Gillian Cal­iste

Frag­ments of men­tal and phys­i­cal pho­tographs are what Trinida­di­an-born British au­thor and po­et An­tho­ny Joseph pieced to­geth­er to bring to life the per­sona of his fa­ther, Al­bert, who was large­ly ab­sent. Con­fronting this ab­sence through po­et­ry, he penned Son­nets for Al­bert and cap­tured the 2022 TS Eliot prize.

Per­haps the most es­teemed in po­et­ry, the prize is award­ed to the best new po­et­ry col­lec­tion in Eng­lish and pub­lished by UK or Irish au­thors.

Joseph joins fel­low Trinida­di­an-British writer and per­former Roger Robin­son who was al­so a re­cip­i­ent of the TS Eliot prize in 2019.

In their re­marks on Jan­u­ary 16, the judges called Joseph's work “lu­mi­nous”. He sees it as vin­di­ca­tion for years of qui­et­ly pur­su­ing his love of writ­ing and cre­at­ing.

The 56-year-old po­et told Sun­day Guardian that his fifth col­lec­tion of po­ems Son­nets for Al­bert pub­lished by Blooms­bury seeks to memo­ri­alise his “charis­mat­ic” par­ent who was miss­ing from his life and who be­came al­most a “mytho­log­i­cal fig­ure.” It al­so has the po­ten­tial to speak to oth­ers who have ex­pe­ri­enced the same void he said.

Cit­ing (Earl) Lovelace's vi­sion of the Caribbean as a place cen­tral to hu­man­i­ty rather than as an iso­lat­ed one on the pe­riph­ery, Joseph made a case for Caribbean peo­ple, even if every­day peo­ple, to be im­mor­talised.

“The Caribbean is al­so a cen­tre of hu­man­i­ty and it's im­por­tant that we recog­nise the mytholo­gies and the folk­lores we live in. We have to re­alise that they are uni­ver­sal. A lot of peo­ple have a dif­fi­cult re­la­tion­ship with their fa­ther, so when I talk about my fa­ther on a very per­son­al lev­el, I'm al­so reach­ing out uni­ver­sal­ly to touch any­one who's had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences,” he said.

Fea­tur­ing pho­tos of his fa­ther, the po­et lays bare his com­plex re­la­tion­ship with his ab­sent par­ent in Son­nets for Al­bert, con­tend­ing with his fa­ther's short­com­ings while still long­ing for and lov­ing him.

Joseph's love for and ac­cep­tance of his fa­ther who passed five years ago were in­flu­enced by his grand­moth­er Sylvia, a nur­tur­ing woman, who loved Al­bert, her last son. Joseph said, at a very young age, he was sent to live with her and his strict step-grand­fa­ther Clarence Hoyte in Mt Lam­bert af­ter his par­ents split up. His younger broth­er stayed with his moth­er.

Joseph would de­vel­op a very close re­la­tion­ship with his Co­coa Pa­ny­ol grand­moth­er who was a coun­try woman, orig­i­nal­ly from San­ta Cruz. His aunt Ur­su­la would al­so im­pact his life.

“My fa­ther wasn't around. He was in and out. You would see him once a year if you were lucky,” Joseph re­called.

His most cher­ished mem­o­ry of the man he of­ten idolised is be­ing hoist­ed by him on­to his shoul­ders in Memo­r­i­al Park near the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Char­lotte Street when a fight broke out at Car­ni­val and then watch­ing the mas bands pass from his van­tage point on his fa­ther's neck. He en­ti­tles it POS­GH 1 in the book.

The gift­ed po­et who has al­so au­thored three nov­els said his ear­li­est mem­o­ries of writ­ing po­et­ry were at age 11. But his child­hood po­ems cen­tred on teenage ro­mance, the sa­van­nah where he lived, Car­ni­val, and his gen­er­al en­vi­ron­ment rather than on his car­pen­ter fa­ther who lat­er be­came a fore­man on con­struc­tion sites.

Com­plet­ing his sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion at San Juan Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary, Joseph worked in in­sur­ance for a cou­ple of years and left for Eng­land in 1989 bent on start­ing a rock band and even be­com­ing a rock star. For a time, he lived his dream as the lead singer of a four-mem­ber Black rock band called Zedd. Then things fiz­zled out.

