Anthony Joseph

Biographical note:  Anthony Joseph is a Trinidadian born poet, novelist, academic and musician. His publications include Desafinado, Teragaton, The African Origins of UFOs (Salt, 2006) and Bird Head Son (Salt, 2009). His work has also been included in several anthologies, including Identity Parade (Bloodaxe), Red (Peepal Tree, 2010) and Black, Brown & Beige (University of Texas Press, 2009). He performs and lectures internationally and tours with his band The Spasm Band. Joseph lectures in creative writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. He lives in London.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844718191
ISBN:  9781844718191
Author:  Anthony Joseph
Title:  Rubber Orchestras
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCF
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Nov-11
Extent:  112pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  13 mm
Weight:  168 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Rubber Orchestras is the fourth collection from Trinidad born poet, musician and lecturer Anthony Joseph. Taking its name from a poem by American surrealist Ted Joans, this is an energetic, sensuous and intriguing collection of poems, written using an (as yet) undisclosed method of composition the writer calls Liminalism.

Main description:  Taking its name from a poem by American surrealist Ted Joans, Rubber Orchestras is an energetic, sensuous and intriguing collection of poems, written over a period of four years with an (as yet) undisclosed method of composition the writer calls Liminalism. This collection was selected from 100 poems written using this method. This is the poets’ most radical work so far, in parts psychedelic, surrealist but always engaging.

This is an experimental collection but only in the sense that poetry should always be a means of searching out the gaps and crevices of language. Each reader will have a different experience of these poems.

The book is divided into three sections: Precious and Impossible — a selection of poems influenced in subject and style by calypso and Jazz. The Colony of Light — poems concerning Caribbean history and society. And Grotesquerie, in which there are darker, more obscure poems.

Apart from the influence of Ted Joans’s surrealism, the resonance of Bob Kaufman, Will Alexander, Ira Cohen, and Caribbean poets such as Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite can be felt throughout. It contains all the trademarks which have informed Joseph’s work for the past decade; the blending of syncopated caribbean rhythms with surrealism and the sensual, painstaking attention to each phrase. With this volume Joseph returns to the exciting experimentalism of his landmark collection Teragaton.

This is a unique text, suggesting a new way of writing but perhaps also, a new way of reading.

This is the fourth collection from Anthony Joseph after Desafinado in 1994, Teragaton in 1997 and Bird Head Son, 2009.

Table of contents:
Contents
I. THE COLONY OF LIGHT
Capybara
The Colony Of Light
The Battlements
Presence Africane
To paint is to Wound
Limbo Brim
Cyclists from the Printery
Antagony
Sonnet
In Baptist Distances
Hunger
Eyesweep & Hustle
Loop
Rhinoceri
Ascesis
Haiti
A Ditch Of Knives
Actio In Distans
Bush Man Rock
Didier
Unpainted Emily
Two Inch Limbo
II. PRECIOUS AND IMPOSSIBLE
Woodbrook
The tent singers
Red Dragon Band
Dimanche Gras
Philly's Congo Prayer
Absolutely Far
In Vibrant Oases
Hawkins
Jam Session
Blue Hues
Riff For Morton
Ferris Bridges
Lester Young
Fire Music
Electric Sky Music
Poem For Franklin Rosemont
Griot
Muggles
In The Million Hills
Streeter's Game
The Pimp
III. GROTESQUERIE
Baptism of the Loa
Bird
Grotesquerie
Damballah
Nile Valley
The Reverend
River Dove
River Mamba
The Ground Dove
The Sequoia Tree
Silk
The Ministry Of Images
Nations
Heritage
Eric
Audrey
Angela
Blood Tree
Badjohn
Cathedral
False Consciousness
Heavy, The Heart Along
In The Andean Belly

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Excerpt from book:  

Blue Hues

Side A

She said blue – like a strange heel
steps out of bed
hunting with devilish technique
- trick bag in the white broad’s hand -
the river forest hid a palace
recap of the blue slash and pocket
we walked, sliver of a deep,
her confection was flame-red
like bursting inside
exquisite, and parted her lips
          cheek bones of her
beat back the black hustler
drag played the con for sure
like old crow whiskey
in the Swedish bosom of her lullabye

her hairy thighs quivered
side of the bed
blue like fifteen echoes of winter,
southbound to boulevards of dirty kickbacks
weeping like Ma Rainey
with her speckled head she guaranteed
a fifty-fifty split, there was
a funk box in the rocking room,
I was years well heeled,
I played a tight con
in the hard eyed world of big time crooks
once, the half witch crushed blood in my rainstorm
and awfully in love
I wore a beige bucket hat like a jitney driver
starving in a bargain for coins and Dutch head
with a broken shinbone
dope racket slick and mean
like some hurting thing
till the leather tong snapped and sealed
the sweet miracle of her breath and hip
blue blowoff in the slum section
built upstairs
of gorilla pussy and champagne

Unpublished endorsement:  Anthony Joseph’s poems are sonic, impressionistic and vivid, like scrapings taken by a forensic scientist from the scene of an experience, like specimens collected by a botanist in a jar. They are rare things to be wondered at.

Through these poems, the reader encounters the smells, sounds and politics of the Caribbean. Part linguistic acrobat, part jazz musician, he writes in 3D; he writes with curiosity and 21st century innovation. This is modernist writing which draws on the same free speaking tradition and freedom of expression that gave birth to calypso.

Anthony Joseph is an important voice. He belongs to a New Generation of writers and poets writing about the region.

Monique Roffey

Unpublished endorsement:  This major collection firmly establishes Anthony Joseph’s reputation amongst international masters of surrealism. Continuing to explore formally innovative processes evoking multiple cultures, artistic media, times and places, Joseph disappears into the language of his new poems with impressive subtlety and control.

Dr Lauri Ramey

Unpublished endorsement:  He is an exceptional talent.

Blake Morrison

Unpublished endorsement:  Anthony Joseph is a painter who uses words to capture the magic of Mona Lisa’s smile. This colony of light is beauty as mystery and innovation; is song as prayer and Creole food; is poetry as a surreal rendition of steel pan. I have waited a long time for this wonderful book to land, and if I am not mistaken, Rubber Orchestra is The Mighty Sparrow’s hip-hop album.

Ronnie McGrath

Unpublished endorsement:  What is delightfully striking about Rubber Orchestras is the confidence behind these poems that bound and bend to a music brimming with jazz energy, bop adventure and calypso musings in an explosion of imagery that links Curacao, Haiti, Trinidad — the Caribbean — and Nigeria, Venezuela and the Andes to North America, stick-fighters and devil-mas, guitars, stilt-walkers and carnival: centres of rebellion and centres of worship, all expressive of the religion that uplifts us from anguish and death as we feel our way in this ceremony of our becoming.

Earl Lovelace

Previous review quote:  Possessing or possessed by requisite bearings, language and lore, Anthony Joseph is fully and beautifully up to the task.

Nathaniel Mackey

Previous review quote:  The leader of the Black avant-garde.

Ilkley Literature Festival