’ [tomraworth.com.wordpress/] comes on in Ap 2005 at the beginning of the still optimistic & feisty days of what turns out to be the Second (and i fear fatal) TIME OF SALT [for the >>>> TIME OF SALT see, inter alia Brathwaite, BarabajanPoems (1994), Golokwati (2002) or simply dial GOOGLE]
and i want to thank & celebrate yr lett of 14 sept w/its newes of how the site had recently gone down after, as it turns out, some technological ad-> justments at the Server but how you was able – typically and w/all yr livication – to ‘get it back up’ and enclosed the note from Megan at Trinity College, Dublin, witnessing to how much the site has meant to her as a researcher & person of conscience. And over the years i’ve heard similar from several
So we bless & thank you again & again for yr help & presence in these time(s) of need.
NOTE
You can download a pdf file of Kamau’s original text/setting of +++SaVing CowPastor & the KB Cultural Lynching 2004-2011+ by clicking this link.
September 11th. 2011
A message from Kamau:
To me
As I say, “Dream on!“
Mark Nowak, September 10th.2010
Wishes CNN would do something really brilliant and unique tomorrow and take just 10 minutes of its coverage to allow Kamau Brathwaite to read “9/11: Hawk” to the world. Won’t happen, but one can wish.
Born to Slow Horses by Kamau Brathwaite
July 1st. 2010
A message from Kamau:
To me
From: Clement payne chambers Clement payne chambers
Date: Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 12:01 PM
Subject: Press Release – Bring Kamau Home!
To: Clement payne chambers Clement payne chambers
PEOPLES EMPOWERMENT PARTY
29 June 2010
PRESS RELEASE
BRING KAMAU HOME!
The content of Kamau Brathwaite’s article in last Sunday’s Nation Newspaper has reminded us in the Peoples Empowerment Party that we have been derelict in our duty to publicly call for the return home of Kamau Brathwaite – the Caribbean’s most important poet.
And so, we now publicly say to Ministry of Culture, Steve Blackette, to Education Minister, Ronald Jones, and to Prime Minister David Thompson – “bring home Kamau Brathwaite; make him an offer he can’t refuse; and repatriate him from the alien climes of New York City to take up his rightful place in Barbados as our national poet laureate!”
It was distressing and heart-rending to glean from Kamau’s article that he currently finds himself in an oppressive condition in New York City, the victim of thieves who have plumdered his apartment of many of his (and the Caribbean’s) most valuable cultural treasures.
Why should this be so? Why should the independent nation of Barbados – equipped with a university campus, a tertiary level ‘Centre of Creative Imagination’, and a ‘National Cultural Foundation’ – permit its 80 year old “father” of Barbadian poetry and cultural history to remain separated from his homeland, his nation, and his people?
Let us be very clear about this – Kamau Brathwaite is no ordinary Barbadian intellectual or artist! Kamau’s unique achievement has been to have plumbed the depths of and to have internalized the essential culture and landscape of Barbados, and through seven years of lived experience in Ghana, to have discerned the deeply rooted umbilical connection between the Barbadian folk culture and our ancestral West African ‘heartland’, and having done so, to have traced the Pan-African connections between Barbados and the cultures and peoples of “Plantation America” and the Caribbean Diaspora.
Equipped with this profound, authentic and holistic understanding of Barbadian culture and identity, Kamau has, over several decades, helped to reveal the Barbadian people to themselves through such brilliant poetical collections as ‘Rights of Passage’, ‘Islands’, ‘Masks, ‘Mother Poem’, ‘Sun Poem’, and ‘Third World Poems’, and through his several pioneering studies on the historical processes of creolization in the Caribbean.
Surely, now more than ever, we, the current culturally beleaguered generation of Barbadians, are in need of Kamau’s presence and spirit amongst us. Surely, we need to hear Kamau’s prophetic voice warning us that:-
“It is not enough to be free
of the red white and blue…..
it is not enough to be free
of the whips, principalities and powers
where is your Kingdom of the Word?….
I must be given words to refashion futures
like a healer’s hand”
For decades now, Kamau has been trying to come home to Barbados. Way back in the late 1970′s there was some discussion about him becoming Barbados’ first ‘Director of Culture’, but apparently our then Government refused to transport his extensive literary collection to Barbados, and as a result negotiations broke down.
And back in the 1990′s Kamau actually came home and attempted to establish a ‘cultural centre’ for young writers and poets at his ‘Cow Pasture’, Christ Church home, but the governmental authorities refused to grant permission on the ground that the land was needed for airport expansion.
We cannot delay any longer – Kamau is now 80 years old – let us resolve to do ‘now’, what we should have done over 30 years ago, and bring Kamau home!
DAVID A. COMISSIONG
President
March 15th. 2010
Two very recent messages from Kamau:
To me
Tonight 10 March 10 just before midnight, in the miggle preparing for Thursday’s class and going to get it to show to the class, discover the theft (one more of thousands) of my Jamaica MUSGRAVE (MUSCRADLE) GOLD MEDAL FOR LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT 2006 and connected so closely w/my friend & colleague/ally Rex Nettleford whose passing is reflected once again and now refracted, in this moment.
Clearly the intention is to deprive me of all i own. The Muscradle, for instance, was to have been handed down to my son. When i have gone – and that is clearly being processed by what’s happening this apartment! – i will have nothing to show that i was here. xcept rumour. certainly no archive or estate. which after almost 80 years of labour, one wd xpect to have
I’m urging you to spread this bitter weed of word loud & abroad – for Xha sake let the world now KNOW about this cultural lynching
Mek dem kno!
Pass it on!!
To Jules Martin, NYU. copy to me
Dear Chief Martin,
Following our conversation half hour ago, I’m writing now, at yr suggestion,
to make a report of the THEFT of my Musgrave Gold Medal, last seen on a
shelf of these things during the end of year holidays when we were placing
cards etc on that shelf
I missed it on the evening after yr visit w/the gentlemen from Los Angeles,
Wed 10 March 2010. I was preparing for a class on Jamaican culture, and
thought that when speaking of the Institute of Jamaica [IJ], one of the
great cultural institutions of Jamaica and the Caribbean, that I wd take my
medal, issued by the IJ for outstanding literary, scientific & artistic
achievement, to show the class
The medal, displayed in its leather case, gold (don’t kno the carats but it
looks sincere), with serrated rim, about 2 3/4 inches across, and an image
of Lord Musgrave, a Governor of Jamaica on one side and an image of the IJ
on the other, carries my name and the date of the award (2006)
Until recently I wd say that the thefts have been mainly books (mainly mine,
Caribbean, or books i am using in my work), manuscripts, ts, teaching notes,
research material, LPs. CDs, DVDs, photographs, student essays, etc But
since late December 2009, I note the inc of small African icons and now the
Musgrave Gold Medal
And there is still – since c2004 – NO evidence of how entry is being
achieved, so that it can be said – as is being said in many Quarters, that
this terrible cultural lynching is my imagination
Is also our impression (Mrs B and myself) that the apartment is bugged, so
that whoever it is hears/sees/knows what we are doing, knows when we are
going out and are alerted as to our return
There might well be also a secret entrance to the apartment. I say this
because it is our impression that some of the recent thefts might well have
taken place even while we, or one of us, are still in the apartment – in
other words, while we are asleep -
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June 25th. 2006
M. Nourbese Philip’s letter to Kamau Song Lines of Memory, an eloquent meditation on both Cow Pastor and the present situation in the Caribbean can be read by clicking here; or in the side menu bar where there is also a link to a downloadable PDF file.
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June 8th. 2006
Adriana González Mateos in Mexico City has published a response to/comment on The Namsetoura Papers. You can read KAMAU: ON THE ISLAND OF DEAD SLAVES here, translated by Christopher Winks.
In a message this morning Kamau adds:
NourbeSe Philip recently specially visited CP and
has written TWO LETTERS which I’ll send as soon as i
can get them open. The translator of the Adriana, by
the way, Chris Winks, a former stu of mine at NYU
and now a prof in Comp Lit at CUNY/Queens, is
Adriana’s husband.
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June 7th. 2006
Extract from a message from Kamau this morning:
CP remains bleak destroyed & mumm. Not a word from
any official soul, despite a sprinkle of continuing
eMs and the obvious influ of yr site (foresight) -
they all read it and have not only stop speakin to
me as a result – but have embargoed me off
activities, the press, radio & tv etc But we still
there, even tho forbidden to build while still
waiting for that dreaded ‘road’
Meantime, the airport has been privatized into
Canadian hands (I suspect has been so since the
attack on CP – clearly for a golf course) and so the
disregard for the remaining native life of the
pasture is likely to be even more xtreme
Happier News:
Kamau was recently awarded the 2006 Griffin Poetry Prize for Born to Slow Horses. He was the International Winner, dividing the prize with the Canadian Winner, Sylvia Legris for Nerve Squall.
