LITERARY REVOLUTION AND DECOLONISATION IN LOUISE BENNETT'S POETRY 47

 to optimal use by the poet.3 While some critics agree that Louise Bennett
 employed a variety of the ballad stanza (ballad quatrain) in the
 composition of her verses, Mervyn Morris begs to differ and opines
 that such a classification would cause the exceptions to outnumber
 the norm. The ballad stanza is "a quatrain in alternate four- and three-
 stress iambic lines, in which only the second and fourth lines rhyme"
 (Abrams 13). According to Morris, "what she quite often employs is a
 quatrain in which eight syllables are followed by six, with the rhyme
 scheme abcb. An extra syllable here, a syllable short there, need hardly
 cause a flutter; especially as, even more reliably, each pair of lines tends
 to have fourteen syllables (or their equivalent in time)" (SP4 xiv).
 I am inclined to concur with Morris because Bennett's poetry on the
whole seems to have little to do with iambic stress patterns, and to
force her into such a mould would be erroneous. Bennett herself does
admit to having been exposed at an early age mostly to the works of
English poets, and being 'greatly influenced' by their rhythms and
techniques (Scott 99). However, she has written in the spirit and not in
the letter of the ballad form and has aptly captured the fiery soul and
vivacious character of JC speakers in real life situations.


The Battle for Legitimacy: Bennett as Revolutionary

 While she now receives numerous accolades during her retirement,
this was not always the case, as she and her work were seen as a local
joke. Nettleford reports in Mirror Mirror that she, "has long been
regarded as little more than a spinner of jingles and (gratuitously) a
first-rate entertainer" (193). No wonder Morris is the first critical
appraisal of Bennett's poetry entitled it: "On Reading Louise Bennett,
Seriously" [my emphasis]. Morris' title announced a counteraction to
the societal perception of Miss Lou's work at the time i.e. it was not
serious and definitely not 'literature' because it was not penned in the
Queen's English. When Louise started writing poetry in Creole, Jamaica



 3 Taking this issue of musicality a step further, Louise Bennett has put some of
her verses to music and laid the foundations for what is today the budding field of
dub poetry, and practitioners such as Mutabaruka, Linton Kwesi Johnson, the late
Mickey Smith, Oka Onouro, and Lillian Allen pay tribute to Bennett in this regard.
 4 Throughout this article the abbreviations JL and SP will be used to refer to
Jamaica Labrish and Selected Poems respectively.