Contemporary Black British Poetry as a Diasporic Avant-Garde (pre-print)

Diaspora and the Avant-garde
in Contemporary Black British Poetry
Lauri Ramey


Citation: In Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural
Displacement, Ed. Carrie Noland and Barrett Watten. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, hbk. 2009, pbk. 2011, 189-206.



What does it mean to be an avant-garde poet if one is Black and British
today? Are there different definitions for avant-gardism in this context
than the historical avant-garde movements of the twentieth century?
Patience Agbabi and Anthony Joseph are two younger Black British poets
whose poetry and poetics differ dramatically from one another, yet both
often are characterized as "avant-garde." Citing her favorite poem, Agbabi
names Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," a treasured icon employing tidy
structure to bury thorny irony under populist appeal. Agbabi mentions
canonical figures such as Chaucer, Wordsworth and Browning among her
important literary models, and frequently writes rhymed metrical verse,
notably sonnets and sestinas. In contrast, Joseph lists Kamau Brathwaite,
Amiri Baraka, Ted Joans, Bob Kaufman, the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchener,
Henry Dumas and Wilson Harris among his main influences. These Black
authors—highly respected though far less likely to appear on college
syllabi than Agbabi's exemplars—explode poetic conventions to convey the
difficulties of linguistically encapsulating their diasporic experiences,
ideas and histories.
What are the complications of mapping race over aesthetic practices
conventionally associated with whiteness? Is it "avant-garde" for
"minority" poets to produce poetry that is "different" or contrary to
expectations for them based on cultural preconceptions and perceived
inheritances? Are poets whose writing works within the formal tradition of
the historical avant-garde automatically disenfranchised from representing
the Black diasporic experience? These are some of the questions that arise
when asking how it is possible for two writers from the Black diaspora with
such radically divergent poetics to be categorized as "avant-garde."
Further, if that description can accommodate poets so different, can it
have any meaning at all?
To start with some definitions, by "avant-garde" I am referring to
historical waves of artists in the twentieth century associated with
innovative formal practices and their legacy. Manifestations of avant-garde
practice generally are regarded as formal and sociopolitical, and typically
involve groups of artists with shared principles who often work in more
than one medium or genre; synthesize disparate influences and techniques
including "high" and "popular" culture; deliberately attempt to undermine
or contradict formal markers of rigidified artistic structures and ruling
ideologies; consider art to be a political and aesthetic instrument with
direct agency; push art and society forward into new and unfamiliar
terrain; employ technical features designed to unsettle and interrogate
unitary voices of authority and totalizing narratives; explore formal modes
such as open field, performative and alternative poetics based on extra-
semantic properties such as visuality and sound; question the nature and
possibility of a non-problematical speaking subject; animate multiple
voices in preference to a centralized stable narrator or persona; transcend
boundaries of nationalism, draw on international influences, and maintain
dialogue with artists in other nations and cultures; and frequently use
collage, bricolage, fragmentation and pastiche in order to create
palimpsestic or dialogic texts revealing multiple frames of reference and
mechanisms of interpretation.
By black diaspora, I refer to a population whose ancestral origins are
in Africa, and which has dispersed throughout the globe by choice, force or
necessity due to race slavery, economic or political circumstances or other
reasons relating to opportunity or survival. Writers of the Black diaspora
often incorporate African survivals in their work, including directly
addressing ancestors and spirit guides; foregrounding elements of orality
and performance in written discourse with equal or greater stress than
textuality; depicting the mind as able to travel freely from the body by
supplanting the Western philosophical framework of Cartesian dualism with
African concepts of body and mind; conveying a permeable boundary between
the sacred and secular; operating within a sense of time that regards the
future as a direct and immediate extension of the present with past and
present as dominant modes of consciousness; describing human relationships
and connections as possible to maintain in states of absence including
after death; building historical narratives to share and preserve communal
memory; and stressing the integral importance of community for all
individuals. Secondary characteristics that specifically reflect migratory
experiences are such themes as the location and meaning of "home," racial
discrimination, the effects of displacement, the ramifications of
alienation, and a reflexive consciousness of the characteristics and
functions of diasporic communities.[i]
Two critics, Kwesi Owusu and R. Victoria Arana, have used the term
"avant-garde" to refer to a movement of younger Black British poets that
has emerged over the last two decades. This post-postcolonial generation
reflects the conundrum identified by Stuart Hall: they appear to be at the
center of current British culture by virtue of coming from its margins. For
Owusu and Arana, "avant-garde" signifies a re-inscription of British
identity that legitimates and incorporates the experience of a Black artist
in Britain as something which is, in fact, British. The practice of these
poets is identified by both critics as "new" and forward-looking, and
bearing a less burdened relationship to political exclusions and diasporic
roots than the preceding generation's—raising the question of whether a
poet's diasporic identification must diminish in order to be perceived as
truly avant-garde.
When this shift began in the 1970s and 1980s, a paradox emerged that
continues today: Black British poets are asserting alternative and
marginalized perspectives while explicitly and emphatically identifying
themselves as products of British culture. As Hall wrote in 1996, "I've
been puzzled by the fact that young black people in London today are
marginalized, fragmented, unenfranchised, disadvantaged, and dispersed. And
yet, they look as if they own the territory. . . they occupy a new kind of
space at the center."[ii] Owusu credits Hall himself as a dominant
influence on the development in the 1980s of what Owusu calls "the new
Black British avant-garde" in politics, scholarship and the arts, where
studies of race, the New Left and experimental practices in film,
photography and the visual arts converged within a primarily London-based
group of intellectuals, critics and practitioners. Owusu refers to this
group as "avant-garde" because it has been marginalized by the dominant