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January 15th. 2006
Happy New Year.
There is an interview with Kamau by Joyelle McSweeney online in the Fall 2005 edition of RAINTAXI here.
Thanks to Mickey O’Connor in Seattle
September 13th.
An update from Kamau now back in Barbados No News is Not Good Newes
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June 21st.
Kamau’s Xtending the CP Discourse added to the site.
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June 17th.
Kamau’s The Rosie Doc and Geoffrey Philp’s play Ogun’s Last Stand added to the site.
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June 15th.
Letter from Kamau to Ricky Jordan
My dear Ricky, Hope yu see the bcc i send you w/the lett to RoXanne. I really hope they will be able to feature in full my lett (which cd go as Guest Column hopefully) this coming Sunday Sun
Things seem to have gone quiet ref the struggle right now – at the mo? – which is juss what the Authorities wd xpect and hope for. We discover that Rayside has done the ruin of the pasture, but we don’t kno why. xcept that what they’ve dug up is NOT for the ROAD – or so we are told. I’m also told that Town & Country has told Rayside – or shd have told them! – that the filling in of the pond is illegal (certainly immoral! but i don’t xpect them to use that kind of language!) and that they shd unfill it. But all this is hearsay. There’s nothing in official writing. Which is how the Establishment operates and how the people are xploited and controlled
In my lett I also make ref to Peter Laurie’s piece on Hackleton’s Cliff (NATION 12 Jn 05), which is another xample of how people, all concerned with the same general objective, are not connXing w/each other. I mean, a glance by Peter at the CP dasein, wd have made a great difference to Bajam attention; by IGNORING us, he makes a great silent devastating point
And we have also to be able to make fine distinctions w/in, as a say, the general dasein (destination design). Peter and many of us talk about National Parks and Reserves – constantly ignored and eroded, as he says, by Developers who can only get away w/their encroachments thru the connivance/permission of Government – all based on the cruel illusion that for us to get by, we must sell, as somebody put it, the family silver – which is not really an appropriate way to image this point anyway, because that’s in itself based on assumptions of class wealth privilege mercantilism plantation. What we really sellin is not the family silver(s) but the people SOUL. And that’s unforgivable and why I use the word unethical
But CP is not even about public space (Park & Recreation) per se, but sacred artistic and ancestral space. Which completely changes the language and the crisis of the cosmos
I’m still hoping that w/this discourse and w/help w/the few like you, that Bajam might still come to recognize this. But as you say, from whe you are on the grounds, this looks like a probably impossible task, given the history & praxis, both ancient & modern, of our society
But we cyaaan give up And so the struggle continues
Kamau/London 15 Jn 05 at 3:17pm
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June 8th.
June 11th. Click here for a PDF file of Kamau’s reply to the letter from Michael Atkins noted below. If the file won’t open in your browser, you can download it and read it with Acrobat Reader. I’ve done it this way to preserve the immediacy and energy of Kamau’s typography.
Letter in Barbados Daily Nation
Venturing on Cow Pasture
Date June 05, 2005
COULD ANYONE TELL ME why “Cow Pasture”, acquired in 1999, should remain intact whilst other properties in the vicinity of the airport expansion project should go?
Is it because of ownership by someone of “importance”? What about those other properties that were owned and occupied by one family even before the airport was there?
Are there only voices in support of “important people”? Or is it that “important people” should only reap benefits?
MICHAEL ATKINS
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June 3rd.
from Kamau, in reference to a suggestion by Alex Cumberbatch
Bajam Call-ins
Dear Kamau :
A friend of mine in Barbados is of the opinion that the call-in radio programmes are immensely popular and generate the most publicity for controversial topics. I believe the Nation owns at least one of the radio stations. Perhaps, you could broach this with Jordan or anyone who might have on-air influence./Alex Cumberbatch, Hong Kong 31 May 05
KB/London 1 June 05
Thanks Alex. a great idea. whose time shd have come a long time ago! Why i say this is because I’m an avid call-in listener and since 1998, when the protest first got underway (confined then to the two newspapers – since this first period, NOTHING has (so far) appeared in/from The Advocate) i myself heard only one (anti-CP) comment on the call-ins, w/the host trying to egg the guy on – to laff it off, laff it down, no attempt to get to the bottom of it. And there was NO FOLLOW-UP. Call-ins are like wildfire – one call stimulates a host
But perhaps because of this wildfire popularity (and much was made of this in the ‘intellectual media’: the ‘new’ modern form of Caribbean democracy – ‘popular & immediate’ – ‘broadcast public opinion’, adding a ‘fifth dimension’ or ‘estate’! to our public concourse – and again the word ‘democracy’) – the call-ins (increasingly since we started listening (back in Bajam since 1997) have become tightly manipulated & controlled by the Estab, w/the call-in hosts clearly agents of the Estab (they will hotly often emotionally deny this, but ‘evvabody kno is so’!), hiding behind ‘screening of callers’, delay mechanisms (partic necessary since the morning in Ja when a woman pho in to say that a then PM had had his penis bitten off or severely itten in/to by an irate apparently rejected lover) and – esp in Bdos – w/a smoke-screen of libel laws which in practice now means that a caller can’t repeat – not even quote – what a minister or certain other Estab figs have said (or of course allegedly said), so that unless the call is bland, non-controversial, Estab-supporting or Estab non-threatening, you will hear now on Bajam call-ins (I don’t kno about the rest of the E Caribb but I was in (?’underdeveloped’) Tortola recently and the call-in there was pretty open & cool), long areas of silence, where the poor caller has been ‘withheld’ w/out his/her knowledge, w/the call resuming, by now quite surrealistically, from wherever the waters are ‘calm’ – no-qualm – again. Which is why KB has nvr pho in – tho, Tom, I will now try when I get back
But I must also say that IF Bajams wanted to comment on what we sayin about CP, they now have plenty to choose from. They cd comment on how the road, as the last of several ruses, will destroy my home and my dream of making a cultural contribution in this place which for me is more than a beautiful place, but a place now of the ancestors – NAMSETOURA. Being a religious and ?African (phile/phobe) people, our callers cd comment on Namsetoura. And they cd now ask Questions about this new CP – Rayside? – phase – the sudden undeclared & unxplained destruction of the pasture, the VANDAL psyche this destruction has introduced, and the ‘ecological time-bomb’ placed in the area by the unpromised filling in of the lake of thorns and – again – the environmental defilement (we gotta use words/we gotta use words when we talk to yu) this represents. Above all, they cd CONNECT whats happening at CP to what they kno of whats happening to the rest of the island. CP is not unique. Thousands have been dispossessed – the word of course being relocated. Sing EMMERTON
No, there’s more than enough for the call-ins here – indeed, there cd – shd – be a call-in special on the issues raised by CP. But there’s been nothing. MUMM here too – my use of this word creeping from MUM to MUMM and getting close to MUMMIE – like those things in those early B-movies. Smatta fact, one of the great directors of one of the call-ins is on our own phone-in eM list. But I guess he’s preferring discretion, as they say, to desecration and/or value
Which is why what we doin here is so important. Our sense of past and concern for the present, hopefully influencing the future of our island. At the very beginning of the campaign, MarinaTaitt put it this way, and I’ve put her words low near the strings of my harp: –
it’s a picture, a pattern, events fit into it, change it. The value of intention, a gesture or an attempt exceeds its physical reach, and hopefully whatever happens with your Emmerton, we will have placed a new possibility for meaning and action into this pattern, which has been standing unchallenged for too long. The CowPastures continue to exist, all the different perceptions co-exist, and is because i see the possibility of their harmony that i continue to move physically to alter the weighing. and because i see that others will have many Emmertons to defend and to create in times ahead, and if the opportunity to insert other potentials into the picture is not taken by us now, someone else will have to make an even greater sacrifice down the line to do it./Marina/Barbados 28 Ap 05
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June 1st.
forwarded by Alex Cumberbatch
A clipping from the Barbados Nation yesterday
click for larger image
Link to the piece online, or as stored text
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May 28th.
