THE BLOSSOMING OF CARIBBEAN LITERATURE: THE LIFE AND WORK OF FRANK COLLYMORE

Professor Edward Baugh (The Walter Rodney Lecture, University of Warwick, 18 March 2010)

"I suspect that Frank Collymore would blush to hear that he is the subject of a Walter Rodney lecture. He was hardly a radical or revolutionary. Indeed, he was conservative by temperament and upbringing; some, a few, might even say reactionary. He showed little interest in politics, was hardly overjoyed when Barbados gained independence from Great Britain. He was of the uninformed view that “We in B’dos have no African customs, folk-lore or anything of the sort,” and he spoke of “the somewhat absurd idea of Mother Africa.”1 Of course, in these positions he was very much of his time and upbringing. Still, he was open-minded and liberal (even if that is a dirty word in some quarters), one who valued the individual no matter the cause in which the individual was embedded, a man of principle, unconventional, even disturbingly so in his way, a person of great integrity, someone whom men of much more radical persuasion were honoured to be able to call their friend and mentor. ..."  Download a copy of the lecture

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