Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s Kinetics: A Poetics of Performance

Abstract

Scholars have written extensively about Barbadian poet Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s creative use of the “scribal/oral continuum” and his “Sycorax video style,” which ground his poetics of “nation language” through oral and visual media. This paper gives an account of how Brathwaite’s poetics of choreography and movement—his kinetics—were inspired by Rex Nettleford’s performance of Kumina at Carifesta 1972 and by Marina Maxwell’s Yard Theatre. The “scribal/kinetic continuum” in his work bridges the act of writing and the performative arts by approximating a state of possession in Afro-Caribbean religions. In his writing, Brathwaite experimented with the possibilities of print media not just to approximate “nation language” and orality, but also to (re)stage dance and performances.