from Kamau: TWO SMALL VICTORIES
1
extracts from correspondence
From: Angelique Brathwaite Hi Kamau, I got some information from Town and Country Planning. It sems that the gully was filled in (illegally) with spoil from Rayside Construction. They have been ordered to clean it up. We’ll have to keep track of it and ensure that this is done. Hope all is well with you. Barbados is so beautiful right now….the colour of the sea is absolutely amazing. Please give my love to your wife. Keep Good earlier From: Angelique Brathwaite Hey Kamau, I’ve been running around from one meeting to the next, trying hard to balance the “art” and “science” of our coastal zone. The problem is that there are so many who think the “art” of our ocean and beaches is to be found in development of the coast. My idea of a beautiful beach is one with no construction on it…just sand and water……all the kiosks, snackettes, etc can go. I know it cannot be so for all… but at least some of our beaches should be left in their natural state. I’m supposed to comment on the science of the ocean, but i cannot help but put in my concept of its art. These people want to build up the entire island. ……………….. —– Original Message —– Hey Kamau, I was in Barcelona for a month last December. I had an amazing time, visiting all of Gaudi’s buildings and the art museums and getting in some flamenco shows at the music hall. It didn’t feel too unbearably europy, as I could always walk down to the Ocean. It was beautiful I’ll still go and check out the gully with a friend from Town and Country. I’ll let you know how it develops. Keep good Kamau Brathwaite wrote:
My dear Angie, Bev is now in London and me in Barcelona. Town & Country Planning, i was told by yr ministerial ?colleague, shd kno all about the destruction on CP.shd kno who do it. The lake/circular gully, wet-season pond is so well filled in, that unless you kno whe it was, is all flat & cover w/stones like most of the pasture now. And by the way, is not on my property – is near! – but part of the once common pasture If yr friend from TCP still want to ck it out, however, he cd ck Mrs Spencer, the house nearest ours and nearest as well to the lost feature. Mrs S is quite poorly these days, but her son Robert shd be able to point out where the pond was. Let me kno how it go. and thanks for yr help —– Original Message —– Hi Kamau, Sorry for my tardy reply. You had spoken to me about the gully on the property, and I said I would get someone from Town and Country Planning to come have a look with me, and see if anything can be done. Do I have your permission to go onto the land in your absence to check it out? Hope all is well with you and your wife, and looking forward to seeing you soon. Nuff Luv Kamau Brathwaite wrote:
My dear Angie, was so GOOD to hear you in Bajam lass Sunday morning w/all that +creative newes. as you can imaj, am anXious to kno if you’ve been able to come on stream ref whats happening @ CP – if you not, will send you some of the docs – if you wish me to, that is. Want to kno if you can in anyway help intervene in this very sad & unfortunate business (1) my vision of a Bussa Inst thwarted by the proposal of unnecessary road thru its heart (2) this new sudden wanton destruction of the pasture (since late Jan 05), inc the filling-up of the gully/pond on the pasture (now complete!), for which NOBODY will admit responsibility, so i can only call it an act of terrorism ********* From: Ricardo Jordan Thanks Kamau. We ain’t mum on Tomás Graves’ letter, just holding it to get in next weekend. We carried a major letter last week from an Alex Cumberbatch, and almost my entire column was devoted to your situation last Friday. I guess you may be depending on what you read on the Net, but not all the major Nation stories get on there.
I’ll work on the Bay Street one for you; for as you said, I have a duty to my children and grandchildren. It just seems like the odds are so great, though.
Blessings
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May 26th.
from Kamau
Here’s a lett/idea first sent this morning to my sister Joan in Bdos, floating the idea now/also of SAVING BAY STREET (RH = Round House and is the place whe i born). We need to find out all we can about all the properties [in our family]. Janice Whittle, who’s on some **Cttee**, tells me that they plannin to tear down the Eye Ward/the Eye Hospital and replace it w/some kind of tourist gazebo – part of the dev of ‘Bayside’. My hunch is that the Eye Ward and RH are connected – if you already have info on this, pl let me kno. But they shdnt go tearing down these structures before at least they have doc their history. Altho i hear that RH is to be ‘spared’, i wdn’t be surprise if someone comes along, as at CP, and start anonymous destruction – esp since there’s still no PLAQUE on RH. Indeed, i thought there was a plaque on the Eye Ward – if so, as you see, it make no diff What i also tell Janice – and i tellin you now in the hope that you will soon become more activist in trying to save Barbados for yr grannchilldren – is that Bay St from the Esplanade to the Swing Bridge shd be restored and stand as a living & used highway of Old Barbados – there wd be nothing else like it in all Bdos (just as i’d said in my REPORT that they shd save Six Men’s Bay), and it wd add far far more to the so-call ‘tourism product’ than these hotels & gazebos that hapzarding all over the place, and which only obliterate & destroy what made the island unique – for there is NO QUESTION in the historical & artistic record, that it was/still is? unique. But is not the tourism product that concern me – these things – like a restored Bay Street, are aspects of our own – we Bajam – spiritual inheritance upliftment. Why I askin you to become ACTIVE is that if you/we don’t say and DO something we conniVin in the unwork of babel and babylon and sodom&gomorrah and satan and the antichrist & whateverelse our other religions find negative…
….. ——————————————- May 24th. NourbeSe/Kamau – the Q of moral & legal challenge to Caribbean Courts of Justice —– Original Message —– Dear Kamau: Please accept my support in your struggle for your land. My thoughts and energy are with you. Stay strong. The ancestors are with you.
M. NourbeSe Philip
Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it. M.NourbeSe Philip Kamau’s Reply London 24 May 05
Thank you NourbeSe. coming from an admired fellow poet & warrior like yrself, this means a lot. what i’m trying for is not only the future of my small strip from where i kno i cd make a contribution from a place of such remarkable spiritual healing – the appearance of yr twin, Namsetoura, there, for instance – is no accident. it is a portal and a warning So that what i really – or rather AT THE SAME TIME tryin for, is a saving of the pasture – the entire actual & symbolic space – trying to make my Bajams realize before it is too late, too late, that we possess precious choral coral thats worth far more than hotels and gold courses golf curses and the selling out & off of our land into hotels casinos sepulchures And i want to take this concern not only to newspapers and letter protests, but to courts of justice, since thats perhaps the only way that we will ever be able to make, paradoXically, a moral point. It’s what you’ve done in yr campaigns Show-boat and other cultural obstacles and i’m therefore wondering if you have any ideas on how i/we can move this CP crisis and its crisis of conscience on to the Caribbean Court of Justice as a TEST – as test case (Cecile Clayton at Mona said this from the inset) – that we the people – not only our government-becom-ing-our-governors – must co-operate in determining our future & therefore our blessing(s)
—————————————————– (Thanks to a note from Jordan Stempleman)
Alex Cumberbatch’s letter (filed below) was published in this week’s Barbados Nation. Click here for the web-page , or here for a copy in case it goes off-line
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May 22nd.
from Janice Whittle, with an extract from Kamau’s reply janice_whittle @hotmail.com Dear Kamau, Belated Happy Birthday ! I am so sorry I have not been in touch before. I received Carolle’s email detailing your continuing difficulties with the government and Cow Pastor. I have not as yet been able to discover anything which might help solve the mystery, but I am trying. I suspect the land has been sold to some private individual for development on top of the lake, hence the secrecy. I keep turning over in my head what I would say in a letter to the press. Quite apart from your situation, we seem to have lost our way. We are giving value to the wrong things. Our salvation is seen to be in the World Cup and everything else can take a running jump ! The Public Library is falling apart. The Children’s section has moved into the Adult section downstairs, which means it is reduced to a fraction of its size, yet we want people to read more. The NCF’s budget has been severely cut, which I suspect will come out of the developmental projects. We at NCF nominated Pat Byer for a National Award while she was on her deathbed and we were refused ! Almost all of the buildings in Queen’s Park have joined the Empire Theatre as unfunctioning memories. Anyway, I am sorry to sing such a sad song about our beloved Barbados. I am an optimist so I always will believe that things can change. Take heart Kamau, there are many people in Barbados who love and revere you. All of that positive energy which is given off when your name is uttered will make good things happen, so do not despair. You are surrounded by love, just wait for it to work. All the best and much love,
Janice from Kamau
London 22 May 05 …And what you say in yr lett, about Pat, about the Children’s Lib – THIS certainly shd be seen as a PUBLIC SCANDAL – all of us all of us learn about our first formative books by going up there to read – learn, in doing so, about what it is to be Bajan – just being in that special environment – going thru those gates, being aware of the courtyard – the court’s yard and what it implies – going up that high flight of smooth beautifully sculptured steps – from chattel house to alhambra – entering that space with its peculiar light, its HUSH – sudden from the world of accustomed NOISE – the discipline – for me OVER-discipline when I was at that stage – but it had its lessons – the COVERING OF THE BOOKS – the CARE for the object of value – all this made a difference to us all, certainly in the days before the video/tv/computer revolution, when it was all we had of that other magical world – and in addition, a intimate MEETING PLACE for so many important events – in my case, my first po readings and book launchings – and to allow that sacred space to fall into disrepair – that kind of cultural DISRESPECT - no no no no – you have to write about it, Janice, you have to speak out – and LINK it w/all these other things you so heartfelt in yr letter. I kno the constraints – the Bajam syndrome – SINdrome – of MUM etc – you working for the NCF an all – but you’ve got to go – you’ve got to go there now – the CURATOR MUST SPEAK – must speak OUT – to lend credence & dignity & future to those works of art that lie so mute on the walls of that – as you say – also neglected neoclassical building – if you don’t speak, the CURATING means nothing more than gatekeeping, rather than being what you are – Ellegua herself…….. ————————————– May 19th.