culture and is driven to remake the center by entering it. These "avant-
gardists" refuse to occupy an externally assigned role on the social and
historical periphery. Instead, they insist on inserting their previously
disregarded voices and perspectives into the narrative of the mainstream as
recuperated missing and essential elements.
Artists of the historical avant-garde and their successors generally
display an ethos of group oppositionality and rejection of the principles
of the aesthetic and cultural status quo. They typically adopt postures of
alienation by choice or conscience, pointing out fundamental flaws in the
values and practices of the center while embracing positions on the
margins. Avant-gardes—when separated from the concept of diaspora—
represent resistance, refusal and redirection when the center is seen to
have gone awry. They have served as the gadfly whose strength and point of
view come from a stance of critical distance on the periphery.
Owusu shifts this definition by proposing a diasporic avant-garde
whose "newness" derives from demanding representation in a narrative that
is otherwise incomplete, misrepresented or distorted. This "new" Black
British diasporic avant-garde is characterized by its determination to
reject a former position of marginality in order to take pride of place in
the center of society, politics, culture and communication. Consistent with
the stylistic markers of the historical avant-garde, "experimentalism" is
identified by Owusu as the formal mechanism used by this young Black
British generation for purposes of achieving "a new revisionism" by
artistic means.
Owusu cites performance poetry as a central formal manifestation of
the experimentation employed by this avant-garde movement, and names Linton
Kwesi Johnson, Jean "Binta" Breeze, Benjamin Zephaniah and Lemn Sissay as
some of the key practitioners of what he considers to be a revolutionary
artistic genre. By describing Black British performance poetry as "avant-
garde," Owusu implicitly links the motives and forms of Black British
poetry to the historical avant-garde through their shared stress on
orality. But there are key differences between these populations' histories
and motivation in the use of this "experimental" form which also impacts
its content and purpose.
Orality and performance only can be read as "experimental" and "new"
in relation to the British literary canon—not in the context of African
diasporic traditions. Since these modes historically have served as
mechanisms to preserve cultural connections and traditions for African
diasporic peoples, they represent links to the past for Black British
poets. As F. Abiola Irele points out, it is this traditional feature that
distinguishes African literature as "different" and significant in relation
to conventional Western textuality: "The centrality of orality to the
African imagination, the original dimension it confers on African forms of
expression, has provided the principal means for demonstrating not merely
the distinctive character of African literary genres but also their
comparative interest."[iii]
For poets of the historical avant-garde, orality and performance
signify a transgressive attack on their own cultural values and traditions
rather than a reinforcement of them. These techniques represent aesthetic
and political strategies that are anti-textual, anti-elitist, anti-linear,
anti-hierarchical, anti-static and anti-semantic. By privileging sound,
spontaneity and audience participation, orality and performance are
effective in leading society forward in a new direction by aggressively
attacking unexamined or unchallenged continuities of meaning, control,
order, hierarchy and preservation. For Black British poets, African-
inspired orality also represents a way to communicate change, forge
individual and community identity, disrupt the dominant narrative, work
across strict boundaries of medium and genre, represent a minority
viewpoint, overcome domination and isolation through group tactics, draw on
syncretic practices and influences that cross national boundaries, explode
unitary concepts of literary transmission as solely text-based, expand
notions of authority as to who may serve as the speaking subject in an
esteemed work of art, and infuse a work of art with a sociopolitical
agenda.
But due to the role of orality in diasporic culture, for Black British
poets these techniques also entail conservation, convention, familiarity,
respect for the past, and serve as highly flexible mechanisms to adapt to
migration and oppression. Although their histories—and in some cases their
goals, forms, techniques and contents may differ—Black British poets—based
on their minority perspective, oral delivery and contrast with Western
poetic conventions—have been designated a vanguard because of these
parallel similarities with the historical avant-gardes. Here we have an
example of an area of practice where the diasporic heritage of Black
British poets enabled them to adjust to their adopted homeland and become
recognized as innovators.
Arana uses the phrase "neo-millennial avant-garde" to describe the
younger generation of Black British poets that she, like Owusu and Hall,
differentiates from their postcolonial predecessors. Arana contrasts what
is now the "older generation" of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Grace Nichols—in
their alienation from British culture, political anger and continuing
identification with issues of immigration and displacement—with the
increased sense of belonging and privilege exhibited by younger poets such
as Bernardine Evaristo, Kwame Dawes, Jackie Kay and Patience Agbabi:
In the phenomenon of the neo-millennial black British writers, we have
all the ingredients of an avant-garde movement. These poets and creative
artists are breaking with some large-order traditions of the black
diaspora: they are far less interested in brooding over the injustices of
slavery, promoting traditional folklore, celebrating emancipation from
colonialist ideology, protesting color-prejudices within the diasporic
populations, and consoling injury than they are in basking in the sunshine
of an unembarrassed triumphalism. They have tasted success as the
celebrators of cultural and racial differentiation.[iv]
Arana connects the avant-gardism of these poets to their rejection of
some traditional and even defining aspects of diasporic identification,
including the emotions of alienation and isolation, the motive to preserve
cultural memory and references, the experience of racial discrimination,
the continuing effects of enslavement and dispersal, the dislocation and re-
adaptation to one or more new environments by necessity or force, and the
inevitability of marginalization based on race. In so doing, with Owusu,
she highlights the centrality of this avant-garde to what contemporary
British culture is in the process of becoming—in fact, as a defining force
in its recreation. As questions of national identity have emerged with
greater frequency in the UK from the 1980s to the present—with Black
British subjects adamantly there to stay—race has become more explicitly
