Lindsay Barrett
Encyclopedia
Carlton Lindsay Barrett is a Jamaica
n poet
, novelist, essayist, playwright
, journalist
and photographer who lives in Nigeria
.
newspaper and for its sister afternoon tabloid, the Star. In early 1961, he became a news editor for the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation
, where his mentor was the Jamaican journalist and political analyst John Maxwell.
Less than a year later, he moved to England, where he worked as a freelancer for the British Broadcasting Corporation's World Service in London and for the Transcription Centre, an organization that recorded and broadcast the works of African writers in Europe and Africa. After a year, Barrett left England for France
and for the next four years travelled throughout Europe
and North Africa
as a journalist and feature writer based in Paris
. His first novel, Song For Mumu, was written between April 1962 and October 1966, and published in 1967, reviewed favourably by critics such as Martin Levin of the New York Times who commented that "What shines ... is its language."
During the 1960s and 1970s, Lindsay Barrett was well known as an experimental and progressive essayist, his work being concerned with issues of black identity and dispossession, the African Diaspora
, and the survival of descendants of black Africans, now dispersed around the world. After travelling to the first World Festival of Black Arts
in Dakar
, in Senegal
, in 1966, Barrett decided to remain in West Africa. He took up residence in Nigeria that year, and became a naturalised Nigerian citizen in the mid-1980s. He was Secretary of the Mbari Artists Club from 1966 to 1967, and in the 1970s was a founding member of the Nigerian Association of Patriotic Writers and Artistes. He was Director of the East Central State Information Service during the Nigerian Civil War
.
Barrett has worked as a lecturer and has taught at many educational establishments in West Africa, including in Ghana
, at Fourah Bay College
in Sierra Leone
and at the University of Ibadan
in Nigeria, where he lectured on the roots of African and Afro-American literature at the invitation of Professors Wole Soyinka
and the late Omafume Onoge. He is also a broadcaster, particularly in Nigerian radio and television, and has produced and presented critically acclaimed programmes on jazz, the arts, and Caribbean-African cultural issues.
Lindsay Barrett is the author of many plays, staged in England and in Nigeria. Jump Kookoo Makka was presented at the Leicester University Commonwealth Arts Festival in 1967, directed by Cosmo Pieterse
. Home Again was performed in 1967 by Wole Soyinka
's company. Blackblast was performed in London in 1973, and After This We Heard of Fire was produced by the Ibadan Arts Theatre in Nigeria. In the early 1970s his theatrical collage of drama, dance and music, Sighs of a Slave Dream, was performed at the Keskidee Centre in London by a Nigerian troupe under the direction of Pat Amadu Maddy. It portrays the capture and enslavement of Africans, their transport across the Atlantic, and their suffering on American plantations. Various plays by Barrett have been performed at the Mbari Theatre of the University of Ibadan and on Nigerian National Radio.
In 1973 Barrett published a collection of poems, The Conflicting Eye, under the pseudonym "Eseoghene". His early militant poems deal with racial and emotional conflict and exile. Barrett's subsequent volumes of poetry are A Quality of Pain and Other Poems (1986) and A Memory of Rivers; Poems out of the Niger Delta (2006), both collections published in Nigeria.
Barrett's second novel, Lipskybound, was published in Enugu
, Nigeria, and has influenced the work of many young Nigerian writers who are interested in breaking the mould of traditional creative writing. His third published novel, Veils of Vengeance Falling, appeared in 1985 and has been used as a set book in the Department of English at the University of Port Harcourt.
Barrett's work has appeared in anthologies, including Black Fire: an Anthology of Afro-American Writing, edited by LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka
) and Larry Neal
, and Black Arts: an Anthology of Black Creations in 1969. He wrote the foreword to a new edition of Amiri Baraka's Four Revolutionary Plays: Experimental Death Unit 1, A Black Mass, and Great Goodness of Life, Madheart, published in 1997. Barrett has been an associate editor of several periodicals, including Afriscope in Nigeria, and Transition Magazine
in Uganda
, and he was a contributor to seminal black British publications in the 1960s such as Daylight, Flamingo, Frontline and West Indian World. He has also contributed short stories, poems, essays, and articles to numerous journals including Negro Digest/Black World, Revolution, Two Cities, New African
, Magnet, Black Scholar, and Black Lines.