Letter from Kamau to the Jamaican poet and critic Mervyn Morris CP/4/23/05 Dear Mervyn, Mary tell me you had pho her to ask about CP and how you might HELP ATTACH (hope it will open) is the recent basic ref the MUM & ANONYMOUS intensification of pressure on the pasture, tho my fight begins in 1998, soon after i buy this place and am told (1) that i can’t build – xtend the present small 3 bedroom w/its old slave outhouse, Wilcox plantation stone wall & two huge covered wells/reservoirs, a lake of thorns – a rare circular gully, really, with all the flora & fauna of a gully, inc mangrove waiting for the return of water during the rains, birds inc the cattle egrets, insects, unfathomed bushes, a transit stop – even temp home – for the now disappeared green monkey colonies of this South; a place, I notice, along whose verge of cool (the gully ‘hill’) spectacular bull/comatings wd take place; clumps of cuscus gold grass fencing & a place, on the edge of the ridge, behind the outhouses, where there is a gathering, on an almost treeless pastor, slave-people trees & plants (cordia, clammacherry, croton, lignum vitae, bearded figtree, dwarf cactus, nunu, manbiaba etc (see ‘Namsetoura’ in WNLT and the NAMSETOURA PAPERS in Hambone 17 (2004)) - because is in a NO FLY ZONE – nr the airport – and we had got a builder to prepare plans for xtensions here to first of all provide library space for my postGilberts, still scattered & un-re-co-ordrinated; then we were to go on to begin space for the beginnings of what I wd call the Bussa Cultural Inst – the general idea. We had enough wonderful space of about 1/2 a mile along this ridge that looks onto the Oistins Lighthouse, SilverSands, the Spiritual Baptists Jerusalem cathedral, my sister Joan’s house and to the north – the northern ridge/rim of the pasture (it shows up most dramatically on the old plantation maps of Barabados, and you cd have predicted from then, from them, that an airport wd one day be out here, because the Thyme Bottom ridge runs like a guide from the sea/coast to the Sewell plantation – which became the now Grantley Adams airport Thyme (Tyme) Bottom is what in Ja we wd call a Free Village – the slaves of this plantation lived along this ridge and what we had here until a few weeks agao was their descendants – who turned to independent cattling (hence CowPasture) and blackbelly sheep herding, gardening, welding, seamstresses etc and a foreday morning horizon of cocks – all gone Since as is the custom here (law actually) they were not allowed freehold (x-slaves, free(d) blacks On good days, when we got here, there wd be up to sixty cows grazing on this serengetti. is amazing the effect of their rumination on the psyche of the place – hence, I realize now, WNLT Now they have gone, the place has become violent & vandal. This late January (late January rather than customary Christmastime/Passover December, because instead of classic harmattan, we had a long wet one – a kind of monswoom which, as perhaps you know, also brought those long cold winter spells to NAm and the UK & W Europe) instead of the duncks-pickers PICKING the duncks as is customary (the pasture is tough crabgrass, tuffy cuscus borders (still here) and hundreds of duncks trees – all now gone!) this year the pickers tear the limbs & limbo branches down from the trees – presaging the fires & tractor voiolence that wd soon follow (2) on xamination/protest, it is disc that we NOT in the flight-path no/build area after all – by the way, early in 1998, there was a first attack of tractors, up almost to our very doorstep. When we protested property, we were told that WE WERE SQUATTERS. Is the investigation into this that reveals that we not, in fact, after all, in the FLIGHT PATH and were flee to build - (3) but not so fast, my friend, no building on this land for you, because the Airport/Govt has decided that it wants this land. For what! at first, no Ansa; then ‘for agriculture’, then comes ‘for security’ (and this still pre 9/11) and finally comes the image of THE ROAD – even tho, as I demonstrated in the press, there are already two high-quality roads on EITHER SIDE OF THE PASTURE – one along Thyme Bottom, past the primary school there (St Bartholomew) at the end of the ridge; the other past my sister’s house and an increasing huge & wealthy many, along Wilcox Ridge No ansa to this – just that a decision has been taken and yu suppose to obey and leave while the growings good and you cd apply(?) for ‘compensation’ – like the squatters along the paradoXical heights of Thyme Bottom. Gazette. Eminent Domain. Emmerton etc etc etc (4) as a result of my campaign in the newspapers and among some of the writer/artists of the island, it was declared – not to me – not to me – but on public TV, that the Airport/Govt don’t kno what Professor [a loyalist radio caller-in, in the only moment my issue was mentioned in Bdos (2000) asked why Kamau Braffit think that because he's a poet [the accolade was sweet, but the hook wasn't] he think that he cd sit out there on CowPasta, tellin Guvvamant what it can do & not do. . .] Live here like that, after the Time of Salt not once but twice (Salt <1> you know – 1986 to the death in TTR; Salt <2> = conseQuential heart-stop, eye-bline, vertigo, but also SYCORAX and NAMSETOURA & MR/2) Hence the intensification & determination of my lonely struggle – that I will set fire to myself upon this belovèd blessèd pasture rather than be choked, strangle or cast out into the darkness of no vision no metaphors no Bussa Centre no restoration of the Library of IT/Alexandria (5) As if in response to my stand, from January 2005 – time of the wet harmattan, the spirits late over from Africa on the east wind – a major and frightening attack > CowPastor (CP) – lorries, tractors, catterpillars, earthscavators – trundling, wheeling, thumping, dumping on the pasture, past all hours into the dark, past midnights into the dawn and on & on – dust, fires, blindness – first filling up the lake of thorns, cruelling up the grass, replacing it with stone & garbage, cutting all the trees down into a now deserted graveyard wilderness The Airport/Govt deny this is ‘the road’ – the ‘road’ dem say, don’t even START yet!. But you promise us you’ll not fill up the Lake of Thorns. What Lake of Thorns? We’ve not filled in/filled up no pond or lake of thorns – we know its place & value! Is not WE full up the lake of thorns and then bring rockin-ingine to roll & blat it white & flat. Who so dem that YOU don’t kno is-who. We doant kno who is who And so the litany of MUM refusal starts & goes on & on & on. the tractors roll up to the well and w/in a scare’s breath of the BEARDED FIG-TREE – that gives the island here its very name – a rare endanger(ed) species, a MIRACLE upon this pasture – like Namsetoura The stones pile pointing now (23 Ap 05) towards the very heart, as Martin Carter says, of whe we dream (6) I’ve sent out an SOS to the world community of the word via the internet and the response has been xtraordinary – even in this dire, meeting strengths you didn’t kno you kno But nuffen so far from Barabadoes. All still MUM & unresponsive, so we don’t even kno – cant find out – who fill up/ fill in the pasture’s Lake of Thorns – protector of nature’s creatures secrets and our harbour against next season’s floods and the nxt and the nxt and the nxt. . . (Kamau)
———————————————– Thanks to Kamau, and to Nate Mackey, there is now a pdf file of The Namsetoura Papers here. Please note that this copy, although giving a readable text, only approximates the layout of the piece as it originally appeared in Mackey’s Hambone 17: for example, where there is a very large “Q” in this version, in the original is a silhouette of an aeroplane.) Time, distance, different computer systems and programs, missing fonts, make the typographical/graphical layout Kamau intended impossible to reproduce at the moment. If I find a way, I’ll replace the file and remove this warning. As the piece is central to an understanding of the present situation, I thought better something than nothing.
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May 17th.
Letter sent to Ricky Jordan at Nation News (Barbados) Tomás Graves
Dear Mr Jordan:
I would be very grateful if you would pass this letter on to the Editor for publication. Dear Sir
I feel I should comment upon Kamau Braithwaite’s battle to preseve his property and cultural project at CowPasture. I was born into a poet’s family (although my father, the late Robert Graves, was perhaps more widely known as author of I, Claudius) on the Mediterranean island of Majorca whose Tourism Board is now celebrating its centenary. That is to say that this is probably the oldest tourist destination in the world, receiving several million visitors a year. The smaller, neighbouring island of Ibiza, with the size and population of Barbados, comes a close second. Forty years ago, when my father was in his seventies, as Mr Braithwaite is now, he was also faced with the threat of development as the tourist activities had completely over-run the flat coastal areas and was seeking to exploit the highlands where he had made his home in 1929. With the support of other artists and well-known foreign visitors he began to contact the government to put a stop to savage development plans and helped get a protection order on the whole Majorcan mountain range, now considered “of scenic beauty”. Luckily the Spanish authorities took more notice of him than the Barbados government seem to be taking of Kamau Braithwaite, who is an internationally respected poet, even in here in Spain where he recently read at Barcelona’s cultural flagship, the art-nouveau Palau de la Música. Since my father and other poets and writers raised their voices, the central and local governments here have realised that the future of the islands’ economy lies in what is known as “sustainable tourism”– people prefer to visit and spend their money in a place where there is an obvious respect for the landscape and cultural heritage. The Barbados government could learn from the Majorcan experience before it is too late: although a lot of this island is spoiled by hotels and motorways, the unspoiled hinterland is now attracting a much more wealthy clientèle. What distinguishes Majorca from competing Mediterranean resorts like Turkey or Tunisia is the “complementary offer”: besides sun and sand, here there is a thriving artistic community, musical events and local crafts. This has, in turn, attracted people like Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Boris Becker, Sir Andrew Lloyd-Weber or Claudia Schiffer to settle here with the consequent media coverage that their presence entails. Mr Braithwaite’s plans for a cultural centre and library is the sort of project that could give Barbados a much higher profile internationally than any airport access road could; in the cut-throat competitiveness of the tourist industry, sunny beach resorts are two-a-penny. In the long term, it’s what lies behind the beaches that makes the difference; Mr Braithwaite is one of the island’s greatest assets and his project could be a windfall for Barbados. Another lesson to be learned from our experience here is that the authorities gain much more international prestige by respecting a living artist than exploiting a dead one. Yours,
Tomás Graves
—————————————————– May 12th.