mapped over contestations of who and what is British and how that
Britishness is conveyed.
Although performance studies critic Beth-Sarah Wright does not use the
term "avant-garde," she echoes Hall's vision of a forward-looking group of
poets oriented towards performance and orality who have built on the
foundation of their Black diasporic identity to augment their senses of
self, communalism and agency which are then performed in the British
cultural mainstream. Wright directly links the capability to establish a
Black British identity to characteristics of African diasporic traditions,
which are "characterized by a fluidity and an advanced capacity to
negotiate and shift in the face of change."[v] She believes that through
the invocation of diasporic legacies and practices, Black British poets
have been able to use their writing as a source of power and self-
articulation to create sites on which to assert their unique identity,
reclaim history and determine the future.
Whether one sees a connection—with Wright and Owusu—or a sympathetic
disengagement—with Arana—between the diasporic and the avant-garde, these
critics agree that many contemporary Black British poets are aiming to
create something "new" where racial identification is connected to the
aesthetics of avant-garde practice. Paul Gilroy also describes the
aesthetics of Black diasporic writing as something new, and which is
composed in forms reflecting the history, aesthetics, ontology and
philosophy of a migratory population: "The fractal patterns of cultural and
political exchange and transformation that we try and specify through
manifestly inadequate theoretical terms like creolization and syncretism
indicate how both ethnicities and political cultures have been made anew in
ways that are significant not simply for the peoples of the Caribbean but
for Europe, for Africa, especially Liberia and Sierra Leone, and of course,
for black America."[vi]
Gilroy's description shows how some major manifestations of the
historical avant-garde are relevant to Black diasporic writers, including
the use of fragmentation and collage, a cross-genre or cross-media
aesthetic practice and the production and reception of art that transcends
boundaries of nationalism. Similarly, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and
Helen Tiffin write that individuals who have migrated from their places of
origin, either by choice or force, would likely bear a residual resistance
to totalizing narratives of wholeness and unanimity: "The development of
diasporic cultures necessarily questions essentialist models, interrogating
the ideology of a unified, 'natural' cultural norm, one that underpins the
centre/margin model of colonialist discourse."[vii]
Following Gilroy and Ashcroft et al., it would be reasonable to expect
the fragmentary and synthetic practices that characterize the historical
avant-garde to appear in Black diasporic writing. Readers might expect to
find numerous examples of poems in experimental forms that question unitary
speaking subjects deriving from multiple inputs intended to undermine
hegemony, restriction, unanimity and repression. The solid theoretical
foundations established by scholars such as Gilroy, Ashcroft, Wright and
others—and Owusu's and Arana's use of the term "avant-garde"—might lead
readers to expect a substantial body of contemporary avant-garde poetry to
have been produced by Black Britons. Readers might expect such writing not
only to exist but to be embraced as part of the "new" multicultural
Britain.
This imagined formally inventive poetry would be neither traditionally
British nor a naïve vision of African return. It would likely be an
imaginative mélange of deconstructed, composite and alternative ways of
conceiving and conveying a range of identities and experiences. Readers
might expect the contemporary condition of Black Britons to be well-
represented by recursive iterations composed of broken fragments juxtaposed
to accrue and reveal new meaning. Irele has coined a term to describe the
generative force behind such potential new creations—"the African
Imagination." This force should be the source of dynamic new Black British
poetry conveying diverse but recognizable continuities, including emphasis
on oral tradition, whose formal manifestation would be "Euro-African
intertextuality."[viii]
Oddly, such practices are not widespread and have not been warmly
welcomed on the cultural menu. In fact, the formal innovations of Anthony
Joseph have left him as something of an anomaly in his generation.
Colonialism, diaspora, postmodernism and the avant-garde intersect in
Joseph, with the interdependence of these styles and themes—and his
isolation—illuminating the restrictions that still maintain for some poets.
Joseph's formal poetics is "normative" for an avant-garde poet interested
in decentering and reconceptualizing identity, examining literary
connections across metaphysical boundaries with others who have engaged in
exploratory practices, and interrogating language as a system of discourse.
But as a Black British poet—whose style, on its surface, is more
recognizably formally avant-garde than diasporic—his practice has largely
rendered him invisible.
The title of his second poetry collection, Teragaton, comes from a
mysterious, repeated word that, following her death, his mother "gave" him
in a recurring dream.[ix] The word signified to him a lexical gap, a
semantic absence representing the potential for communication across
metaphysical divides—a commonplace of African diasporic physics, philosophy
and religion connected to the postmodern theme of language's systemic
failure. The poet's position is represented by Joseph's choice of cover
illustration, which is his parents' wedding photograph. In the image, the
poet appears in secret: he is there in utero as an unspoken
presence/absence since his mother was pregnant at the time of her wedding.
Joseph's work in this volume shows his inventiveness in drawing on a
variety of formally innovative trends associated with the historical avant-
gardes and blending these with African diasporic traditions and references.
In the Introduction, Joseph explains that his writing is a rejection of
"conceptual colonialism." This refusal to have his ideas and references
narrowed to conventional British dictates motivates poems such as
"Europeisinmyass," a rush in five pages of justified prose text without
lexical boundary spaces, reflecting the adjustments that Joseph knew he
would have to make upon his arrival in London in 1989. This long prose poem
focuses on the subjects of identity and individuality as constructed and
undermined by that necessary social medium of language.
"Europeisinmyass" starts with a Trinidadian childhood, the oral rhythms of
parental warnings and the dream state with its counterpart of nightmares
("dontsleeponyourbackyoullhavenightmares"). The compositional style
suggests automatic writing—a frequent technique of the historical avant-
garde, often coupled with surrealism, which appears abundantly here—where
ego barriers dissolve in a semi-conscious encounter with an avalanche of
pointed signifier:

