Andrew Salkey

Andrew Salkey (January 30, 1928 - April 28, 1995) was a novelist, poet, freelance writer and journalist of Jamaican and Haitian origin. Salkey was born in Panama but was raised in Jamaica. He died in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he had been teaching.

Career

After completing his basic education in Jamaica, Salkey came to England in the early 1950s to attend the University of London. His first novel, A Quality of Violence, was published in 1955. According to Stuart Hall, Salkey "quickly took his place at the centre of a small but outstanding circle of Caribbean writers and intellectuals. For a critical period he was the key figure, the main presenter and writer-in-residence in the Caribbean section of the BBC World Service at Bush House, and his programmes became a glittering showcase for a generation of writers, including Sam Selvon and George Lamming, who had made London their second home. Established and aspiring authors were chivvied, cajoled, gently chastised, inspired and schooled to produce new work for radio on the Caribbean Voices programme over which Andrew Salkey often presided."

Salkey was a part of the West Indian Students Union (WISU), which provided an effective forum for Caribbean students to express their ideas and provided voluntary support to the "harassed" working-class Caribbean immigrant community, during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The association also included Gerry Burton, Arif Ali, Chris LeMaitre, John La Rose and Horace Lashley.

In the mid-1950s Salkey taught English at Walworth Secondary school (also known as Mina Road school), an early comprehensive just off the Old Kent Road in south-east London.

A prolific writer and editor, Salkey was the author of over 30 books in the course of his career, including novels for adults and for children, poetry collections, anthologies, travelogues, and essays. In the latter part of his life he was a professor in writing at Hampshire College in Amherst.

Salkey was good friends with Austin Clarke, and the two had a long written correspondence, a great deal of which is available in Clarke's files at the McMaster University Archives in Hamilton, Ontario.

I was headed nowhere like a hundred million others: I had escaped a malformed Jamaican middle class; I had attained my autumn pavement; I had done more than my fair share of hurting, rejecting, and condemning; and I had created another kind of failure, and this time, in another country.

(from Escape To An Autumn Pavement)

"Salkey's Score"

Salkey was a director and constant supporter of the London-based publishing company Bogle-L'Ouverture, founded by Guyanese-born Jessica Huntley, who (together with a committee comprising Louis James, John La Rose, Marc Matthews, Mervyn Morris, Jason Salkey, Anne Walmsley and Ronald Warwick) organised on 19-20 June 1992 a two-day symposium and celebration called "Salkey's Score". Held at the Commonwealth Institute, it paid tribute to Salkey in respect of his work in London in the 1960s and 1970s with the Caribbean Artist's Movement; his journalism on the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices; his contributions to developing the teaching of Caribbean writing in schools; the importance he gave to the relationship of Africa to personal and communal Caribbean identity; his work in Cuba; and his prolific output of novels, poetry and other writings.

Bibliography

• A Quality of Violence (novel, 1959)
• Escape to an Autumn Pavement (novel, 1960)
• West Indian Stories (editor; Faber and Faber, 1960)
• Hurricane (children's novel' Oxford University Press, 1964) (winner of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis)
• Earthquake (children's novel; Oxford University Press, 1965)
• Stories from the Caribbean (editor; Paul Elek Books, 1965)
• Commonwealth Poetry (editor West Indian section, 1965)
• The Shark Hunters (Nelson, 1966)
• Drought (Oxford University Press, 1966)
• Riot (Oxford University Press, 1967)
• Caribbean Prose: an anthology for secondary schools (editor; Evans, 1967)
• The Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover (1968) ISBN 0090855302
• The Adventures of Catullus Kelly (1969) ISBN 0090951409
• Island Voices: Stories from the West Indies (compiler, 1970, c1965) ISBN 0871405040
• Jonah Simpson (Oxford University Press, 1970)
• Breaklight: an anthology of Caribbean poetry, chosen, edited and introduced by Andrew Salkey (Hamish Hamilton, 1971) ISBN 0241019621
• Havana Journal (Penguin, 1971) ISBN 0140213031
• Georgetown Journal: a Caribbean writer’s journey from London via Port of Spain to Georgetown, Guyana, 1970 (New Beacon, 1972) ISBN 090124113X
• Caribbean Essays: an anthology; edited and introduced by Andrew Salkey (Evans, 1973) ISBN 0237289431
• Jamaica (poems; Hutchinson, 1973; Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1983) ISBN 0091157412
• Anancy’s Score (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1973) ISBN 0950154679 ISBN 0950154687
• Joey Tyson (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1974) ISBN 0950154695 ISBN 0904521001
• Come Home, Malcolm Heartland (Hutchinson, 1976)
• Writing in Cuba since the Revolution: an anthology of poems, short stories, and essays (editor; Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1977) ISBN 0904521052 ISBN 0904521044 (pbk.)
• In the Hills Where Her Dreams Live: poems for Chile, 1973-1978 (Casa de las Americas, 1979)
• The River that Disappeared (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1979)
• Land (Black Scholar Press, 1979)
• Danny Jones (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1980)
• Riot (Oxford University Press, 1980) ISBN 0192771051
• Away (poems; Allison & Busby, 1980) ISBN 0850313376 ISBN 0850313384 (pbk.)
• The One: the story of how the people of Guyana avenge the murder of their Pasero with help from Brother Anancy and Sister Buxton (1985)
• Brother Anancy and other stories (1993) ISBN 0582225817
• In the Border Country and other stories (1998) ISBN 090452194X

• Jamaica Symphony (long poem unpublished, winning Thomas Helmore Poetry Prize, 1955).

Further reading

Peter Nazareth. In the Trickster Tradition: The Novels of Andrew Salkey, Francis Ebejar and Ishmael Reed. Bogle L'Ouverture Press. 1994

References

• Writers of the Caribbean.