Lindsay Barrett wrote on the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone and was the co-founder, with Tom Kamara, of the Liberian newspaper The New Democrat. He was a correspondent throughout Africa for the news magazine West Africa for more than three decades. He has maintained weekly columns in several Nigerian newspapers over the years and his widely read “From the Other Side” in the Nigerian tabloid The Sun. Barrett continues to work as a political analyst and commentator on Nigerian current events.
One of his sons is the Nigerian writer A. Igoni Barrett
.
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
n poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, novelist, essayist, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and photographer who lives in Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
.
Life and career
Born in Lucea, Jamaica, in 1941, Lindsay Barrett graduated from high school in 1959. He then worked as an apprentice journalist at the Daily GleanerDaily Gleaner
The Daily Gleaner may refer to:*The Daily Gleaner - a newspaper published in New Brunswick, Canada*The Daily Gleaner , published by the Gleaner Company, a daily newspaper and publishing company in Kingston, Jamaica...
newspaper and for its sister afternoon tabloid, the Star. In early 1961, he became a news editor for the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation
Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation
The Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation was a public broadcasting company in Jamaica founded in 1959 by Prime Minister Norman Manley with the aim of emulating the success of other national broadcasting companies such as the BBC and CBC.-History:...
, where his mentor was the Jamaican journalist and political analyst John Maxwell.
Less than a year later, he moved to England, where he worked as a freelancer for the British Broadcasting Corporation's World Service in London and for the Transcription Centre, an organization that recorded and broadcast the works of African writers in Europe and Africa. After a year, Barrett left England for France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and for the next four years travelled throughout Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
as a journalist and feature writer based in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. His first novel, Song For Mumu, was written between April 1962 and October 1966, and published in 1967, reviewed favourably by critics such as Martin Levin of the New York Times who commented that "What shines ... is its language."
During the 1960s and 1970s, Lindsay Barrett was well known as an experimental and progressive essayist, his work being concerned with issues of black identity and dispossession, the African Diaspora
African diaspora
The African diaspora was the movement of Africans and their descendants to places throughout the world—predominantly to the Americas also to Europe, the Middle East and other places around the globe...
, and the survival of descendants of black Africans, now dispersed around the world. After travelling to the first World Festival of Black Arts
World Festival of Black Arts
The World Festival of Black Arts, also known as FESMAN, is a month-long culture and arts festival that takes place in Africa. The festival features poetry, sculpture, painting, music, cinema, theatre, fashion, architecture, design and dance from artists and performers from around the African...
in Dakar
Dakar
Dakar is the capital city and largest city of Senegal. It is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula on the Atlantic coast and is the westernmost city on the African mainland...
, in Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
, in 1966, Barrett decided to remain in West Africa. He took up residence in Nigeria that year, and became a naturalised Nigerian citizen in the mid-1980s. He was Secretary of the Mbari Artists Club from 1966 to 1967, and in the 1970s was a founding member of the Nigerian Association of Patriotic Writers and Artistes. He was Director of the East Central State Information Service during the Nigerian Civil War
Nigerian Civil War
The Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War, 6 July 1967–15 January 1970, was a political conflict caused by the attempted secession of the southeastern provinces of Nigeria as the self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra...
.
Barrett has worked as a lecturer and has taught at many educational establishments in West Africa, including in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, at Fourah Bay College
Fourah Bay College
Fourah Bay College is the oldest university college in West Africa. It is located atop Mount Aureol in Freetown, Sierra Leone...
in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
and at the University of Ibadan
University of Ibadan
The University of Ibadan is the oldest Nigerian university, and is located five miles from the centre of the major city of Ibadan in Western Nigeria...
in Nigeria, where he lectured on the roots of African and Afro-American literature at the invitation of Professors Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
and the late Omafume Onoge. He is also a broadcaster, particularly in Nigerian radio and television, and has produced and presented critically acclaimed programmes on jazz, the arts, and Caribbean-African cultural issues.
Lindsay Barrett is the author of many plays, staged in England and in Nigeria. Jump Kookoo Makka was presented at the Leicester University Commonwealth Arts Festival in 1967, directed by Cosmo Pieterse
Cosmo Pieterse
Cosmo George Leipoldt Pieterse is a South African playwright, actor, poet, literary critic and anthologist.Pieterse went to the University of Cape Town and taught in Cape Town until leaving South Africa in 1965. He was banned under the Riotous Assemblies Act of 1962...