from Kamau, still in Barcelona
continuing. . . (Kamau/the morning after a great – the 2000 audience seh so – b/day po reading at the Palau da Musica. Now they talkin about a ?big press conf here – we’ll see) From: Kamau Brathwaite Dear Cecile Clayton, Yrs is the second (only) voice – and most strong and strongly welcome, from the UWI, me having got in touch w/Brian Meeks and the Inst/ Centre Caribbean Thought of which I’m a founding member. You are going in the direction I’m thinking – this thing has to have legal and constitutional contestation and meaning. ‘Eminent Domain’ is being abused all over the world, but that don’t mean we have to accept it in the Caribbean, esp when I hear from so many of my North American students how their fathers are buying up land in the Caribbean for their rainy – or sunny! – days To cut straight to the point – who in our legal world can we turn to to help in this, get the kind of move you suggest going and organize it forward? Believe it or not, have not (yet) found a legal in Bajam willing & able to help me make tenants pay rent on my mother’s house they’ve been occupying (protected by other lawyers) for almost 100 years now – far less one willing to take this thing to the CCJ – or even to the Bajan courts for that matter in the first instance. When I asked Brian if he had any ideas, he said he’s have to think about it! So things might well be more deeply dire than we think The media campaign is on. in fact Tom Raworth, the Eng poet in Cambridge There is also the suggestion I’m getting here in Barcelona at the Po Fest I’m now at, that there shd be a long-list signed statement into the PM Barbados office. how does this strike you? any ideas ref implementation? (Kamau Brathwaite, w/nuff nuff respec)
——————————————- May 11th. from Kamau, from Marina, from Alex
This came in on my b/day here at the Barcelona International Po Festival. It made we weep. That there are some of you out there who see this as not only about KB5, which it very much is – my moment, my dream, my effort of contribution – but it goes further farward into our future & conscience – that if we don’t make a stand now against indifference, neglect & materialism, we’ll have little or nothing for our children and theirs to write from HOME about. Thank you to all – inc the poet from Serbia, who sent greetings to this morning’s rehearsal Kamau
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Kamau, I just received the Email below with attachments. (If you can’t open the first attachment, try the second). You can forward to Tom or not, as you see fit. marina
————— From: Alex Cumberbatch Dear Messrs Adonijah & Jordan: Please find attached an article I have written regarding Kamau Brathwaite and CowPastor entitled ‘Kamau Brathwaite’s Lyrical Endgame’. I would appreciate it if you could run it in your Friday edition. Sincerely, Alex Cumberbatch
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Kamau Brathwaite’s Lyrical Endgame In a letter that has now found its way on to the Internet, poet and NYU lecturer Kamau Brathwaite writing of his homeland Barbados laments: ‘I cannot even die here now. no strength to even burn myself upon this pasture as I want to do.’ The emotionally charged letter is a response to the way he is being treated by authorities in the matter concerning the construction of a road in the vicinity of his property. It so alarmed the poet’s many friends and well-wishers around the world that a campaign of support has got underway through a website called Save CowPastor set up on the initiative of Tom Raworth, a poet residing in Cambridge. Brathwaite conscientiously objects to the negative ecological, social and cultural consequences of the road; for in building the road, the authorities have unleashed the moral equivalent of Sauron’s menacing army of orcs in the Tolkien trilogy — disrupting a simpler way of life, uprooting trees, ravaging some of the last grazing lands for livestock (many of which have perished), preventing the 75-year-old poet from establishing a sanctuary for the arts at the location, possibly even desecrating an African burial ground. This affair brings to mind that once fashionable phrase ‘the death of the author’ — the title of Roland Barthes’ landmark essay—perhaps not in the nuanced way intended by its now quite dead author. I was thinking more of the stark difference between the way the state treats a living author and a dead one—that is, the way the state can antagonise, or even persecute, an independent-minded intellectual, only to exploit his memory as a national figure in death. It seems that dying is sometimes the only thing you can do to advance your career as a poet. This may account for the disproportionate number of suicides among poets compared with every other type of artist. So I ask: What is the likely scenario when the author in question dies? At that time, I imagine, the authorities who have done everything to thwart the establishment of Brathwaite’s cultural institute will with every cliché they can think of ceremonially and tearfully laud his long and productive literary life. Finally, he will be officially acknowledged, his life’s work symbolically claimed as a national treasure, and his name used for all kinds of purposes. In time, he might have a school, an auditorium, a roundabout, or better yet a new airport road named after him. Even then, his books might hardly be read in his native land and his archive neglected or forever lost, a thing of dreams as mythical as Shangri-la or Kubla’s pleasure-dome. Poets are well accustomed to dealing with ambiguities in their work — but the contradiction between what is being done now and what will inevitably be said when Kamau Brathwaite goes on his further journey will hardly qualify as paradox, but be revealing of a far more uncomplicated dishonesty. In his writings, Brathwaite has shown himself to be a loyal foot soldier in the cause of the underprivileged denizens of the Third World. He has been, moreover, a tireless cultural ambassador abroad, personalising the thematics of economic disparity, social displacement and cultural diaspora through his sustained and inventive use of highly musical Barbadian and Caribbean vernaculars. Like Basho and many other poets of world renown, Brathwaite is an indefatigable traveller and most emphatically a poet of place, a landscape artist whose painterly eye illuminates the specific sites of his journey: Brown’s Beach, Cattlewash, Cambridge, Ghana, Kingston, New York and now CowPastor. Lee Jenkins and Alex Davis of University College Cork, wrote recently on the Save CowPastor website: ‘We know Barbados because of and through his poetry, using his words as our map to the island.’ Brathwaite’s aesthetic, however, clashes with the official touristic image of the island, which has been sold abroad for generations. Some years ago, one of the New York dailies headlined an interview with Brathwaite with his words ‘hotels squatting on my metaphors.’ That official image of the island is not only based on largely false assumptions about the expectations of tourists, but it is a continuation of the myth of exotic places that was one of the most potent hallucinations of colonial psychosis. At the very least, Brathwaite is owed a very public apology for being pushed so far to the edge of thinking and doing the unthinkable. Adorno famously wrote that ‘after Auschwitz it is barbaric to write poetry.’ But poetry, if it serves any profound purpose, is a way of dealing with such devastation. Apparently robust and still enormously productive, Brathwaite remains a missed opportunity for Barbados. In the active years that he has left, the poet seems determined to make his final contribution. There is probably no more credible resource person in matters of culture; and his extensive archive could still be made use of as a significant point in a powerful matrix for the development of the diverse Caribbean arts communities—that is, if the authorities were interested in anything other than cynical patronage of the arts.