It was a box of old song lyrics and po­ems he had writ­ten as a youth back home that re­vealed his true call­ing one day. Tak­ing his cue from Beat writ­ers like Allen Gins­berg and Amiri Bara­ka who pro­mot­ed a pas­sion­ate ap­proach to po­et­ry of­ten ac­com­pa­nied by pro­gres­sive jazz mu­sic, and such Caribbean greats as Derek Wal­cott and Ka­mau Braith­waite, Joseph delved in­to what he termed post-colo­nial Caribbean ex­per­i­men­tal po­et­ry and spo­ken word. Sur­re­al­ism and Trinidad his main themes, he reimag­ined every­day el­e­ments in the home­land with beau­ty and won­der, even­tu­al­ly find­ing his voice.

Along the way, he put to­geth­er an­oth­er band, re­leas­ing eight al­bums to date and tour­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. In 2019, he and his band record­ed the al­bum Peo­ple of the Sun in Trinidad, with 3Canal, El­la An­dall, Len “Boogsie” Sharpe and Broth­er Re­sis­tance as guests.

Joseph's ap­proach to lyrics, rhythm and ex­pres­sion moves seam­less­ly be­tween his writ­ing and mu­sic, pour­ing in­to oth­er as­pects of his life.

“Be­ing a po­et means that I car­ry that at­ti­tude and aes­thet­ic in­to any­thing I do, even in mak­ing mu­sic or teach­ing. It's an ap­proach where you are try­ing to find a new way of what it means to be hu­man con­stant­ly,” Joseph who is al­so a King's Col­lege Lon­don lec­tur­er in Cre­ative Writ­ing said.

Nat­u­ral­ly, his mu­si­cal­i­ty played in­to his award-win­ning Son­nets. He ex­per­i­ment­ed with the clas­si­cal 14-line-ten-syl­la­ble pat­terned po­et­ic form, pour­ing what felt like his fa­ther's “en­er­gy” and “spir­it” in­to his vers­es.

“Be­cause the son­net is an im­pe­r­i­al form. It's one of those el­e­ments of Eng­land that is part of a colo­nial mind­set, so [the spir­it of] my fa­ther kind of re­sist­ed it and I want­ed to hear his voice come out so I start­ed chang­ing it. It varies, some of it still has traces of the clas­si­cal son­net, but most­ly I freed it up and wrote it more in a Caribbean or Trinida­di­an rhythm,” Joseph ex­plained.

He al­so chan­nelled his Trin­bag­o­ni­aness and con­nec­tion to home in­to his sec­ond nov­el Kitch (Peepal Tree Press 2018) a fic­tion­al bi­og­ra­phy of Lord Kitch­en­er which he ini­tial­ly start­ed as part of his PhD at Gold­smiths in the wake of the death of the cul­tur­al icon. It was short­list­ed for the 2019 Re­pub­lic of Con­scious­ness prize and the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture’s En­core award.

Joseph en­joys be­ing the fa­ther of two daugh­ters. He ap­pre­ci­ates the sup­port of his wife, Louise, the writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty, his pub­lish­ers, and his agent Elise Dilsworth.

As to whether writ­ing Son­nets for Al­bert has brought him clos­er to fill­ing the void of hav­ing grown up with­out a fa­ther, the po­et is still not quite sure. But it has helped him bet­ter come to terms with who his fa­ther was and gain an un­der­stand­ing of un­con­di­tion­al love.

Son­nets for Al­bert is avail­able at Pa­per Based Book­shop, St Ann's.

Sonnets for Albert

Q&A with An­tho­ny Joseph

What are your feel­ings about win­ning the cov­et­ed TS Eliot prize?

It's a big ac­knowl­edge­ment be­cause I start­ed writ­ing a long time ago, prob­a­bly in 1978. I was 11 writ­ing in sec­ondary school. In the past few years, it's worked in that I make a liv­ing from be­ing a po­et now, and an aca­d­e­m­ic. This is a re­al ac­knowl­edge­ment be­cause I've nev­er been a main­stream po­et. My work has al­ways been ex­per­i­men­tal, kind of left field and I'm not some­one who's great at sell­ing him­self. I was nev­er that way. I just did my thing. It's re­al­ly im­por­tant to me on a per­son­al lev­el and al­so it means hope­ful­ly more and more peo­ple will get to read my work. That's a great thing.

How come you left Trinidad in 1989? Was it your life­long dream to seek out your fu­ture abroad?

