The Houses of Alphonso by Anthony Kellman

Members met in the London district of Earl's Court to share and discuss their works. He also became involved in the London literary scene mainly through the Poetry Society and the late Peter Forbes, former editor of London's Poetry Review. At the age of eighteen, he left for England, where he worked as a troubadour, playing pop and West Indian folk music on the pub and folk club circuit. Kellman was born in Whitehall, Saint Michael, Barbados, and attended Combermere Secondary School. Kellman is the originator of the Barbados poetic form Tuk Verse, derived from melodic and rhythmical patterns of Barbados' indigenous folk music. National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. anthology of English-language Caribbean poetry, Crossing Water, and in 1993, he received a U.S.

In 1992, he edited the first full-length U.S. Since 1990, he has published three novels, four CD recordings of original songs, and four additional books of poetry, including Limestone: An Epic Poem of Barbados, the island's first published epic poem which covers over four centuries of Barbadian life. In 1990, the British publishing house Peepal Tree Press published his first full-length book of poetry, Watercourse, which was endorsed by the late Martiniquan poet Edouard Glissant and which launched Kellman's international writing career.

professor emeritus of English and creative writing at Augusta UniversityĪnthony Kellman (born 24 April 1955) is a Barbados-born poet, novelist, and musician.

He currently teaches at Augusta College, Georgia. In what follows Kellman combines a poetic and imaginative exploration of Alphonso’s personal journey into his past, with an acute engagement with racial and political issues as he rediscovers his country in the midst of turmoil as the old order is challenged.Īnthony Kellman was born in Barbados. There is also the family house, locked up and at risk of being vandalised and Alphonso finally recognises that he cannot put off making a return, the first since his departure.

It is the place that still feeds his imagination, but as a boy from a Black working class family he has felt excluded from the class structures of a country still dominated by a privileged White minority. All is complicated by his mixed feelings for his homeland. There is the love, shame and guilt he feels for the dead parents whose funerals he failed to attend, and there is the mystery of the brother he has never seen, hidden away in an institution.

Only then is Alphonso forced into confronting the ghosts that propel his perpetual migrancy. But this time she has had enough of his ‘sorry restlessness’, refuses to move with him and threatens the end of their marriage. He has refused to share with her any real explanation for the complex feelings that drive him.

The Houses of Alphonso by Anthony Kellman