ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I outlined some of the concerns which militate against Una Marson being celebrated, unreservedly, as a literary mother-figure; I also discussed the kinds of issues which may have ‘disqualified’ Phyllis Shand Allfrey from sharing that platform with her. Louise Bennett’s reputation as a literary mother-figure, by comparison, is broadly recognized and her work is celebrated as being unequivocally West Indian. In contrast to some of the complications and ambiguities surrounding the work of Marson and Allfrey, Louise Bennett’s poetry, as the epigraphs above demonstrate, is often cited as marking the birth of an ‘authentic’ West Indian poetry, the moment when the region finds its voice. Where Marson’s oeuvre is constrained by an over-reliance on European poetic models and where Allfrey’s West Indianness is contested (at least as it is manifested in her
poetry), Louise Bennett’s work has been consistently received as being grounded firmly in a Jamaican context and, in her exclusive use of Creole, her work is seen as redefining, and indigenizing, the contours of ‘the poetic’. This chapter will interrogate some of the criteria involved in the consolidation of Louise Bennett as ‘the mother of Creole’. Bennett’s literary reputation was relatively late in coming, and, to date, discussion of her work has largely been dominated by the focus on the importance of her innovative use of Creole, rather than on detailed readings of her poetry. My discussion, as a result, will include a brief outline of the literary debates which may account for this time-lag and focus, in the literary reception of her work, as well as offering detailed readings of specific poems.
