E. A. Markham - Poetry and Other Works

Poetry and Other Works

Although Markham is mainly known for his poetry, he worked in many artistic genres across the years, producing plays, short stories, a novel and an autobiography as well as multiple collections of poetry. He found his first "artistic outlet" in drama, writing and producing a play called The Masterpiece while still at university in the early 1960s.

A defining characteristic of Markham's work is his tireless exploration of multiple voices and perspectives. In a short introduction to his work entitled "Many Voices, Many Lives" (1989), Markham wrote: "The dramatic revelation that poets in the Caribbean had two voices - nation language and Standard English - released many energies; but we had to be sure that this wasn't to be interpreted that we had only two voices, only two modes of expression I was interested in testing the whole range of voices that were possibly real for me" As part of his exploration of multiple personae, Markham often published his works under pseudonyms. In the 1970s, Markham wrote a series of poems (including Lambchops, Lampchops in Disguise and Philpot in the City) in the fictional personae of Paul St. Vincent - a young, black man from Antigua, living in South London - and these poems were published in St. Vincent's name. Unlike much of Markham's poetry, the Paul St. Vincent poems are mainly written in nation language. Later, in the 1980s, Markham wrote through the fictional persona of Sally Goodman: a white, Welsh feminist. Some of the "Sally Goodman" poems were later anthologized in Markham's poetry collection Living in Disguise. Markham argued that in inventing these multiple personae, "the test was to force their creater to accommodate types of consciousness which, at the very least, served to enlarge one area of Westindianness".

Markham's writing in genres other than poetry - the short story, the novel, autobiography and travel-writing - was well received by critics. In addition to his creative writing, Markham also edited two important anthologies of Caribbean writing: Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies and Britain (1979) and The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories (1996).