don'tsleeponyourbackyoullhavenightmareso
nethingilearndformyselffictionispretensein
theroleof theego4wordscallouscaseouscuntb
ushwas intranceshesveryeroticashesvery6r
ejectedwordsperfectriverpeacezincalloydisa
llowretrogradeifyoukeepwritingyoullbreaki
ntearsbroccolifishtearassociativebehaviou
rcalmisuponmebtbigbooksLacanEcritswhat
willidothereisachapterontheletterintheunco
nsciousdescriptionsthesilverplatedscissoral
mosttouchestheteacupilostitifeltitgowasyes
(Teragton, 00)

Reader and speaker move surreally from autobiographical descriptions of
childhood in the Caribbean to adult encounters with the Continental
tradition. The "bigbooks" offer the speaker access to the
"associativebehaviour" that provides a framework for his creativity, but
the truly generative creativity began prelinguistically in a Trinidadian
childhood long before. Experience, necessarily, must be formed from
language, which was originally presented as an undifferentiated mass for
the poet to shape and interpret. The poem is an act of recognition of this
postmodern reality which is both thrilling and terrifying.
In Lacanian fashion—the poem alludes to "The Instance of the Letter in
the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud"—Joseph explains in the book's
introduction that "hypnotic letters instigate mindset."[x] The letter's
primacy is further emphasized by phonetic and idiosyncratic spelling,
missing letters, strategic enjambment to defamiliarize the few glimpses of
semantic cohesion, and consistent fragmentation of words into constituent
parts at the margin. The clinical phrase "associative behaviour" is
followed in the same line by the rhetorical question "what will i do" (52),
suggesting the failure of the very explanations and structures offered.
When maxims of theory and certitude emerge ("disa/ llowretrograde,"
"fig/htforpeace"; 52, 53) to signal the grounding of an Anglo-European
education, they appear strangely alien, decontextualized and ineffective in
the welter of phonemes.
The waves of meaning build and dissolve to approximate an identity
being forged —a migratory identity—which is both in tension and dialogue
with its pre-linguistic unconscious
("myancestorsmasagenwalked80milesbutmy/eyesarefoldingawake. . ."; 53). By
invoking the cognitively blended states and cultural/linguistic influences
of Europe, America, Africa and the Caribbean, Joseph generates a fluid
place—which he has referred to as "liquid textology"—of physical, cultural
and psychological flux. Escape from linguistic repression is central to
Joseph's poetics, which interrogates social, intellectual, national and
cultural institutions whose notion of preservation is to lock out voices of
diversity. Joseph's treatment of the subject mockingly brings up the
hegemonic expectations for acceptable Black British poetry: orally
performative material with a linear narrative that calls for class- and
race-based social interventions and uses techniques and imagery directly
discussing dual identities and cultural tensions. In contrast to these
stereotypes, much of Joseph's poetry is visual collage. He is not
interested in directly calling for social change, but in the politics of
exploring his identity as a language user.
Poems such as "Europeisinmyass" recall the opening sentence of
Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: "Striving to be both European and black
requires some specific forms of double consciousness."[xi] Joseph echoes
this perspective: "When I came to London in 1989 I realised, that in order
to adapt to the city with my sanity intact, certain adjustments would have
to be made" (Teragaton, 18). The double consciousness of Du Bois (where it
exists) is not reflected in naturalized characterizations, but through
voices that are de-centered, unidentified, multiple and distributed.
Instead of addressing disempowerment as a theme in his poetry, he
represents it through semantic rupture and syntactic fragmentation and by
breaking down communicative frames and patterns.
Joseph's state of separation from Trinidad—a place to which (he feels)
he can never fully belong again, but which is central to who he is—forms
the foundation of his identity as an artist. His Caribbean heritage and
memories may not outweigh his other intellectual and emotional resources,
but they are ineradicable regardless of his location. The examples of
others from the Caribbean, such as Harris and Brathwaite, enabled Joseph to
see himself as part of a community and tradition after his migration,
rather than as a deracinated individual working alone in Britain, where so
few Black artists work in experimental modes.
While Joseph has found kinship with a small circle of Caribbean
predecessors and African American role models, he has few if any Black
British forebears or contemporaries. His poetry has received less critical
and popular attention than many of his contemporaries, although his first
full-length book The African Origins of UFOs (2006) was published by Salt,
a British literary press with a prestigious poetry list; it was nominated
for a Commonwealth Prize; and laudatory blurbs were supplied by
international literary luminaries Nathaniel Mackey, Brathwaite and Linton
Kwesi Johnson.[xii] Joseph has been invited to read at such US venues as
Rutgers University, California State University at Los Angeles, Howard
University, the Chicago Humanities Festival and University of California at
Los Angeles. He was admitted to the PhD program at Goldsmiths College
University of London, where he is writing his dissertation on Lord
Kitchener. He has delivered courses for The Arvon Society and represented
The British Council. Despite these indications of literary achievement,
Joseph's greatest audience success has come from performing in tours in the
UK and Europe with his musical group The Spasm Band.
Patience Agbabi's equally unique cultural place is exemplified in an
article that appeared on 5 March 2005 in the New York Times (dateline
"WINDSOR, England") titled "Giving the Boys at Eton Poetry to Think About"
by Victoria Young.[xiii] This piece, covering a three week residency by
Agbabi at Eton College, opens:

Patience Agbabi, a bisexual, radical-feminist performance artist with
cropped hair and tattoos, has been called "the PVC poet" by the
British media because of the lesbian, sadomasochistic and drug themes
featured in her poetry. (PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, is used to make
the shiny black material that is commonly worn by dominatrixes.) Ms.
Agbabi earned this label during her recent, unusual assignment: writer
in residence at Eton College, one of the oldest boarding schools in
Britain, and almost certainly its grandest.

