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Abstract
This paper introduces and explores the relationship between Caribbean female poets and the game of cricket given cricket's historical importance to the Anglophone Caribbean and the numerous appearances of cricket within Caribbean literature. For if we are to appreciate cricket as a significant activity for the Caribbean, then the relationship between women and the game must also be investigated. In this context, it is noteworthy that a number of Caribbean women writers have mobilized cricket in their work, drawing on and contesting the game's socio-political position and demonstrating its availability to them as a means of capturing their own Caribbean and life experiences. After briefly introducing the place of women in Caribbean cricket poetry, the discussion focuses on the cricketing works of Anim-Addo, who dedicated both of her poetry collections to her mother, Jane Joseph, a Grenada player during the post-war period. Notably, Anim-Addo takes up her mother's cricketing 'herstory' and infuses it with her own diasporic idiom of feminist transgression, social reclamation and boundary crossings. The paper concludes by examining how Jean Breeze has mobilized the sport as a metaphor for female sexuality, sexual enjoyment and self articulation in her poem 'on cricket, sex and housework'.
Notes
1. See Hilary McD. Beckles, 'Introduction', in The development of West Indies cricket: volume 1: The age of nationalism (London, 1998), pp. xiv-xix and throughout. For C.L.R James's classic reading of West Indies cricket see Beyond a boundary (London, 2000), which was first published in 1963.
2. Beckles, The development of West Indies cricket: volume 1, p. 117.
3. Beckles, The development of West Indies cricket: volume 1, ch. 6, pp. 117-44.
4. See Michael Manley, A history of West Indies cricket, revised edn with Donna Symonds (London, 2002).
5. See Beckles, The development of West Indies cricket: volume 1, ch. 5; Gordon Rohlehr, 'Music, literature and West Indian cricket values', in Hilary McD. Beckles, ed., An area of conquest: Popular democracy and West Indies cricket (Jamaica, 1994), pp. 55-102; and Frank Birbalsingh, The rise of Westindian cricket: From colony to nation (Antigua, 1996).
6. For discussions of Caribbean women's writing, see, for example, Carol Boyce Davies and Elain Savory Fido, eds, Out of the Kambla: Caribbean women and literature (Trenton, NJ, 1990); and Selwyn R. Cudjoe, ed., Caribbean women writers: Essays from the first international conference (Wellesley, MA, 1990). For a useful study of poetry in particular, see Denise DeCaires Narain, Contemporary Caribbean women's poetry (London, 2002).
7. See 'Tanti at de Oval' in ?Paul Keens-Douglas, Tim Tim: The dialect poetry of Paul Keens-Douglas (Trinidad, 1976), pp. 26-32; and 'Tanti backin' Lara' in Paul Keens-Douglas, Roll call: Poetry and short stories by Paul Keens-Douglas (Trinidad, 1997), pp. 33-6.
8. Cynthia James, 'From orature to literature in Jamaican and Trinidadian children's folk traditions', Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 30 (2) (2005), pp. 164-78 (p. 169).
9. I am yet to discover a poe-m dedicated to the women's regional cricket team or any of its heroes.
10. See 'Massa day done', in Ian McDonald, Between silence and silence (Leeds, 2003), pp. 87-8; 'Conquest', in Howard Fergus, Volcano Verses (Leeds, 2003), pp. 59-60; and 'Viv', in Faustin Charles, Days and nights in the magic forest (London, 1986), p. 43.
11. 'Lara rains', 'Lara reach' and 'BC Lara' are all in Howard Fergus, Lara rains and colonial rites (Leeds, 1998), pp. 9, 10 & 11, respectively.
12. 'Song for Lara', in Jean 'Binta' Breeze, On the edge of the island (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1997), pp. 67-9.
13. 'On Lara's 375', in Ranjandaye Ramkisson-Chen, Ancestry (London, 1997), p. 101.
14. Paula Morgan, 'With a Tassa blending: Calypso and cultural identity in Indo-Caribbean fiction', Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, 3 (2) (2005), available online at http://anthurium.miami.edu/volume_3/issue_2/morganwithatassa.html, accessed 3 November 2008.
15. Eutrice Cowie-Hope, 'Lara the brave', Trinidad Guardian, 26 April 2004; and 'Celebrating Brian Lara', Trinidad Guardian, 28 April 2004.
16. 'Quality time', in Merle Collins, Lady in a boat (Leeds, 2003), pp. 13-14.
17. Lorna Goodison, 'How I became a writer', in Selwyn R. Cudjoe, ed., Caribbean women writers, pp. 290-3 (p. 291). Such an engagement with her own sense of self and internal self-construction echoes Beryl Gilroy's closing statement in 'I write because...', where she exclaims: 'I express my identity in the craft of writing.' See Beryl Gilroy, 'I write because...', in Selwyn R. Cudjoe, ed., Caribbean women writers, pp. 195-201 (p. 201).
18. 'For my mother (may i inherit half her strength)', in Lorna Goodison, Guinea woman: New and selected poems (Manchester, 2000), pp. 25-8.
19. 'Village cricket', in Beryl Gilroy, Sunlight on sweet water (Leeds, 1994), pp. 101-4.
20. Jean Breeze, 'Sunday cricket', in Jean 'Binta' Breeze, On the edge of the island (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1997), pp. 62-6.
21. See Carole Boyce Davies, Black women, writing and identity: Migrations of the subject (London, 1994), p. 2.
22. Brenda Berrian, '"We speak because we dream": Conversations with Merle Collins', in Carole Boyce Davies, ed., Moving beyond boundaries volume 2: Black women's diasporas (London, 1994) pp. 31-42 (p. 39).
23. 'Thoughts from a cricket orphan', in Joan Anim-Addo, Haunted by history: Poetry by Joan Anim-Addo (London, 1998), pp. 51-2. All citations taken from these pages.
24. 'Janie cricketing lady', in Joan Anim-Addo, Janie cricketing lady with carnival and hurricane poems (London, 2006), pp. 10-44. This is a long poetic cycle which is subdivided into historical periods and then individual poetic sections, even poems, with individual titles. Some of these titles are used here but all references are supported by pages numbers taken from this edition.
25. 'Long memoried meanings: Underpinnings of African-Caribbean women's writing', in Joan Anim-Addo, ed., Centre of remembrance: Memory and Caribbean women's literature (London, 2002), pp. 273-87 (pp. 273-4).
26. She reiterated this point during the 'Writing the other America: Comparative approaches to Caribbean and Latin American literature' conference, University of Warwick, 25 Feb. 2006.
27. Mervin Morris, 'Gender in some performance poetry', Critical Quarterly, 35 (1) (1993), pp. 78-84 (pp. 83-4).
28. See Jenny Sharpe, 'Dub and difference: A conversation with Jean "Binta" Breeze', Callaloo, 26 (3) (2003), 607-13 (pp. 612-13).
29. 'On cricket, sex and housework', in Jean 'Binta' Breeze, The arrival of Brighteye and other poems (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2000), p. 50.
30. Nourbese Philip, 'Prologue: In the matter of memory', in Anim-Addo, Centre of remembrance, pp. 3-13 (p. 6).