. Home Again was performed in 1967 by Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
's company. Blackblast was performed in London in 1973, and After This We Heard of Fire was produced by the Ibadan Arts Theatre in Nigeria. In the early 1970s his theatrical collage of drama, dance and music, Sighs of a Slave Dream, was performed at the Keskidee Centre in London by a Nigerian troupe under the direction of Pat Amadu Maddy. It portrays the capture and enslavement of Africans, their transport across the Atlantic, and their suffering on American plantations. Various plays by Barrett have been performed at the Mbari Theatre of the University of Ibadan and on Nigerian National Radio.
In 1973 Barrett published a collection of poems, The Conflicting Eye, under the pseudonym "Eseoghene". His early militant poems deal with racial and emotional conflict and exile. Barrett's subsequent volumes of poetry are A Quality of Pain and Other Poems (1986) and A Memory of Rivers; Poems out of the Niger Delta (2006), both collections published in Nigeria.
Barrett's second novel, Lipskybound, was published in Enugu
Enugu
Enugu is the capital of Enugu State in Nigeria. It is located in the southeastern area of Nigeria and is largely populated by members of the Igbo ethnic group. The city has a population of 722,664 according to the 2006 Nigerian census. The name Enugu is derived from the two Igbo words Enu Ugwu...
, Nigeria, and has influenced the work of many young Nigerian writers who are interested in breaking the mould of traditional creative writing. His third published novel, Veils of Vengeance Falling, appeared in 1985 and has been used as a set book in the Department of English at the University of Port Harcourt.
Barrett's work has appeared in anthologies, including Black Fire: an Anthology of Afro-American Writing, edited by LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
) and Larry Neal
Larry Neal
Larry Neal or Lawerence Neal was a scholar of African-American theatre. He is well known for his contributions to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Biography:...
, and Black Arts: an Anthology of Black Creations in 1969. He wrote the foreword to a new edition of Amiri Baraka's Four Revolutionary Plays: Experimental Death Unit 1, A Black Mass, and Great Goodness of Life, Madheart, published in 1997. Barrett has been an associate editor of several periodicals, including Afriscope in Nigeria, and Transition Magazine
Transition Magazine
Transition Magazine , founded by Rajat Neogy , a Ugandan of Indian ancestry, was published from 1961 to 1976 on the African continent and was revived in 1991 in the United States. Born in Africa and bred in the Diaspora, Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling, most curious...
in Uganda
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...
, and he was a contributor to seminal black British publications in the 1960s such as Daylight, Flamingo, Frontline and West Indian World. He has also contributed short stories, poems, essays, and articles to numerous journals including Negro Digest/Black World, Revolution, Two Cities, New African
New African
New African is an English-language monthly news magazine based in London. Published since 1966, it is read by many people across the African continent and the African diaspora...
, Magnet, Black Scholar, and Black Lines.
Lindsay Barrett wrote on the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone and was the co-founder, with Tom Kamara, of the Liberian newspaper The New Democrat. He was a correspondent throughout Africa for the news magazine West Africa for more than three decades. He has maintained weekly columns in several Nigerian newspapers over the years and his widely read “From the Other Side” in the Nigerian tabloid The Sun. Barrett continues to work as a political analyst and commentator on Nigerian current events.
One of his sons is the Nigerian writer A. Igoni Barrett
A. Igoni Barrett
Adrian Igonibo Barrett is a Nigerian writer. He was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria to a Nigerian mother and the Jamaican novelist and poet, Lindsay Barrett.Barrett was a winner of the BBC World Service short story competition for 2005...
.
Awards
- In 1970 Barrett's writing received the fifth Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Award from the Illinois Arts Council.
- In August 2009, Barrett's latest poetry collection, A Memory of Rivers: Poems Out of the Niger Delta, was one of 9 books shortlisted for the $50,000 NLNG Prize in Nigeria.
Further reading
- Edwards, Norval Nadi, in Daryl Cumber Dance, ed., Fifty Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, New York: Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 26–34.
- Herdeck, Donald E., ed., Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical-Critical Encyclopedia, Three Continents Press, 1979, pp. 25–26.
- Royster, Philip M. “The Curse of Capitalism in the Caribbean: Purpose and Theme in Lindsay Barrett’s Song for Mumu”, Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review 2.2, 1987, pp. 3–22; reprinted in Harry B. Shaw, ed., Perspectives of Black Popular Culture, Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990.