How often do we see poets described in such terms? How often is a poet
sufficiently newsworthy to generate a news story at all? This journalistic
account is of a poet who apparently is intended to appear avant-garde by
means of culturally threatening cues sent by her superficial appearance and
related themes of sex, politics and drugs in her poetry. She is "a
bisexual," with "cropped hair" and "tattoos," a "radical-feminist" who
features "lesbian, sadomasochistic and drug themes" in her poetry—not to
mention her dominatrix-wear.
She is described as a "performance artist" in the salacious context of
sadomasochism, implying that sexual performance may be part of her
aesthetic practice. I have most often heard Agbabi describe herself as a
poet—not to my knowledge as a "performance artist"—and only rarely, and
with some qualifications, as a performance poet. While she reads her poetry
aloud very skillfully, and has created fascinating literary pieces for
installation outside the context of conventional text—poetry written to
appear as a tattoo on skin, a poem for the London Underground, an MA thesis
consisting of a corona of sonnets reproduced on panels of a skirt—she works
explicitly within the literary tradition. No sex acts, to my knowledge, are
part of her poetry reading repertoire. Even the poem that she wrote to
celebrate her 2000 Poetry Society residency at the Flamin' Eight Tattoo
Studio and Clothing Store in London would not be taken as "avant-garde"
linguistically or formally, were it not for its intended placement on skin
as a tattoo:

Rhythm is the
symphony
of angels
Angels are muses
with
wings
Wings elevate
words into
rhythm[xiv]

Significantly, among the flood of description opening the New York Times
article, no verbal mention is made of the poet's race (though a buzz cut
and her own tattoos evidently are worth noting). That she is a woman of
African descent is visually conveyed by a photograph of Agbabi (wearing a
snappy black and white hounds-tooth coat) —who has been interested since
adolescence in art and fashion, aesthetic presentation and self-
styling—prominently illustrating the article. This article's central theme
is to highlight colliding cultures by focusing on the "unusual" nature of
locating such a "different" person in "old" and "grand" Eton. Victorian
mores—seen through American eyes—are revived and repositioned in the
refracted mirror of postcolonial Britain–then translated and repackaged for
American eyes.
Eroticism and power exchange embodied in a Black bisexual woman—what
could be more classically British as a source of titillation? These themes
appear in two of Agbabi's best known poems. "Ms. De Meanour" is a clever
sestina in which the speaker fantasizes herself to be a "bitch with dick"
who is the self-described "bastard child/of Barbara Cartland and
Boy/George."[xv] "Transformatrix" is a sonnet (and title poem) that closes
the same volume—playing the dozens with feminist readings of the sonnet's
masculinist restrictions and repressions—where the speaker is a corseted
submissive/poet who serves and stimulates a metaphorical Dominatrix/muse:
both exist in a void without the other.[xvi]
With our critics having identified the basis of the "avant-gardism" of
the younger generation of Black British poets as the insertion of "new"
diasporic narratives and/or orality into the mainstream of contemporary
British culture, how do these poems (and the New York Times's description
of Agbabi's avant-gardism) suit these criteria? There are no racial
signifiers, radical forms, uses of orality or performance, references to
diasporic experience, or expressions of affiliation with avant-garde or
radical movements apart from popular culture and "alternative" sexualities.
Yet this article focuses on the incongruity of Agbabi's selection as Eton's
Poet-in-Residence because of her progressive and transgressive stances. We
must then ask: is the source of Agbabi's avant-gardism her handful of poems
with lesbian, bisexual, drug and sadomasochistic themes and metaphors? If
so, is her avant-gardism unrelated to her being Black and/or to her
employment of any culturally oppositional compositional methods such as
fragmentation or techniques such as orality?
Additional questions emerge if we juxtapose the rhetorical stance of
this article with the facts of Agbabi's writing and history. Agbabi may not
have attended public school or been raised with white British middle class
privilege (though she was raised by white foster parents in comfortable
circumstances and received educational encouragement from her biological
father in particular), but Agbabi is a product of the same elite
educational sector as Eton. As the article later reveals, Agbabi holds a
degree in English from Oxford. How much risk actually was entailed in
engaging this "avant-garde" poet to hold a residency with the Eton lads?
The article continues: " Ms. Agbabi's work may seem at odds with Eton's
reputation for offering a traditional, classical education. But during a
recent visit, she seemed to be fitting right in." Why would her appearance
be at odds with Eton's reputation? Why would her "arrival" and "fitting
right in" possibly be any kind of "surprise"? She is a British subject, has
herself received a "traditional, classical education," publishes with the
respected press Canongate and has been a university lecturer. In 2004,
Agbabi received one of the most significant British honors offered to a
young poet when she was named one of "The Next Generation Poets." This
listing is compiled every ten years (the first, in 1994, was called "The
New Generation Poets") by the Poetry Book Society. The selection committee
was chaired by current UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. This list, which has
served as a predictor and validator of the poets who have come to dominate
the successive generation, celebrates "the nation's brightest young poets."
Agbabi is the sole Black British poet on the 2004 list, which included two
in 1994, Moniza Alvi and David Dabydeen, in addition to others selected for
the earlier list who now have gone on to substantial fame: Simon Armitage,
John Burnside, Carol Ann Duffy, Lavinia Greenlaw, Michael Hofmann, Kathleen
Jamie and Don Paterson.
Agbabi has been reduced in the Times article to a cipher (a
caricature, even) of Black female deviant sexuality injected into an
environment of protected, proper, young and upper class (the annual tuition
of $42,000 is cited in the article) English boys who represent the past,
present and future rulers of the UK. The sensational rhetoric cannot be
fully explained away by irony. Why the attention and characterization?
Agbabi speculates to the reporter: "I think it is partly because I am
black," she continued. "People are very quick to marginalize and
overemphasize." [. . . ] "Ms. De Meanour," she pointed out, "is actually a
sestina, an ancient form of French poetry that's incredibly hard to write.
But people seem only to see what they want to see." Agbabi is sometimes
identified as Black, sometimes as avant-garde, sometimes as "page,"
sometimes "performance," sometimes British, and sometimes Nigerian (the
home of her parents before emigrating). Race and gender also are shown to
subtly be linked to class in categorizing Agbabi, as described later in the
article:

