Literary icon, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, will be celebrated in a webinar on what would have been his 91st birthday.
The National Cultural Foundation (NCF) is hosting Words & Wisdom – Celebrating Kamau’s Birthday, via Zoom on Tuesday, May 11 at 5:30 p.m. The session will also be broadcast live on the NCF’s Facebook page.
It has assembled some of the country’s finest literary and spoken word artists to read two of his pieces The Dust and Rites. The line-up includes: Winston Farrell, Jack Lewis, Cyndi Celeste, Ayesha Gibson-Gill, Matthew Murrell, Janine White, Irijah Nyzingha Alkins and T’afari Steede.
There will also be a panel discussion reflecting on his cultural influence featuring Poet Laureate Esther Phillips, Dr Yvonne Weekes, Robert Edison Sandiford and Adrian Green.
Professor Brathwaite’s work is known for innovating the “creolisation” of language. He was integral in helping to forge a sense of local and regional identity through the embrace and use of native language.
Brathwaite coined the term “nation language”, which he defined as “the kind of English spoken by the people who were brought to the Caribbean, not the official English now, but the language of slaves and labourers, the servants who were brought in”.
He died on February 4, 2020. (PR)
