Coincidental with the advent of the word processor, Brathwaite seems to have developed the “Sycorax Video Style” of writing. To what do you attribute the poets need to evolve from his already effective poetics to this more visual representation?
Why does the poet dislike the term “dialect” in relation to the language of his work? Why is Brathwaite more comfortable with the term “Nation Language”?
How does the Sycorax style affect your reading and interpretation of some of Brathwaite’s poetry?
Does this poet think it important to be adhere rigidly to the printed version of his work? How does this play out in his readings?
There is definitely something going on here – is it intertextual? I agree there is a play on the physical/digital textual space but I’d question what we do with this alongside his performances as you too have mentioned. While we’ll discuss it tomorrow, I think the moves he makes linguistically is present in his performance. “Negus” is a wonderful example of this – listen to his emphasis and spacing/echoing of certain words and lengths. I think, as Collins points out in her essay, Brathwaite believes the poem is a “moment of possession” and language is often not perfect enough of a medium to portray this embodiment.
Great questions! – Amanda
I think he likes the creativity of the word processor in terms of its allowances for one to create one’s own script or font, so that one is no longer constrained by the typewriter’s long tradition of European font uniformity.
Dialect implies deviation from an original, but as Brathwaite recognizes, there is no true original, and so dialect merely acts as force in categorizing what regionally diverse peoples use to communicate and express themselves as deviations from the power base, thereby marginalizing these forms of speech while attempting to force these populations to adopt the standard form of speech:
“Martinique, one of the Antilles, has been French since 1635.
[…] Slavery was the rule until 1848. The population, numbering 400,000, has two languages: a mother tongue, Creole, and an official language, French, which is tending to become the natural language.” Glissant