Una Marson: Selected Poems (Caribbean Modern Classics)

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The Library's buildings remain fully open but some services are limited, including access to collection items. We're In many ways, Marson unselfishly employed her literary status to foster and build upon the development of a Caribbean literary canon. In her desire to advance Jamaican literature and culture, Marson formed the Writers Club, the Kingston Drama Club, and the Poetry League during the 1930s. Marson was also responsible for starting a publishing press. In 1936, Marson attended the 12 th Congress of the International Alliance for Women for Suffrage and Legal Citizenship in Istanbul as a delegate and spoke to a gathering about the pressing need to support the impoverished families of Jamaica. Marson, Una. Assorted writings in Linnette Vassell (ed.), Voices of Women in Jamaica, 1898–1939, Mona & Kingston: Dept of History, UWI, 1993. If you close your eyes she sounded like a British woman. That’s what some of the British people even commented on, so there were moments that I chose to kind of loosen up her kind of accent a bit and bring up her patois.

The youngest of six children, Marson had a traditional Jamaican middle-class childhood. ‘Her father was a pastor, and died when she was 10,’ says Dr Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Marson’s official biographer. ‘She had a loving but tough relationship with him and explored how young Jamaican women can break away from their patriarchal men in her later work, including her first play ' At What A Price.’ In 1937, Marson wrote a poem called "Quashie comes to London", which is the perspective of England in a Caribbean narrative. In Caribbean dialect, quashie means gullible or unsophisticated. Although initially impressed, Quashie becomes disgusted with England because there is not enough good food there. The poem shows how, although England has good things to offer, it is Jamaican culture that Quashie misses, and therefore Marson implies that England is supposed to be "the temporary venue for entertainment". [20] The poem shows how it was possible for a writer to implement Caribbean dialect in a poem, and it is this usage of local dialect that situates Quashie's perspective of England as a Caribbean perspective.Marson’s last years of political activism focused on advocacy for the Rastafarian community in her native Jamaica, where she successfully established a home for Rastafarians. She also created the Save the Children Fund, an organization that helped to fund poor children’s basic education. Marson, Una. Letter to the Committee of Jamaica Save the Children’s Fund. MS1944C, National Library of Jamaica. Al Creighton, "A little known poet with an important place in the history of Jamaican writing", Stabroek News, 16 February 2014. Lisa has worked in tertiary institutions in Ontario, Canada where she taught courses in English literature, humanities, and visual culture. She is currently a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in the Department of Literatures in English. Some of her publications include book chapters in Jamaicans in the Canadian Experience: A Multicultralizing Presence, Archipelagos of Sound: Transnational Caribbeanities: Women and Music, Critical Insights: Harlem Renaissance, as well as encyclopedia entries in the Dictionary of Afro-Latin American and Caribbean Biography. Even though Marson was born in Jamaica, a Jamaican accent wasn't something that was noticeable throughout the documentary.

