Revolutionary poet Peter Blackman has never received his due in either the Caribbean or the UK, where he made his home from 1937. The author has gathered selected poems and a speech by Blackman into a new collection, Footprints (Smokestack Books). This article discusses Blackman’s life from ‘colonised’ schoolboy and missionary to Africa to railway worker in north London and sets his writing – especially his language – in the context of twentieth-century West Indian literature. Blackman, who befriended Paul Robeson in London and dedicated works to Claudia Jones, was clearly at the vortex of progressive black cultural expression, but has hitherto been overlooked.
BlackmanPeter, Footprints: five poems, with a preface by Chris Searle (Middlesbrough, Smokestack, 2013). Quotations given here from the poems are from this edition unless otherwise stated.
2.
CarterTrevor, Shattering Illusions: West Indians in British politics (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1986).
3.
BrathwaiteE. K., History of the Voice (London, New Beacon Books, 1984).
4.
BlackmanPeter, ‘Address to a meeting organised by Art Against Racism and Fascism’ (1980), Footprints, op. cit.
5.
BlackmanPeter, ‘Is there a West Indian literature?’, Life and Letters (London, 1948).
6.
Ibid.
7.
From research notes of Joe Martin, taken from personal file on Peter Blackman at the BBC.
8.
Ibid.
9.
PeterBlackman, address to a meeting organised by Art Against Racism Fascism, 13April1980, Garage Young People’s Theatre, Sloane Square, London.
10.
Ibid.
11.
RobertWyatt in correspondence with Chris Searle, November2012.
12.
Blackman, AARF address, 1980, op. cit.
13.
From tape of Peter Blackman’s address to an Art Against Racism and Fascism meeting at the Half Moon Theatre, November1979.