**************************************************************** May 9th.
from Kamau; reply to email
From: Kamau Brathwaite aJa,
my faith, even at this ?late stage, is this – and it comes from yr ideas, via i suspect Mia and some landscape artist you kno - that CP does not have to be handled in the brutal way it now is - a) there shd be discussion and sharing of plans, needs, ideas; leading to, surely, b) a more humane approach to ‘development’. it’s surely 19th century – or at least falluja mentality, which stems from that century + shock & awe – to have tractors & bulldozers tearing up god’s landscape, pushing people around & about as if they don’t matter – make them feel they don’t matter (this psycho leading to the ‘ease’ of the concentration camps) (c) there must be digital-style models – neater, accessible, inclusive and surely in a specially beautiful and delicate ilann ecology such as ours, we need to rise to the challenge of 21st century construction and deconstruction models – this alone wd bring more recognition of pathfinding to Barbadoes d) the use of grace & style & poetry, coral/choral & sea-sense, rather than brutalism pl copy this verbatim for me to the PM. I live to feel he will lissen Kamau ————————————– from Kamau; his replies to questions from Stephen Alleyne, PROBE newspaper
9 May 05 Dear Stephen, Have numb yr Qs 1-9 and will ans (>) viz - (1) Can’t get hold of your wife all I try. Sorry you didn’t get thru to Beverley before she left for London. Now here (2) Don’t know if you’ve seen those emails yet, but one has indicated that you have said that you’re considering ‘burning yourself on the property’. Is there any truth in this? If so, could you explain what you mean? this is part of a very serious discourse of the future that you, and all of us, like the people in Lamming’s Season of Adventure, will have to learn (3) Has the Min. of Housing, PM, your rep. Reginald Farley or any other gov’t min been in contact with you recently? No contact /at any time (4) Has any one from the airport project been in contact with you? Yes. twice since 1998 and at my reQ. EnQs to the wide circle of all concerned ref the new postJan 05 developments have been met w/silence, ‘too busy/in a meeting’, denial, aggression, polite hostility – bottom-line: SHUT-OUT. What i call MUM. You can ck w/ Ricky Jordan @the Nation (5) Have you written any letters to the powers that be? If so, can I have any copies? The early hardcopy letts (1998-2000 not w/me here and since then have i employed the services of an attorney. However ATTACH see a typical letter to, in this case, the Legal Officer, Min of Housing & Lands. There’s been no reply (6) Are there any houses close to yours which have been served notices? There are 3 other houses/residents on the CowPasture ridge. Might be a good PROBE/ reportage move to make contact w/them for their stor/ies. As far as I kno, all these years, NO one has sought speak w/them, esp since is only my voice speaking (7)Was a notice ever served on you? If so, when? I’ll like to have a copies of any notices. No direct Notice, but my attention was brought to a Gazette Notice in the newspapers issued 25 Mar 1999 under the Land Acquisition Act, Cap 228, Plan no 221/99. The various schedules of this Notice/Order appear in my NAMSETOURA PAPERS, Hambone 17 (2000), which you shd try obtain from Hambone. It might also be up on one or other of the websites dealing w/this CP Crisis. eg the CaribArtsNewsletter or get in touch marinataitt@hotmail.com (8) I know the property is invaluable and irreplaceable, but have you ever considered what would be adequate compensation for any loss? No (9) When next will you be in Bim? As soon as possible (10) Any plans for a protest – marches, petitions? No. But wd it not be fabulous if, say, yr newspaper, wd org an EMMERTON 2005 Concert, headlined by the Mighty Gabby, the creator of Emmerton, on CowPasture? ————————————– from Kamau; his “lett of mine to the Legal Officer, Min of Housing & Lands – the person responsible for drafting those eViction notices. No reply of course” from 2002 New York New York The Chief Legal Officer 6 June 2002 Dear Madam, I am referring to yr last three most recent letters of which I’m in receipt – 18 July 2001, 21 March 2002, 5 May 2002 – ref the proposed Land Acquisition involving my property on CowPasture ref Road Improvement connected w/the X- pansion of the Grantley Adams International Airport My position on this matter is total & outraged objection. My position is that my rights as a resident as a citizen and as a human being are being violated not only by Government’s action in this matter & manner, but by Government’s (and the Airport Authority’s) attitude. I have noticed that many citizens of Barbados have been expropriated & uprooted from our homes & land on the agendas of road improvement, need for government acquisition (Developmental Projects etc) etc etc and that there has been no or little discussion w/the persons involved and many of the people involved have not had the means or the knowledge or the privilege or the status (access to legal aid or Government or the ears of the Press); so that over the years it is being taken for granted that citizens can be uprooted from their homes & sites of life & livelihood (shades of EMMERTON w/out discussion or w/inadequate (sometimes vague & confused/confusing discussion as to why they are being uprooted & removed. Research into the history of these developments wd, I am sure, reveal awesome violations of human rights and indeed, as a consequence of what has been happening to me & to others I know and have observed, I shall be making moves to institute just such a study. But right now am I replying to yr letters listed above. From the moment, having acquired the property at CowPasture in Ap 1997, we came to live there in the house called ‘CowPastor’ in June 97, have we been met & harassed by a series of conflicting pressures against our being there. (1) First we were informed (cJan 1998) that we cd not xtend the building -that no new building cd be undertaken on CowPasture – because of complaints from aircraft coming in to land, that their navigation instrumentation was being somehow affected by, one assumes, the presence of the (very few) buildings on the pasture. Note the lack of documentation on these restrictions. No letter of restriction. no letter of xplanation. so that we don’t really know that aircraft have in fact complained about our presence. Nor is there any published or shared information ref the problems of incoming aircraft at Grantley Adams Airport and how these ?difficulties compare w/other (similar) airport(s); and no scientific evidence that the few houses on CowPasture and the larger number along the ridge at Thyme Bottom, do, in fact, affect aircraft navigation. (2) cJune 1998, a tractor arrived on our property & began digging operations, w/operatives walking all over the place making measurements. When I objected to this trespassing, I was rudely informed that in fact the land that I have bought & have title deed for, is not in fact mine but Government/Air-port land (again the vagueness & confusion) and that we were in fact SQUATTING on CowPasture. (3) It took a long time for the Lands Dept to straighten this out & confirm that the land I have bought is in fact mine! – problem of proper & accurate Government record keeping even in matters as crucial as real estate! But cMay/June 1999 it was finally confirmed (it took one whole year!) that the land is mine; and it was also allowed that our house was not in fact w/in the ‘airflight limitation zone’ – and that technically therefore there was nothing to prevent us from xtending CowPastor towards the project we had in mind – the building of a library & space for my own archives and then the continuation of these facilities into a BUSSA (Research Meditation & Performance) INSTITUTE of BAJAN ARTS & CULTURE – the site at CowPastor & Cow Pasture being ideal almost perfect environmentally for such an enterprise, in addition to being v/probably part of a slave burial ground which, if the case, shd certainly not be desecrated by ‘road improvements’. (4) in July 1999 however, we are informed by an official of the Ministry of Housing & Lands, who came to see us at CowPastor, that altho the house was outside the flight-path limits, we wd still not be able to build further – indeed, we wd not be able to remain on CowPasture at all, since there were plans to acquire all the private property on CowPasture for ‘airport extension & improvement’. (5) July 1999-July 2000 there are a series of confusing & conflicting statements as to Govt/Airport intentions (a) that the airport was ‘xpanding’ (b) the airport is ‘improving’ (c) the Airport was being pressured internationally for more security not only ref flight-path & w/respect to access. This last argument is the one that was apparently settled on by mid2000 when it was claimed that all my property at CowPasture wd have to be acquired by Government in order to build a new access road across the pasture since, it seems, the road that runs at present along the airport’s western perimeter, from Pilgrim Place (the Gas Station) to the junction that leads downhill to SilverSands (left) and Wilcox Ridge/Gibbons (right), is to be closed (for security reasons) and a new road – incorrectly being called in Govt correspondence ‘road improvement’ – cut into CowPasture to take all the (increasingly heavy) traffic that at present uses the western perimeter airport road. I have three comments on this: (1) there is no need for a new road, since all traffic to the south of the airport can get to Town using the xisting Wilcox road to Thornbury Hill; and the traffic that wd come from Pilgrim Place cd go turn right along the already xisting Thyme Bottom road and getting out to Providence & then to Oistins or the highway to B’town. In other words, it is not only inaccurate & deliberately misleading to talk of road improvement, but it is absolutely not necessary to cut a new road into CowPasture which will destroy one more one last pristine pasture in our small island; which will uproot me (leaving me no place to retire to) and my plans to contribute to Barbados’ cultural development w/the Bussa Institute. (2) it is amazing that a whole community is being uprooted from its heart at Thyme Bottom/CowPasture on the ground – w/out evidence – that our pres- ence constitutes a hazard to incoming aircraft (and I assume a hazard to ourselves if there shd be an aircrash – tho this has nvr been mentioned or discussed!) but at the same time a new HIGHWAY, masqueraded as ‘road improvement’ is to be cut into this precious pasture environment and we are xpected to believe that the increasingly heavy traffic that such a road will bear (not to speak of moments of traffic accidents etc) will not, after all, affect incoming aircraft and will not affect the ‘security’ of the airport!! (3) under the confusion & obfuscation of evidence & direction – the locking citizens out from what is going on – there is the impression being built up by more & more of us in the area under threat, that there might be plans for our area quite other or quite in addition to what has so far been confusingly declared. That we might be being cleared off CowPasture in order to make room for some other enterprise or arrangement? This of course might not be so, but in the absence of transparency & information, rumour (& ill humour) gains more & more credence & circulation. The whole thing is, as I say, an insult to me as citizen & human person and to all Bajans so suffering under this kind of hammer. No discussion. No courtesy. No consideration no respect. No presentation of evidence. One is just xpected to get up & get off on say-so w/out ever being told why; without ever being made party to whatever is being planned on one’s own Emmerton. The three recent letters from you I refer to contain the ff conflicting information: 2001-07-18 speaks of acquiring ‘approximately 1001 square meters’. No map. No indication of where shall we cut this pound of flesh 21 March 2000 speaks of acquiring ‘approximately 100 square metres’. This figure is handwritten in a space in the typescript. Again no map or indication as to where this cut 2002-05-13 ‘the Crown will now be acquiring 1114.0 square meters’. Again no Map or indication altho I seem to recall a statement from a person at the Airport Authority on a TV programme mid2000, stating that this proposed road, tho not after all engulfing our house, will be built w/in a very few feet of it and it is my impression that we are xpected to be satisfied w/what was being then called this ‘compromise’ To sum up, then, I repeat: that I am totally opposed to any incursion by Government on CowPasture & on my property of CowPastor on the ground that this incursion is unnecessary and an arrogant invasion of my rights & livelihood and plans to contribute to the islands future. It is also a violation of human rights and a terrible example how government continues to treat its citizens and is allowed by its citizens, for a variety of reasons, to do so. I am here the voice, even if alone, of objection against all this Kamau Brathwaite
————————————– May 8th.