Brewing chamomile tea on a recent Thursday morning in the staff room
in Eton's English department, halfway through her nearly three-week
residency, which ended March 4, Ms. Agbabi, who is soft spoken and
five and a half months pregnant, could not understand what all the
fuss was about. She is, frankly, bored by the fascination that has
surrounded her appointment, in particular the media's fixation with
her tattoos. "As if someone who goes into Eton can't have a tattoo,"
she said, rolling her eyes. "I thought the taboo had gone but it
obviously hasn't."

When injected into this bastion of civilization, Agbabi does not conduct
herself as a radical-feminist bisexual dominatrix, writes the reporter. In
fact, she is actually "soft-spoken" and thoroughly domesticated: she brews
herbal tea, is pregnant and is depicted here as an island of British
reasonable feminine calmness—almost "mumsy"—in pooh-poohing the
"fascination." The potential threat has proven to be no germ at all; her
conduct and attitudes reflect the success of colonization. Agbabi
recognizes that being Black is a central factor in her description and
reception—would she have been invited to this role otherwise?—but so are
her gender, sexual orientation and class, all of which have the potential
to obscure the impact and a fair reading of her poetry and poetics.
Tellingly, in spite of Agbabi's belief about the true source of the
attention, this article places far more emphasis on her sexual vanguardism
than on her race. Is it possible to consider a contemporary poet who writes
sonnets and sestinas to be engaging in avant-garde practice? If so, using
what cultural or historical model? What if that poet is Black and female,
can quote Browning and Chaucer, and also writes about cocaine and strap-
ons? Perhaps we really are entering into épater le bourgeois territory
after all.
Agbabi's residency at Eton was a cunning, safe decision and media-
savvy decision (after all, it even resulted in international coverage in
the New York Times, no small feat for any poet, especially a British woman)
in a culture that is still dealing with the ragged vestiges of Empire.
Agbabi's residency was not about cultural exposure to diasporic populations
or poetic innovations. She stressed to the journalist that her work is in
the form of the "incredibly hard" sestina, a legacy of her Oxbridge
education which naturally included "ancient French poetry." Agbabi's Eton
residency was summed up in the subtext of what might be taken as a faux
naïve comment by her host:

Tony Little, Eton's headmaster, who describes Ms. Agbabi as an
"exciting wordsmith," is also mystified by the interest that her
appointment has generated. "The view seems to be that her work might
exert an unsuitable influence on the boys," he said. "But I'm not at
all worried about the subject matter of her poetry. After all,
sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll are part of everyday life. Some people
are amazed that Eton has progressed beyond the year 1857."

I presume that Mr. Little was "not at all worried" because he knew he
needn't be. The tone of mild post-Victorian voyeurism and spectacle
underscores the major public relations coup of this residency. The
enlightenment and long view of an English cultural institution such as Eton
prevails in demonstrating that this institution is contemporarily relevant,
under control and eternal all at once—in essence, its class makes it
impregnable. In spite of the potentially radical encroachments of Black
female adult sexuality from an ostensible outsider (as racially determined)
in such an environment, British culture has prevailed. It has even emerged
looking better through its bravery in risking this "dangerous" encounter.
It was culturally necessary for Agbabi to be described dramatically, then
colonized, tamed and redeemed (and all with no agency ascribed on her
part).
The alternating depictions of her objectification, exoticization and
absorption as Black, British, female and alien (she is the stranger within)
also emerge in the conflicted reception of her poetry and performances. On
the one hand, she is far more fully inscribed than Joseph's challenging
formal experimentation, though still relegated to a category that appears
provocative but can be naturalized—Black, hip and edgy on the surface, but
ultimately recuperable and legible—and rewarded and recognized for the
British breeding that finally can be counted on to prevail over potentially
threatening manifestations of sexual transgression or other forms of
counter-cultural challenge.
As a poet closely identified with formal verse and the British
literary tradition, it is ironic that Agbabi has emerged as one of the most
prominent figures of the contemporary Black British "avant-garde." Her
inclusion results from a complex set of factors having to do with the
juxtaposition of traditional British culture with race, class and gender.
Based on her place in British high culture, Agbabi's primary claim to an
avant-garde practice is the new and unexpected nature of her aesthetic
practice "for who she is," and recalling Owusu, her insistence on her right
to the cultural center. This position is reflected in her poem "Off the
Shelf:"[xvii]

