Over the last few decades Caribbean writers - performance poets,
newspaper poets, singer-songwriters - have created a genuinely popular
art form, a poetry heard by audiences all over the world. At the same
time, even at its most literary, Caribbean poetry shares the vigour of
the oral tradition. Writers like Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott, and
many other exciting new voices, are exploring ways of capturing the
vitality of the spoken word on the page. Both of these traditions are
represented in this lively anthology, which traces Caribbean verse from
its roots to the present.