Message from Kamau to Marina Taitt, followed by some more CowPastor photographs. Kamau notes that the main damage took place between the end of January and the middle of April. London Sat 7 May 05 Dear Marina, This is another lett freeze-up JUSS before it SENN. Was thankin you for the Sue Bain (former HEAD ConserVation) init an tellin you that Penny Hynam (former HEAD Nat Trust) & Janice Whittle (QP Gallery) visit Bev & CP a few days agrow Was also sayin that I realizin more & more (wellfull thinkin?) – yu kno it all along, if not yu wdn’t be here in these frontlines now – that what we tryin for here is helpin Bdos (???!!!/hopefully!!!???) into DEMOCRACY (cf Lil Inglannness) and inta the 21st cent – the two bein (again hopefully) connXted - so that what we want now are not only FORMERS, but the FARMERS & FARTHERS/FARTHERERS – dem who now in POWA. for instan, the now supportive Penny (an I hope she doan take this wrong way, but that’s how it as/is), when HEAD NatTruss, treat my phocall w/askance (she might not even remember this) when I raise the Q of Round House (on Bay St) whe I born & grow up (Browns beach, all the early poems, BOY & THE SEA, MO PO, SUN PO, tings in DS esp SALVAGES wdnt have been possible, BARABAJANPOEMS, GOLOKWATI. . .) being given a National Marker (one of those round Blue Stamps – which wd protec it also from DEVELOPERS’ bulldozers) becau of its AGE (the house goes back into the early 19th cent if not earlier – (they cd do the research!); and its (therefore) unique ARCHITEXTURE; and becau (I didn’t at the time have the temerity say this to her – but after all!) KB WAS BORN THERE – similar to Conrad an Killroy an the sameway dem spenn millions on the GEO WASHINGTON SLEEP HERE HOUSE further up Bay St. . . Will Sue & Penny and their successors now/soon CONNX that we- heritage & conservAtion begins w/the god of small things like poor people chattel houses and cowpastures, not hotels sQuatting on my metaphors; cowdozing not bulldozers. . . perhaps we ought to get in touch w/Arundhati Roy. . .indeed we shd!. . .any ellegbuas out there for this?
————————————– May 7th.
Here is a photograph of CowPastor about a month ago showing the filled-in Lake of Thorns sent by Kamau this morning (with thanks to gwenlyn29@netscape.net)
————————————– May 6th.
for Adonijah’s piece The Cow Pasture Capers in today’s Barbados’ Weekend Nation mentioned in the previous message, click here. In case the link dies, I’ve put a mirror of the text here. forwarded by Jordan Stempleman
From: “Ricardo Jordan” rickyjordan @nationnews.com”> Okay, other journalists are also sensitising the public as well. My colleague Adonijah mentioned it in his column today in the Weekend Nation.
————————————– from Kamau, in London
……. So far, after all our efforts, there has not been a single word/response from Govt/Airport Authority, and the rumour grows louder that whats going on at CP is not yet the ROAD but a ?new/old initiative of which the road is PART – a golf course for the Airport’s tourists. To have created so much havoc, thrown off so many people from the pasture, destroyed a rare environment, thwarted my perhaps last opp to find a hoom in Barbados and set up that Institute – all for a secret golf course! it makes you want to turn to ‘sterner’ other measures – at least you can see how these things come about – not that we have that kind of psychology/raw material in ‘Paradise’
————————————–
May 5th.
from Jordan Stempleman
————————————–
April 29th.
See Professor Tim Reiss’ eloquent letter from January 2000 on this matter linked to from “Suggestions” in the right-hand menu.
————————————– a KB reply to a warrior who is worried that the sound of the planes flying over CP to the airport might suggest that CP, after all, is not the best place for a oumfô Salvation Salvages Greetings Robert, Thanks for sharing me into this correspondence. ref Esther’s point about the PLANES. Anybody who has been to CowPastor – before the destruction – wd have been amazed – and said so – about how quiet the planes were going in to the airport – the CONCORDE most silent of all!! is only since the cows have gone, the rumination gone, the lake of thorns filled in, and all the grass cruelled from the pasture and replaced w/STONES, that the place has become a CANYON, and you can NOW hear the aircraft engines ticking and roaring by (tho still not terrible & freQuent enuff to take it intolerable)* the point i’m making is that COWPASTOR was – and i have faith to say STILL IS* – the perfect place for my Bussa Institute and my Library of Alexandria. it is also the place blessed by the presence of NAMSETOURA* which those millions who believe in LOURDES wd no doubt appreciate and which I hope one day our Caribbean poets & artists will also (ff by our Caribbean people – perhaps the PEOPLE MIGHT WELL PRECEDE THE ARTISTS IN THIS – we shall see) - *the unique & miraculous appear of a slave ancestor on CowPasture – don’t forget this is where the Wilcox and Gibbons plantations were/are; and at CowPastor there are still two wells, part of a plantation wall, a small outhouse, a set of trees which we know slaves grew as sacred signs to their dead – markings of unaccommodated* graveyards (*see Shakespeare & the Yoruba ifa on this) the bearded fig-tree (how strange that there shd be one so quiet, almost hidden until now on this pasture – now THREATENED by the destruction – which by the way, the AIRPORT says is NOT PART OF THE GOVT AIRPORT XPANSION – this los barbathos is also a sign of these presences We also have to recognize that NEWTON*, the only place in Barbados – is this not a SCANDAL A CRIME AND VERY BAD OMEN A VERY BAD OMEN! – *where slave remains have so far been found – is just over the hill from CP and is part of the same geological scroll and i wd say that CP, with its water source – that pond – those large wells – and its VIEW OF THE SEA – is much more likely than Newton, to have been a centre of slave religions and ceremonies (or the two perhaps connected – Handler thinks he found a slave priestess at Newton – and i kno now that the spirits of GOLOKWATI to who(m) i was introduced in Ghana and again at Limuru in Kenya by Ngugi wa Thiong’o grandmother, have led me to this place and to the vision of Namsetoura unlike most people in Bajam at the moment, therefore, I have no intention of moving – the bulldozers will have to cover is over – even tho my dream vision is being apparently perhaps ‘realistically’ destroyed by unvision materialism. but is my instinct that w/the right pressure on those doing this even now, that this whole destruction cd be reversed – the grass allowed to grow back, the pond DUG BACK UP unfortunately those dozen cowherders who were here will surely not come back – they have better housing for one, they now have land titles whe before they were sQuatters – and i suspect that the spirit of VANDAL which these tractors have wrought, will only bring into this sacred space, a new vandalism & butchery which will jell well w/the present wanton destruction, the loss of green (trees grass duncks & birds), the new sound of the planes, and the FLOODS which will surely weep across, Oya forbid, this coral landscape now that the lake has been assassinated but that’s the material realistic scenario – it is not the way of the buddha – what the ancestors say – and all-yu really have to read Namsetoura and the new Psalms I’m writing = that one stele of correction – one move to undo a wrong – (see what stem-cell is doing!) – will be answered w/the return of grass, the return of the harmattan & its birds and with them the wonderful if slow return of the trees – their very SLOWNESS the wonder of nature’s eternity – and so – i say – the return of the possibility of CowPastor – a something that with the help of YOUR strength & spirits, cd be added to the magical realism of Barabadoes Kamau/in love & assurance NOTE: NAMSETOURA. While making the photographic record referred to in the extract below from his Lecture, Kamau tried to photograph a spider and web. First the lens of the camera shattered; a second lens was tried and the lenshood became too hot to hold. Finally with his wife’s Box Brownie he took three photographs. In the first the web is visible; in the second there are distortions of image and colour: “a rip in the space/time continuum”, while the third shows what seems to be a faint but clear portrait of a black woman, the right eye a disk of pure white. Kamau believes there was a slave burial on this spot, April 27th.