Off the Shelf

For Chinua Achebe and Things Fall Apart

I was half the age I am now,
now he's twice my age.
I met him in the local library.
I wore beige,
he wore an orange and white jacket—
all the rage—
with a black logo. It was tight
as a cage.
I was reading Yeats,
he'd read him,
he was humble, sage.
He opened up, I read him
like a first page.
The speaker creates a metaphysically impossible space where she places
Achebe in her personal and immediate frame of reference in contemporary
London. Achebe is physically present to the speaker through his image on
the book's jacket, with the metaphorical cage of the diasporic writer
represented in the image of the tightness of his then-fashionable jacket.
Though the encounter is both imagined and embodied, it is also asymmetrical
and not mutual—the speaker can engage with the physicality of Achebe's
Black body in hip Western wear, though he is only engaging with her by
means of her imagination, a one-sided exchange. We discover that the
speaker is actually reading Yeats, who becomes the gateway presence in the
metaphorical blend.
As a representative of the canonical Anglo-Irish tradition, it is
Yeats—the bringer of culture—who in good colonial fashion, mediates between
the speaker and her discovery of the Commonwealth writer, which represents
an opening, "a first page" into her encounter with a writer of the African
diaspora. The speaker experiences Achebe as an image first and the source
of words and ideas only later, in the fashion of ut picture poesis. To
further complicate the blend of postcolonial, diasporic and canonical Anglo-
Irish literary reference points, three other writers also are implicitly
present in this contemporary sonnet: Chapman, Homer and Keats, through the
structure and theme which alludes to "On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer," underscoring the poet's implicit goal of connecting Black diasporic
writers with the center of the classical tradition in which she was
educated.
Most of Agbabi's literary models are neither Black nor avant-garde,
and even the diasporic figure to whom "Off the Shelf" is dedicated is now
canonical. She names Paul Muldoon, Carol Ann Duffy, Michael Donaghy, Roger
McGough, R.S. Thomas and Jackie Kay as some of her favorite poets—closer to
the center than the margins of culture and more associated with
confessionalism and neo-formalism than avant-gardism. She is aware that her
influences might appear politically incorrect but is properly unapologetic
and resistant to being affiliated with any "movement."[xviii] This lineage
brings to the surface the expectation that Black poets, British or
otherwise, must draw from a restricted range of common influences, and use
diction associated with the vernacular and themes of social realism.
Her poetics could reasonably be called conservative for its reliance
on conventional forms—she writes almost entirely in rhymed and/or metrical
verse—and literary influences. Consistent with Arana's claim that the "neo-
millennial avant-garde" is less concerned with Black diasporic culture,
Agbabi makes some references to hiphop, Northern Soul, urban alienation,
the effects of migration on communities and individuals, and the Black
female body—but perhaps half of her poetry (or more) contains no racial
signifiers. Her dominant themes are the stages of life, the writing
process, familial and romantic relationships, the challenges of
communication, women's roles and identities, sexuality and popular culture.
Though she has received exceptional acclaim and acceptance in Britain for a
younger poet, Agbabi paradoxically is regarded by many as a leading avant-
gardist. Her writing—wholly detached from the tradition of the historical
avant-garde, and not closely connected to Black diasporic tradition—relies
on an English formalism that distinguishes her from other Black British
poets of her generation.
If by "avant-garde," we are referring to artists working outside of a
mainstream tradition, Agbabi's practice does indeed qualify—because others
of her generation and ethnic background are not writing what she is
writing. On the other hand, the radical poetics of Joseph—calling on the
traditions both of the historical avant-garde and on the increasingly
perceptible, documented and influential Black diasporic avant-garde that
has inspired him—is actually more critically legible than the non-tradition
of Agbabi in terms of defining a context—regardless of Joseph's formally
innovative compositional methods, goals and presumptions and Agbabi's
conventional practices.
If Agbabi were a white English poet, would she be considered avant-
garde? If Joseph were not Black, would he be recognized as a key
international figure in pushing forward the avant-garde tradition?
Preconceptions of Black British poetry remain fundamentally conservative
with only certain kinds of constricted experimentation legible and
condoned, with little progress having been made since the 1970s and 1980s.
Yet critical and cultural theory suggests that diasporic writing and the
formal features traditionally associated with an avant-garde sensibility
and practice should go hand-in-hand.
The sociological is automatically entailed in dealing with Black
British poetry, explaining why juxtaposing the avant-garde and the
diasporic illuminates some of the central dilemmas facing contemporary
Black British poets. Issues of identity and representation impact all poets
working in the last hundred years. But an aesthetically postmodern context
does not tally with what many perceive as the terrain of a Black poet,
where experimentation continues to be most closely associated with white
Euro-American modernism and postmodernism.
The examples of Joseph and Agbabi demonstrate the value of
distinguishing between historical definitions of the avant-garde and "avant-
garde" goals of generating new meaning in diverse ways—what Hall, Arana,
and Owusu have referred to as "moving ahead," sometimes through the
appropriation of conventional poetic structures, traditional meter and
rhyme, canonical tropes, elaborate figures and elevated or mainstream
colloquial diction where that represents a tradition formerly functioning
as exclusionary. By inserting their voices into the British national
heritage, the younger generation of Black British poets may indeed be
offering something "new." But they do not share the history, purpose, forms
and contents of the historical avant-gardes despite important similarities.

