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Abstract
This essay considers the place of Brian Lara in Caribbean poetry through two literary framing devices. It first situates the iconic image of Lara within the literary frames provided by T.S. Eliot's ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ and Kamau Brathwaite's notion of ‘mwe’, before unpacking Lara poems composed by writers and performers as well known as Jean Breeze, Howard Fergus and Paul Keens-Douglas. The discussion suggests that by reading these pieces as a collection Lara is shown to represent the Caribbean's ongoing negotiation between the one and the many, as well as the potentially hazardous over-investment in the individual hero. Consequently, the discussion is less concerned with the actions and personality of Lara than it is with his heroic image in poetry and the critical messages West Indies cricket and the Caribbean more generally may take from such literary representations.
Notes
1 CitationScovell, Brian Lara: Cricket's Troubled Genius.
2 Beckles' key writings on Lara are: The Development of West Indies Cricket: Vol. 2; ‘The Strife of Brian’ and ‘Brian Lara’.
3 See CitationSobers, Garry Sobers, 276.
4 CitationLara, Beating the Field, 33–42.
5 The symbol * indicates that a batsman is not out.
6 For a discussion of this fall see, among others, CitationGrigg, ‘Calypso to Callapso’.
7 See CitationBeckles, ‘Brian Lara’, 245.
8 CitationBeckles writes of the three paradigms of West Indies cricket history. He argues that the nationalist sentiments of the first and second paradigms are now in retreat and being overriden by diverse and competing island-based socio-economic interests. See The Development of West Indies Cricket: Vol. 1, xviii. Beckles repeats the point about Lara being the ‘first hero of a new paradigm’ of globalization in ‘Brian Lara’, 253.
9 CitationHector, ‘Lara in Cricket Time and Social Place’.
10 CitationEliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, in The Sacred Wood, 42–53.
11 Eliot, ‘The Possibility of a Poetic Drama’, in The Sacred Wood, 55.
12 CitationSaid, Culture and Imperialism, 1–3.
13 CitationJames, Beyond a Boundary, 202.
14 CitationJames, Beyond a Boundary, 131.
15 CitationJames, ‘Garfield Sobers’, 389.
16 CitationJames, ‘Garfield Sobers’, 379–80.
17 CitationSurin, ‘C.L.R. James' Materialist Aesthetic of Cricket’, 318.
18 Sobers, Garry Sobers, 277.
19 Beckles, The Development of West Indies Cricket: Vol. 2, 145.
20 Beckles, The Development of West Indies Cricket: Vol. 2, 150.
21 Beckles, The Development of West Indies Cricket: Vol. 2, 146. Interestingly this information is not conveyed by either Sobers in Garry Sobers or Lara in Beating the Field but Beckles records his first hand conversations with both players to support his case.
22 Beckles, The Development of West Indies Cricket: Vol. 2, 146.
23 Beckles, The Development of West Indies Cricket: Vol. 2, 131.
24 James, Beyond a Boundary, 218.
25 See CitationBrathwaite, History of the Voice, 13 and 30.
26 CitationBreiner, ‘Creole Language in the Poetry of Derek Walcott’, 30.
27 See CitationBreiner, ‘Lyric and Autobiography in West Indian Literature’.
28 CitationBrathwaite, Barabajan Poems 1492–1992, 204–5.
29 Hector, ‘Lara in Cricket Time and Social Place’.
30 Beckles, The Development of West Indies Cricket: Vol. 2, 93.
31 Hector, ‘Lara in Cricket Time and Social Place’.
32 CitationRohlehr, ‘Music, Literature and West Indian Cricket Values’; CitationMidgett, ‘Cricket and Calypso’.
33 CitationBrown and McDonald, The Bowling was Superfine.
34 See Christopher Martin-Jenkins, ‘Scintillating Lara peaks at 400’. The Times, April 13, 2004, 70.
35 CitationBreeze, ‘Song for Lara’, in On the Edge of the Island, 67–9.
36 CitationRamkisson-Chen, ‘On Lara's 375’, in Ancestry, 101.
37 CitationMorgan, ‘With a Tassa Blending’.
38 In Beating the Field, Lara claims that this was action was done ‘quite instinctively’, 100.
39 CitationFergus, Lara Rains and Colonial Rites, 9–11.
40 Although Lara himself has a young daughter, Sydney, from a relationship with former Trinidadian model Leseal Rovedas, he has never married and Brian Scovell puts this lack of a partner and the death of his father as the two chief factors shaping Lara's personal life. See, Scovell, Brian Lara, 21.
41 Hector in the Outlet cited in CitationSearle, Pitch of Life, 44–5.
42 CitationMcDonald, ‘Massa Day Done’, in Between Silence and Silence, 87–8; CitationFergus, ‘Conquest’, in Volcano Verses, 59–60.
43 CitationGilroy, The Black Atlantic, 131.
44 Fergus, ‘Lara Again’, in Volcano Verses, 61. All citations are taken from these pages.
45 See CitationKeens-Douglas, ‘Tanti at de Oval’, in Tim Tim, 26–32.
46 CitationKeens-Douglas, ‘Tanti Backin' Lara’, in Roll Call, 33–6.
47 CitationMarkham, ‘Conversations at Upton Park iii’ and ‘For Brian Lara’, in Misapprehensions, 77 and 78 respectively.
48 Keens-Douglas, ‘Lara Fans’, in Roll Call, 8–9.
49 In the ‘The Strife of Brian’, 87, Beckles describes how, ‘The cricket hero became a demi-god, a role model, invested with expectations that suggest iconic ‘worship’ and idealisation’.
50 CitationPires, ‘Emperor of Trinidad’, 215.
51 Eutrice Cowie-Hope, ‘Lara the Brave’. Trinidad Guardian, April 26, 2004; and ‘Celebrating Brian Lara’. Trinidad Guardian, April 28, 2004.
52 See, among numerous other sources, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, ‘Scintillating Lara Peaks at 400’. The Times, April 13, 2004.
53 Fazeer Mohammed, ‘Of misguided celebrations and misplaced priorities’, November 30, 2005. http://content-www.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/227748.html.