AUTHOR ROSALIENE BACCHUS


Reaching minds and hearts through storytelling



POEM "A REPORT TO THE ACADEMY: THE MODERN CARIBBEAN" BY TRINIDADIAN POET RAYMOND RAMCHARITAR



RAYMOND RAMCHARITAR, born in Trinidad, is a journalist, poet, fiction writer, and cultural critic. He studied at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine in Trinidad & Tobago, where he earned three degrees: Bachelor of Science in Economics (1991), Masters in Literatures in English (2002), and Doctorate in Cultural History (2007).

He was awarded the following overseas fellowships: Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Warwick University, UK (2008) Visiting Scholar at New College, University of Toronto, Canada (2010) and Poetry Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Middlebury College, Vermont, USA (2011).

His poetry collections include: American Fall (2007), Here (2013), and Modern, Age, &c (2020).

Working as a journalist since 1991, Ramcharitar has written a controversial and provocative study of the deficiencies of the Trinidadian press, Breaking the News: Media & Culture in Trinidad (2005). His first short story collection, Island Quintet: Five Stories, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book in 2010. His latest book, published in 2021, is A History of Creole Trinidad, 1956-2010.

He currently lives in Trinidad where he is a communications consultant for the ANSA McAL Group of Companies.


Author Photo featured on his Author's Page at Peepal Tree Press.


PART 1: A REPORT TO THE ACADEMY: THE MODERN CARIBBEAN BY RAYMOND RAMCHARITAR



Noble Sirs, you do not know me, and I won't
bore you with a résumé I'll just say,
in case any of you should take affront
at this intrusion to your college, to allay:
I am what's left the remains of the days:
Eschaton: after the chains and whips,
a cheerful, indigenous apocalypse.

You might well ask, but why now? Or, what's new?
The simplest answer is most morbid, but apt:
you're all departed and dead, the sea's still blue
and the brutes in charge, and those they rule, are enrapt
on tiny azure screens, and still entrapped
by Mephistopheles, in binary code,
barrelling down that ancient, slippery road.

It's an unnerving moment in these islands –
which Vidia, had he stayed, might have called
An area of darkness, on whose tepid sands
Derek found himself stunned, his metres stalled,
borrowing Spoiler's lament: I wanna fall,
to echo Vidia's dismay at these slave ports –
these islands, these imperial afterthoughts.





PART 1: A REPORT TO THE ACADEMY: THE MODERN CARIBBEAN continued



Sir Arthur, economic development

is an old joke among the bureaucracy

in the IMF's semi-serious department.

"Consociational democracy"

has been deposed by a grinning adhocracy,

by the Sinons who ascend from the masses,

cheered on by the jawbones of grobian asses.


Derek, Vidia, poetry and prose

these days are "spoken words" and Facebook screeds,

not like the days when men could come to blows

over taunts like "Mimic Man," the dubious deeds

of heroic Shabine, or jousts on donkey steeds.

Your deaths brought murmurs of spurned prophets, but lacked

the traction of Olatunji on X Factor.







SOURCE: Modern, Age, &c, poetry collection by Raymond Ramcharitar, Peepal Tree Press, Leeds, UK, 2020.