For Agbabi, it is authentic—and possible—to convey new ideas and
expressions using British literary traditions. Some of the technical
markers associated with the historical avant-garde movements of the
twentieth century may not be present in her poetry, but a number do exist,
as do many "avant-garde" motives. She works in more than one medium or
genre, synthesizes disparate influences, draws on "high" and "popular"
culture, undermines ruling ideologies, and believes that art can move
society forward. By looking past race and technique to examine motives and
purposes, we see that these features apply to Agbabi even in the absence of
collage, fragmentary depictions of self positions, anti-narrative
strategies and other formal traits of the avant-garde.
Unlike Agbabi, Joseph actively questions voices of authority and
control, explores open field and experimental modes of composition and
presentation, and employs visuality, sound and extra-semantic properties of
expression. He would not accept as patent the possibility of creating a non-
problematical speaking subject in language, and interrogates the formation
and nature of identity. Collage, palimpsest and multiple levels of meaning
and comprehension are central to his work. Joseph views himself as part of
an avant-garde tradition and is not likely to imagine himself in the same
cultural role or relationship as Agbabi, though he holds her work and
practice in the greatest esteem. Agbabi's goal is to enter the cultural
mainstream on her own terms to move tradition forward in a new direction so
that her voice—which represents both continuity and diversity—is
incorporated and represented. Joseph assumes that avant-garde art will
remain marginalized, and that diasporic avant-garde art will remain even
more invisible.
Paul Gilroy asks the central question: "Can the obligations of black
consciousness and artistic freedom be complimentary rather than mutually
exclusive?"[xix] Joseph and Agbabi would respond affirmatively, even if it
remains an open question for some critics, readers and members of the
public. In examining the conjunction of avant-garde and diasporic writing,
several overlapping features bring these terms into meaningful
intersection. Both Joseph and Agbabi privilege demotic and oral as well as
literary models of language and linguistic communication, articulate the
languages and perspectives of individuals coming from the margins rather
than the centers of cultural power, fuse aesthetic and political motives
for the purpose of enacting social change, and reflect international,
multiple and cross-cultural references and influences rather than single
cohesive and unitary national traditions. Returning to the listing of
general tendencies associated with avant-gardism and the Black diaspora, we
see that many features turn out to apply to both poets.
If avant-garde refers to art that is new, different, oppositional and
challenging to cultural narratives, what do we ultimately learn from Agbabi
and Joseph's actual practice versus their critical reception and
categorization? Joseph is a marginalized formally innovative poet working
within a historically and critically documented and recognizable tradition.
Patience Agbabi has received mainstream recognition and uses conventional
poetic forms, yet is regarded as avant-garde because of presuppositions
regarding her identity and choice of poetic content. While Joseph's
formally and culturally radical position may be seen as "conventional,"
Agbabi's "conventional" use of form places her outside of a recognizable
tradition. When we examine the intersection of the categories "avant-
gardism" and "diasporic" in the poetry of Anthony Joseph and Patience
Agbabi, constructive conundrums are illuminated in the ways these terms are
used. By refreshing our perspectives, we may discover that the greatest
value of both terms has been their ability to evolve as they move culture
forward.

-----------------------
[i] For related discussion of the relationship between the categories of
the avant-garde and the diasporic in relation to Black British poetry, see
Lauri Ramey, "Situating a 'Black' British Poetic Avant-Garde," in Black
British Aesthetics Today, ed. R. Victoria Arana (Cambridge: Cambridge
Scholars Press, 2007), 79-100. For a personal reflection on the experience
and situation of a self-described Black avant-garde writer in England
today, see Anthony Joseph's essay "The Continuous Diaspora: Experimental
Practice/s in Contemporary Black British Poetry," Black British Aesthetics
Today. 150-56. See also Lauri Ramey, "Contemporary Black British Poetry,"
in Black British Writing, ed. R. Victoria Arana and Lauri Ramey (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 109-36.
[ii] Stuart Hall, "Minimal Selves," in Black British Cultural Studies, ed.
Houston A. Baker, Manthia Diawara, and Ruth Lindeborg (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1996): 14-15.
[iii] F. Abiola Irele, The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and
the Black Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), xv.
[iv] R. Victoria Arana, "Black American Bodies in the Neo-Millennial Avant-
Garde Black British Poetry." Literature and Psychology 48, no. 4 (2002):
72.
[v] Beth-Sarah Wright, "Dub Poet Lekka Mi," in Black British Culture and
Society: A Text Reader, ed. Kwesi Owusu (London: Routledge, 2000): 271.
[vi] Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 15.
[vii] Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Key Concepts in
Post-Colonial Studies (London: Routledge, 1998), 70.
[viii] Irele, African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black
Diaspora, xiv-xv.
[ix] Anthony Joseph, Teragaton (London: Poison Engine Press, 1997); see
also Desafinado (London: Poison Engine Press, 1994).
[x] Jacques Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason
since Freud," in Literary Theory: An Anthology, ed. Julie Rivkin and
Michael Ryan (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998), 190–205; Joseph,
introduction to Teragaton, 18.
[xi] Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 1.
[xii] Joseph, Anthony, The African Origins of UFOs, introduction by Lauri
Ramey (Cambridge: Salt, 2006).
[xiii] The excerpts of this article are reprinted with permission of the
New York Times.
[xiv] Postcard produced by the residency's sponsor, The Poetry Society,
dated 18 April 2000. The Flamin' Eight Tattoo Studio and Clothing Store's
address on the postcard is 120 Holloway Road, London N7 8JE. The tattoo of
Patience Agbabi's poem was by Naresh on the model Joelle Taylor.
[xv] Patience Agbabi, "Ms. De Meanour," in Transformatrix (Edinburgh:
Canongate, 2000), 45. See also her collections R.A.W. (London: Gecko, 1995)
and Bloodshot Monochrome (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2008).
[xvi] Ibid., 78. For further discussion of this poem and Agbabi's
modulation of freedom and structure in creative and sexual contexts, see
"Patience Agbabi: Freedom in Form" by Lauri Ramey in Sable 11 (Autumn/Fall
2007): 75-77, 93-96.
[xvii] This poem appears in the unpublished draft manuscript of Bloodshot
Monochrome but is not included in the published volume.
[xviii] Email from Patience Agbabi to Lauri Ramey (28 September 2005).
[xix] Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 311.