I spoke briefly to Kamau after his Judith Wilson Lecture in Cambridge yesterday. He said the information in the Barbados Daily Nation is the most accurate, to be used for any media contact. The situation is otherwise unchanged and he had no particular suggestion of what might best help. I’ve transcribed part of his lecture, below, for more background. The three events in Jamaica to which he refers were (a) the sudden death of his first wife, (b) the destruction caused by hurricane Gilbert in 1988 and (c) his being shot in the back of the head by intruders. … the third palenque I found, which is in my home island of Barbados. In 1998 I find the place I been always looking for in my dream it is on one of the… Barbados has a series of beaches rising from the sea… the coral formation… and where I find is the ninth beach from the southern shore… and this place is like a Serengeti… it’s a pasture… Serengeti because there are cows that ruminate on the pasture… on a good day you can find 60 cows there… and of course I began to learn so much… I should tell you I took three years off – after those three incidents (Jamaica), after the gunman shot me I felt it would be unwise to continue living in that space so I moved to New York where I teach at NYU… and it was during the time at NYU that I returned to Barbados and find this obvious palenque and… understand it is not a mountain palenque, it’s not 3000 feet up, it is on this coastal plain… on the south of the island. The birds, the egrets, the dunks trees… I began to learn things I never knew… the dunks trees have little berries… when the wind blows from Africa these trees begin to blossom… the berries are very popular… they’re free of course… people come to pick these things… and I discovered how this tree behaves… when it is full of berries it actually casts its branches down to earth so you can pick them easily, and after the picking the tree goes back up and elevates itself into the sky. I began to understand how chlorophyll twinkles through the leaves of a tree and how that chlorophyll links in my head to the path created by the bullet… in other words… can I say this? I began to have a conversation with the trees… I began to get messages from trees… and in fact it became so alarming that I had to go to the doctor because the trees were encouraging me to become immobile. I began to feel it was not necessary to move… that we could communicate through whatever it is they use… telepathy… I began to understand birds as I never did before, on this pasture… and I understand what it means to be at peace. Within three days however of discovering this pasture the government drove in a car up to my house to tell me no no no my friend you can not live here… why? The first excuse they gave is because we’re near the airport and the pilots they say are complaining about houses on the pasture distracting them from flying… this was news to me… I’ve flown over San Francisco… with all the technology the pilots have… they have to train to fly blindfolded… but they said these maroon houses on this pasture were distracting the airplanes so we weren’t allowed to build… I discovered this because I went to the town planning people, which I had to do… now that I had come and found this palenque I wanted to build a Cultural Institute… I wanted to give something back to Barbados… I wanted people to be able to come there… to build some small simple chattel houses for artists and writers… this strip of land I have, about half a mile, I could also build a space for my library and archives which had been scattered in the hurricane Gilbert… I was happy there too, with my new queen. So in that sense it was the future ambition… so… knock knock knock… you can’t stay here, they said. First of all because of the flight path. Secondly they said, after that excuse was laughed out of court, they said they wanted to create a space for “agriculture” on this pasture. Now this is what we call in Barbados rab land… it is stone, thin soil, and shrubs, dunks trees, eucalyptus trees and cows… it is pasture, not agriculture… so they were telling lies about that.. o.k. … so that disappeared after a time. And then we began to see golfballs appearing on the pasture… for just across, there is a famous course… but no-one is saying a word about it. We used to be “honoured” by having the Concorde fly to Barbados… and once the Minister of Housing and Lands said because of the Concorde and possible future tourism in Barbados the airport was going to be expanded… because, and this was significant, people who came on Concorde could fly into Barbados, play a round of golf, and get back to London in time for the six o’clock news. When Concorde went, this plan seemed to have slipped as well. but that’s not the end of the story. The Concorde has disappeared and things were silent for a while… I decided that since it seemed I would have to go that I would make a photographic record of that pasture… I started… we have the old plantation well… we have a pond… which in the dry season is full of thorns and mangroves… in the wet season full of water that comes from the hills and saves the place from flooding. They have now filled the pond in… this is part of what is happening even as I speak… There are trees… this is pasture… but there is a clump of trees behind my house… but these are not ordinary trees… these trees are those that African slaves always planted… for purposes of ritual observation… lignum vitae, dwarf cactus, eucalyptus, breadfruit… these are the trees. And the bulldozers work six feet from my door. April 24th.
Some interesting suggestions today in a message from Alex Cumberbatch, based on an analysis with which (from the little I know) I agree. And thanks to Alex here is a link to the story as reported in the Barbados Daily Nation on April 3rd.
Should it go offline there’s a mirror here
April 22nd.
A message from Kamau this afternoon saying that he will be in Cambridge in four days (on Tuesday 26th.) for a lecture. I hope to see him then and get up-to-date information both on the situation and on what is being (and can be) done. April 21st.
I am waiting to hear from Kamau. When and if I do, I’ll post his message here. I’ve asked him for a short description of what is actually happening (and how it began), thinking that would be useful to contact media with. I’ve also asked him for the name of the person, or the Government Department, responsible for the present situation: with the thought of directing letters (rather than an online petition that really goes nowhere) there. For anyone with Skype, or a free phone-card, you might check out the Barbados Government Information site. There is only one general email address, but a full listing of names, telephone numbers, and addresses. A simple request for information on the matter might stir things, should it come from the United States, or Europe. (later) This seems to be the Permanent Secretary Kamau mentions being unable to make an appointment with:
Mr. Lionel Nurse Telephone: 467-5700
I’ve also written to The Voice (“Britain’s Best Black Newspaper”) to see if they’ll pick up the story.
Date: 27 May 2005 16:25:29 BDT
To: Kamau Brathwaite
Subject: Re: Hola from the Rock
Angi
Date: Friday, May 13, 2005 4:14 pm
Subject: Re: Hola from the Rock
From: Angelique Brathwaite
Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 2:24 pm
Subject: Re: Rae: can you see a way to help?
Angie
From: Angelique Brathwaite
Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 7:56 am
Subject: Re: can you see a way to help?
Angie
2
Date: 27 May 2005 17:01:22 BDT
To: Kamau Brathwaite
Subject: Re: Savin Barabados
Reply-To: rickyjordan@nationnews.com
. . .
From: “M.NourbeSe Philip” nourbese@sympatico.ca
Date: Friday, May 20, 2005 8:55 am
Subject: from m. nourbeSe philip
Vladimir Mayakovsky.
email: nourbese@nourbese.com
website: www.nourbese.com
Date: 22 May 2005 12:48:11 BDT
To: kb5@nyu.edu
Subject: Re: Cow Pastor
My dear Janice,
. . .
Braffit goin on about – its been decided – !!agreed on w/him!! – that since he don’t want to move from CowPastor (CowPastor is the name of the oumfô-palenque on CowPasture), he cd/remain on CowPasture, with road, as it turns out, planned to run like a lasso or hangman round the strangle neck of the hoom
tomasgraves@ya.com 6:48 pm (11 hours ago)
Date: 12 May 2005 10:44:50 BDT
To: cecile.clayton@uwimona.edu.jm
Subject: Saving CowPastor + CowPasture
To: adonijah @nationnews.com,rickyjordan @nationnews.com
CC:
Subject: Kamau Brathwaite
Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 00:13:57 +0800
Date: 9 May 2005 17:45:46 BDT
To: ajeland@promotech.net
Subject: CP
KB/Stephen Alleyne, Editor, PROBE Newspaper, Btown,
Bdos
Altho I have been since told – on TV!/2000 – that there has been an alteration of this declaration – to the effect that KB5 will not have to move (but will have to accept the noose of a ROAD around his house & plans for his Bussa Centre), this ?modification has not so far, as far as i kno, been Gazetted
Legal Unit
Ministry of Housing and Lands
Frank Walcott Building
Culloden Road, St Michael
Barbados
‘Without struggle there is no progress’ – Frederick Douglass; ‘Without justice there can be no progress’ – Mark Twain
(Kamau)
The young Bearded Fig Tree – endangered – a symbol of Los Barbados itself – sacred to Amerindians and enslaved Africans – a miracle here on this pasture. The tractors (end Ap 05) have paused NEXT to this tree, perhaps because of the quiet sound of our protest. But we still don’t kno WHO is destroying god’s nature and what happens next
(Kamau)
Sleeping piles of cut grass nr CowPastor – CowPasture as it was, as it shd be, as it cd still be
(Kamau)
Foregrounding destruction, w/CowPastor showing now between the remaining trees. Since this picture (midMarch) CowPastor now stands naked and xposed, with stones, gravel and garbage rolling up to w/in feet of the house
(Kamau)
To: “Jordan Stempleman”
Subject: re: Kamau Brathwaite
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 14:22:24 -0400
May 2
Counterpunch has linked the site on their webpage (see website of the weekend in left-hand column)
Readers should check “Suggestions” regularly, as often snippets of news are embedded in more general emails
or Is who Braffit tink he is
Ministry of Housing, Lands and the Environment
N H C Complex,
Country Road,
St.Michael,
Barbados
