For readers of West Indian literature, a study of Eric Roach requires no justification. He is the most significant poet in the English-speaking Caribbean between Claude McKay (who spent nearly all of his life abroad) and Derek Walcott. Roach would be celebrated as the leading poet of Trinidad, were he not overshadowed by Walcott, a native of Saint Lucia strongly associated with Trinidad. Roach began publishing in the late 1930s and continued, with a few interruptions, until 1974, the year of his suicide. His career thus spans an extraordinary period of Anglophone Caribbean history, from the era of violent strikes that led to the formation of most of the region’s political parties, through the process of decolonization, the founding and subsequent failure of the Federation of the West Indies (1958-1962), and the coming of Independence in the 1960s. This book presents a critical analysis of all of Roach’s published poetry, but it presents that interpretation as part of a broader study of the relations between his poetic activity, the political events he experienced (especially West Indian Federation, Independence, the Black Power movement, the February Revolution of 1970 Trinidad), and the seminal debates about art and culture in which he participated. Laurence Breiner establishes Roach’s particular importance in his thinking about the relation between poetry as ‘High Art’ and the products and elements of popular culture, and his sense of the place of the folk, their language and customs in Caribbean life. Throughout his career, as the study establishes, Roach steadily reflected on the salient issues of West Indian life in poetry of vigor and authority. Breiner shows persuasively that Roach’s poetry was impressively crafted and worthy of discussion in its own right, but he argues that it is especially valuable because of its engagement with the events and forces that shaped the societies of the contemporary Caribbean. By exploring his work within its conditions, this book aims above all to confirm Roach’s rightful place among West Indian and metropolitan poets of comparable gifts and accomplishments.