In 1998, Delia Jarrett-Macauley published the original full-length biography The Life of Una Marson, 1905–1965 ( Manchester University Press, reprinted 2010). [35] While living in England, Marson developed the BBC radio program, “Caribbean Voices,” which evolved into a significant literary show, one that would have a crucial impact on the development of new writings and writers from the Anglophone Caribbean. Caribbean cultural luminaire Kamau Braithwaite has characterized the forum as the “single most important literary catalyst for Caribbean creative and critical writing in English.” 4 Outside of her writing at that time, Marson was in the London branch of the International Alliance of Women, a global feminist organization. By 1935, she was involved with the International Alliance of Women based in Istanbul. In 1965, she received a grant from the British Research Council to conduct a study on the social development of Jamaica. The findings were to be incorporated into a semi autobiography she had started working on. However, in March of the same year, while on assignment in Haifa, Israel, she became ill and decided to return to Jamaica. Kinky Hair Blues” by UnaMarsonis about a woman who is clearly struggling with not only her skin tone but also with the texture of her hair. At the beginning of the poem she is happy or at least satisfied with her hair texture and her skin tone. The connection between hair, skin tone and finding and keeping a man is also explored. Straight hair and a lighter skin tone equal a family and happiness to the woman in the poem. There is a clear feeling of inadequacy based solely on one’s appearance and the notion of light skin being “better” or somehow superior to darker skin. The woman seems to believe she will be accepted by her male counterparts simply by turning away fromwho she really is, which is a dark skinned woman with natural hair. This notion that she is not beautiful or undeserving of a family because of her skin and hair appears to not be ingrained but an adaptation.At the age of 10, Marson was enrolled in Hampton High, a girl's boarding school in Jamaica of which her father was on the board of trustees. However, that same year, Rev. Isaac died, leaving the family with financial problems, so they moved to Kingston. She finished school at Hampton High, but did not go on to a college education. After leaving Hampton, she found work in Kingston as a volunteer social worker and used the secretarial skills, such as stenography, she had learned in school, her first job being with the Salvation Army. [5] [6] In 1938, Una returned to Britain as the organising secretary for the ‘Save the Jamaican children Fund’. After the War’s end, Miss Marson again returned to Jamaica in 1949. On this occasion, she joined the Gleaner Company as organising secretary and served as general editor of the Pioneer Press. BBC 100: Lenny Henry on Una Marson's faded legacy". BBC News. BBC. 18 October 2022 . Retrieved 18 October 2022. some money will be available from a private source for social work in the villages on rural institute lines and Miss Marson has been asked to help with the organisation. She hopes that she may start this work in January and we wish her the fullest possible measure of success, as all who have heard her speak about conditions in Jamaica know a great need.’

She also produced her first play, At What a Price (with Horace Vaz), which now must be given its rightful place as the first play written by a West Indian. Prior to this, only expatriate British had written plays, and only canonical British plays were ever produced. At What a Price is noteworthy for its unblinking portrait of discrimination within the Jamaican community and its engaging, strong woman protagonist. To a suggestion that she temper her professional ambitions, the character balks, saying, “I’m not beautiful enough to be ornamental.”

Nos vemos en el Zócalo / Meet Us in the Square

Una Marson: poems of a Jamaican literarypioneer Posted: August 6, 2016 | Author: Zócalo Poets | Filed under: English, English: Jamaican Patois, Una Marson | Comments Off on Una Marson: poems of a Jamaican literarypioneer

Kat François is a performance artist, educator, director, writer and creative arts coach. She was the first person to win a televised poetry slam in the UK and is a World Slam Poetry Champion. Kat continues to teach and perform globally, currently pushing her art form through movement and hula hoop. Her short story, Indigo Waters, is featured in Hidden Realms Short Stories, published by Flame Tree Publishing. Narain, Denise deCaires. "Literary Mothers? Una Marson and Phyllis Shand Allfrey". Contemporary Caribbean Women's Poetry: Making Style. New York & London: Routledge, 2002.

Una Marson and West Indies Calling

Eventually, this appears to have led to what we might refer to now as burnout. Her mental health suffered and she ended up being hospitalised in a psychiatric institution in Jamaica. Upon her recovery, she returned to charitable work and political campaigning, setting up a publishing company that made the work of Jamaican authors accessible to as many people as possible. When she spoke about her work on Woman’s Hour, many years later, she noted that it marked her return to the BBC. Marson returned to London in 1938 to continue work on the Jamaican Save the Children project that she started in Jamaica, and also to be on the staff of the Jamaican Standard. In March 1940, Marson published an article entitled "We Want Books - But Do We Encourage Our Writers?" [21] in Public Opinion, a political weekly, in an effort to spur Caribbean nationalism through literature. In 1941, she was hired by the BBC Empire Service to work on the programme Calling the West Indies, in which World War II soldiers would have their messages read on the radio to their families, [22] [23] becoming the producer of the programme by 1942.