At that time in the 80s, every­one was try­ing to leave Trinidad. We had just come out of a re­ces­sion, I think, and things were a bit un­sta­ble eco­nom­i­cal­ly and a lot of peo­ple were try­ing to leave. A lot were go­ing to the States and we got caught up in a sort of post-colo­nial mind­set that you have to leave Trinidad, leave the Caribbean and go some­where else. I thought: I'm not go­ing to be suc­cess­ful here. It's changed now, every­one's try­ing to get in.

So you felt com­pelled to leave?

Yes...be­cause of the stuff I was in­to; Lit­er­a­ture and mu­sic and at that time, there was very lit­tle op­por­tu­ni­ty to do any­thing out­side of the norm in Trinidad. It's dif­fer­ent now be­cause we have tech­nol­o­gy, the in­ter­net.

You got in­to po­et­ry around age 11. How did that come about? Have you al­ways felt the need to ex­press your­self?

I was re­al­ly in­to mu­sic and my grand­fa­ther had a few records that I grew up lis­ten­ing to; peo­ple like Spar­row. I was re­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by lyrics. It was amaz­ing how ca­lyp­so­ni­ans rhymed and talked about all these in­ter­est­ing top­ics. So by the time I got to be 12 years old, I start­ed lis­ten­ing to Amer­i­can pop mu­sic. I start­ed writ­ing my own lyrics and the writ­ing of lyrics and po­ems be­came a re­al pas­sion, every day I just wrote. But at that time, I didn't know what a po­et was. I didn't know what po­et­ry was. It was on­ly when I came to the UK I re­alised that I was a po­et; that this was what my life was about.

Did you have feel­ings for your fa­ther in your ear­ly years?

Well, my grand­moth­er loved my fa­ther. That was her youngest child. He lived in To­ba­go for about ten years and when he would come, he would come to see her...and I would be there and get to see him, as I said, once or twice a year. He was a myth to me, a leg­end, very charis­mat­ic and charm­ing, very well-dressed...just a re­al trick­ster.

So at that time you re­al­ly idolised him? You had pos­i­tive feel­ings to­wards him?

The fun­ny thing, I nev­er had any neg­a­tive feel­ings about my dad. I al­ways loved him and ac­cept­ed him for who he was. I think it was be­cause my grand­moth­er loved him that I felt that love for him too. He was a hard man to dis­like. He was a nice guy when you were with him.

Any mem­o­ry of you spend­ing time, do­ing an ac­tiv­i­ty with him? Per­haps you talk about it in your book?

Yes. One of the po­ems talks about be­ing very young and my fa­ther show­ing up and he's got big rolls of mon­ey. He takes me to the shop on the cor­ner and he buys me any­thing I want. I end up buy­ing com­ic books and choco­lates. That was quite spe­cial. I felt like I had a fa­ther...but then he was gone again.

Men, and Caribbean men, are typ­i­cal­ly seen as find­ing it hard­er to com­mu­ni­cate their feel­ings. What al­lowed you to ex­press your­self, and do so hon­est­ly in Son­nets?

I nev­er suf­fered from that. I was al­ways a ro­man­tic and I was al­ways writ­ing love songs. I nev­er had an is­sue ex­press­ing my­self be­cause I wrote it down. Yes, and it stemmed from my grand­moth­er too. She was al­ways go­ing to be push­ing me, ask­ing: tell me how you feel, what are you think­ing? And that was beau­ti­ful. We could talk about any­thing.

What do think your win means for Caribbean writ­ers and those of the di­as­po­ra?

There's nev­er been a short­age of amaz­ing writ­ers in Trinidad. We have a rich tra­di­tion of writ­ers go­ing back to CLR James, VS Naipaul, and all the way up to now. I hope that my win draws even more at­ten­tion to writ­ers from the Caribbean be­cause I think I said it else­where that the Caribbean is a mi­cro­cosm for the rest of the world. If you want to un­der­stand where the world is right now, look at the Caribbean: mi­gra­tion, gen­der con­flict, glob­al warm­ing, and peo­ple mov­ing in and out try­ing to find their iden­ti­ty. We've al­ways tried to move be­yond the Caribbean and I think as Braith­waite and Lam­ming used to say: we be­come Caribbean peo­ple when we leave the Caribbean. I think this move­ment cre­ates in­ter­est­ing lit­er­a­ture, and I don't think it's good to re­gard it as a mar­ket­ing trend that we have these great Caribbean writ­ers now win­ning prizes. It's not a trend. It's how it should be.