ABSTRACT
Chinua Achebe has remarked “that the English language will be able to carry the weight of [his] African experience” (103). However, he warns that “it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings” (103). This project examines the ways in which twentieth-century Caribbean poets, Una Marson (1905-1965 ), Eric Roach (1915-1974) and Claude McKay (1889-1948) “alter” Renaissance forms and poetics in order to suit their own subversive objectives. Each poet demonstrates that their use of certain Renaissance forms sufficiently shoulders the burden of their unique Caribbean “experience” while simultaneously challenging social injustices. Therefore, by appropriating forms traditionally associated with whiteness and privilege, the poets defy socially-constructed notions of authenticity and point to the revolutionary potential of language. Nevertheless, due to their choice of literary form, each poet has been marginalized to some degree. This project is partly a recuperative effort to restore these poets within their rightful place in the Caribbean poetic canon. Through their poetic output, Marson, Roach and McKay reinforce the need for post-colonial scholars to create alternative theories that will account for the complexity of not only their work, but the work of similar Caribbean poets as well.
