Diaspora and the Avant-Garde in Contemporary Black British Poetry

Abstract

What does it mean to be an avant-garde poet if one is Black and British today? Are there different definitions for avant-gardism in this context than for the historical avant-garde movements of the twentieth century? Patience Agbabi and Anthony Joseph are two younger Black British poets whose poetry and poetics differ dramatically, yet both often are characterized as “avant-garde.” Citing her favorite poem, Agbabi names Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” a treasured icon that employs tidy structure to bury thorny irony under populist appeal. Agbabi mentions canonical figures such as Chaucer, Wordsworth, and Browning among her important literary models, and frequently writes rhymed metrical verse, notably sonnets and sestinas. In contrast, Joseph lists Kamau Brathwaite, Amiri Barak a, Ted Joans, Bob Kaufman, the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Kitchener, Henry Dumas, and Wilson Harris among his main influences. These Black authors—highly respected though far less likely to appear on college syllabi than Agbabi’s exemplars—explode poetic conventions to convey the difficulties of linguistically encapsulating their diasporic experiences, ideas, and histories.