A Conference Report from the Archives:
Vol. 12, No. 46, Pages 80–83 (January–June 1968)
CA.M.'s formation, aims and objects were reported in the last Bim. I wonder how it sounded to Bim readers outside Britain: just another small, cosy talk-in of the elite of West Indian artists in exile? Certainly when Eddie Brathwaite outlined his plans for C.A.M. to a few friends in his Bloomsbury flat, at the end of December 1966, even when the first publicity material came round inviting membership, it was hard to guess the dimensions of what was in motion. For from the first monthly Friday evening meeting at the West Indian Students Centre, C.A.M. has roared forward. Always the seats go early, many stand. Always the questions press on to one another; 10.45 p.m. (when the bar is about to close) brings the session to a pause, not close, for it continues in the hall, the bar, and then on into members' flats, way into Saturday morning.
After January to July of such evenings, and a break in August, C.A.M. has started the new season with a consolidation, a concentration of its forces: a week-end conference mid-way through September. At Eliot College in the new University of Kent, outside Canterbury, ninety people met from Friday evening to Sunday evening for the first conference of the Caribbean Artists' Movement.
Who were the ninety? Caribbean artists themselves at the core, of course, and, in giant-like dominance, C. L. R. James, George Lamming, Michael Anthony, Andrew Salkey and Eddie Brathwaite; Aubrey Williams, Ronald Moody and Clifton Campbell; Marina Maxwell, Doris Harper, Lloyd Reckord, Horace James and Bari Johnson; Peter Figueroa, John La Rose and Gordon Rohlehr. Then there were the distinguished West Indian academics: Professors Elsa Goveia and Douglas Hall from U.W.I., Brian King from Cambridge, Kenneth Ramchand from Edinburgh, and two academics non-West Indian but almost honorarily so—Arthur Ravenscroft from Leeds, editor of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and Louis James, formerly at U.W.I. and now at Canterbury—and a foremost critic of West Indian literature. There were writers non-West Indian too: Awabena Tmoako from Ghana, Calvin Hernton from the U.S., and Margaret Lawrence from Canada. Then there were West Indian sociologists, one indeed engaged on a sociological study of the Caribbean artist in exile; West Indians teaching in Britain, and Britishers who had taught in the West Indies; Trinidadians recently returned from Nigeria, a Nigerian girl, and an Englishman specialising in the study of French Creole. Four British book publishers were represented: Faber, Heinemann, Macmillan and Longman.
The ninety met—and they talked. What they talked about was structured around a programme of lectures. Saturday morning led off splendidly with Dr. Goveia speaking on the Socio-Cultural Framework of the West Indies, followed by Kenneth Ramchand on Claude McKay and Banana Bottom in particular. Saturday evening, after tea, Clifton Campbell and Aubrey Williams talked about their paintings: Campbell with slides of his paintings, and Williams with a highly articulate account of his approach to painting. Saturday evening after supper C. L. R. James and Michael Anthony talked about Trinidad at different periods: James on West Indian Literature in the '30s, Anthony on lug development, or Growing Up as he called it, in writing: about Trinidad, in and out of Trinidad. Sunday morning was given to literature, critical and creative. First Louis James posed questions, gave and invited answers, on the poetry of the West Indies. Then George Lamming presented a preview of his new novel, Natives of My Person. For the afternoon, the last session of the conference, Bari Johnson, Lloyd Reckord and Horace James performed, and spoke about performing in the West Indies and in Britain.
Of these lectures I've given a catalogue only. To attempt to summarise would inevitably falsify, distort. Luckily—if it's fair to call luck what is a regular efficient feature of C.A.M. sessions—all that was spoken by the lecturers and in discussion afterwards was recorded. The spools turned quietly. There was no need to take notes. We are promised early publication of the entire proceedings. Everyone must have his own private record library of statements, sounds, pictures from these sessions. Mine include C. L. R. James intervening in a hot to and fro between speakers who were trying to discover why Michael Anthony felt he could not write novels set in Britain. With the characteristic James gesture, the inimitable timing and authority: "The artist must write what he wants to write when he wants to write it, no matter how much you tell him what he ought to write." Then there was Aubrey Williams' classic phrase, slipped in with a sort of muted burning, talking about West Indian painters: "They're going to change the real seeing of the world"; George Lamming's "All my novels are natives of my person"; Clifton Campbell's quick reply to yet another pert, senseless, literal question about one of his paintings; "You don't understand my Cockney accent”'.
These sessions, then, were the centre of the Conference—and they were expanded on every side. Both nights, far into the night, there were readings of the literature that was analysed and discussed by day—with boundaries far broader than the strictly West Indian. Doris Harper enacted her Samaan Tree Story, George Lamming read part of Penelope's Diary from Of Age and Innocence, and poems by Martin Carter; Eddie Brathwaite, Peter Figueroa, Knolly La Fortune spoke their poems. But also we heard Marina Maxwell read translations of Cuban poets, C. L. R. James read Aimé Césaire and St. John Perse; Kwabena Amoako and Calvin Hernton read their own London and New York poems. There was, too, ample chance for people to read and acquire what was read aloud and discussed. John La Rose ran a bookshop, which had a wide and comprehensive collection of books of Caribbean interest. Then almost unnoticed in the bookshop was a small wooden sculpture; an exquisite Ronald Moody head, contemplative amidst the books. Other examples of the visual arts were less easily unnoticed; large canvases by Aubrey Williams and Clifford Campbell lined the corridors, each with their own colour-range and style, each complementing the other. Musical sound burst rarely; the background of steel bands, Belafonte, Edric Connor behind the barbecue dinner on the first evening seemed outrageously phoney and tourist image. Best was when discussion of West Indian verse forms, following the Louis James talk, broke into two Sparrow calypsoes.
It's a truism now that in Britain more than anywhere is the West Indies a reality, the separate territories seeming only ingredients of the whole. Dr. Goveia's opening talk ranged over the entire West Indies: discussing, elucidating, pointing to its common social, economic, political pattern. But one of the over-riding themes of this conference was the vision of a wider pattern still. No longer is the talk of the West Indies, the former British colonies, united in relation to Britain, or even seen in relation to the States—there was, surprisingly almost no mention of the States. The feeling was rather of Caribbean awareness. The talk was of how we must look round to Spanish, French, Dutch-speaking neighbours; how we must look to the past of Central and South America for our roots, as much as to Africa, Europe and the East. Here is to be found the identity, the destiny of the West Indian. In discussion, in readings, this was the concept which gathered support and rolled larger and larger through the week-end.
Closely allied to the concept of thinking Caribbean were two other recurrent themes of the conference: communication and commitment—to over-simplify drastically under those outworn umbrella words. Communication was discussed primarily in relation to the West Indies themselves: freer communication with the population in the press and on radio, despite the politicians; communication by the right use of the right language. And behind the necessity of communication sang out the strong sense of commitment; by some overtly to the West Indies, but others primarily to their own art—and clearly no distinction can be drawn here.
I must finally just say a word about the setting of this C.A.M. week-end. No old stones, groaning with history and tradition, but a new college at a new university. Eliot College was exciting and challenging architecturally: it gave the right sort of dimensions and perspective to all that happened. It was also very confusing and easy to get lost in but, as someone pointed out, this led to unexpected encounters and conversations. The lecture hall was a windowless box, which provided an atmosphere both concentrate and unlocated. The Junior Common Room was roomy, relaxed. And it pleased me, anyway, to think that C.A.M. held its first conference at Eliot College: shades of another exile who came from a new country to an old, another man who drew widely and boldly from all traditions and cultures, another artist whose concern was the revitalising of his tools.