Making Waves: Una Marson's Poetic Voice at the BBC

Abstract

Jamaican poet and playwright Una Marson (1905–1965) gained access to the BBC microphone during World War Two and went on to produce, edit, and present an extensive number of broadcasts for the West Indies on the Overseas Service. Closely examining internal BBC communications alongside Marson's poetry, this article asks what it meant for a female colonial subject to be speaking on the radio at this time. Postcolonial theory informs analysis of Marson's poetry before and after her immersion in the metropole. This article focuses attention on the effect of Marson's experiences at the BBC on her literary output and psychological health for the first time. It argues that Marson's interaction with the Corporation profoundly influenced her poetic voice. Furthermore, it uses her poetry to inform readings of archival material that shape our understanding of Marson's relationship to British broadcasting.

KEYWORDS:

• BBC radio
• Caribbean voices
• empire
• gender
• voice
• Una Marson

Notes

1 Proctor, “Una Marson at the BBC”.

2 Proctor, “Una Marson at the BBC,” 4.

3 Donnell, “Una Marson and the Fractured Subjects of Modernity,” 346.

4 Donnell, “Una Marson and the Fractured Subjects of Modernity,” 346–48.

5 Snaith, Modernist Voyages, 154.

6 Umoren, “‘This is the Age of Woman’,” 58–67.

7 Winkiel, “Gendered Transnationalism,” 40.

8 Emery, Modernism, 119.

9 I use the term ‘colonial’ here to acknowledge the Crown Colony status of Jamaica during this period, making Marson's citizenship administratively colonial, but also to acknowledge her position as a late-colonial intellectual as subject to imperial ideology and oppression before the nationalist movements of the mid-century and subsequent independence.

10 Donnell, “Introduction,” 13.

11 Preminger and Brogan, Poetry and Poetics, 1366.

12 Marson, “Jamaica”, Selected Poems, 56.

13 Emery, 113.

14 Marson, “Jamaica,” 57.

15 Marson, “Jamaica,” 73.

16 Donnell, “Introduction,” 29.

17 Sherlock, “Foreword,” vii.

18 Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man,” 126.

19 Bhabha, 127.

20 Huggan, “A Tale of Two Parrots,” 645.

21 Braithwaite, History of the Voice, 5.

22 Braithwaite, 13.

23 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. ‘Creole, n. and adj.’, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/44229?redirectedFrom=creole.

24 See McWhorter, Defining Creole, for an overview of the controversies in the field of linguistics.

25 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 128.

26 Marson, “The Stone Breakers,” 125.

27 Savory, “Anglophone Caribbean Literature,” 729.

28 Crisell, Understanding Radio, 58.

29 Crisell, 47.

30 Gillespie and Webb, “Corporate Cosmopolitanism,” 5.

31 For further details of the changed relations between the BBC and the wartime government, and the consequences of such wartime collaboration on Empire broadcasting, see Potter, Broadcasting Empire, 114.

32 Marson, “The Banjo Boy,” 124.

33 Kalliney, Commonwealth of Letters, 4.

34 Ibid.

35 Rosenburg discusses Marson's position between interwar Caribbean writers and the prominent writers of the 1950s. Rosenburg, Nationalism and the Formation of Caribbean Literature, 159–80.

36 Marson, “The Banjo Boy,” 124.

37 Marson, “The Stranger,” 98.

38 Proctor, 14–15.

39 J. B. Clark, letter to Harold Nicolson, 7 March 1942, E2/584, Foreign Gen. West Indies, 1939–1950, BBC Written Archive Centre (hereafter BBC WAC).

40 John Grenfell Williams, letter to J. B. Clark, 11 March 1942, E2/584, Foreign Gen. West Indies, 1939–1950, BBC WAC.

41 Rendall, letter to Grenfell Williams, 2 January 1943, E1/1294/2 (File 1b, 1943–1944), Countries: West Indies, Broadcasting in West Indies. BBC WAC.

42 Grenfell Williams to Rendall, “Notes on Interview with Miss Marson,” 28 August 1944, L1/290/1, BBC WAC.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Rendall, letter to Grenfell Williams, 7 August 1944, L1/290/1, BBC WAC.

46 Marson, “Politeness,” 166.

47 A modified instance of the influential concept of ‘writing back to Empire’ as theorised by Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin in The Empire Writes Back, 1989.

48 Proctor, “Una Marson,” 24. and Calling the West Indies script in BBC WAC.

49 Proctor, “Una Marson,” 24.

50 Grenfell Williams to Rendall, “Notes on Interview with Miss Marson,” 28 August 1944, L1/290/1, BBC WAC.

51 Caribbean Voices, 25 March 1945, scripts in BBC WAC.

52 Ibid.

53 Undated memorandum written by Joan Doulton, detailing the events of Marson's illness, communication with her sister, and dates of movement between hospitals, L1/290/1, BBC WAC.

54 Report from A. F. Whyte, BBC Medical Advisor, titled ‘Miss Una Marson’, 3 May 1946, L1/290/2, BBC WAC.

55 See Newton, Paving the Empire Road, for the inclusion of Black Britons at the BBC.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leonie Thomas

Leonie Thomas, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. E-mail: [email protected] and University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.