Kamau Brathwaite

KAMAU BRATHWAITE - The Kamau Brathwaite Award In Poetry.

Legendary poet and academic Kamau Brathwaite passed away on February 4, 2020. The Barbados born-poet, one of the titans of post-colonial literature and the arts, was 89.

Kamau Brathwaite, who was born in Barbados and lived all over the world including a stint in Ghana, was widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. Starting with his first published work Four Plays for Primary Schools (1964), he went on to produce dozens of collections of poetry and important academic work. Some of his other work was Jamaica Poetry (1979), Barbados Poetry (1979), Sun Poem (1982), Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982), Gods of the Middle Passage (1982), and Third World Poems (1983).

Some of the awards for his work include the Neustadt International Prize for Literature 1994, Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from International Poetry Forum 1999, Griffin Poetry Prize 2006, Robert Frost Medal from Poetry Society of America 2015, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry 2018.

Writers and poets from across Africa who were also influenced by the Barbadian have been leaving tributes on Social Media. Here are a few;