JOSEPH T. FARQUHARSON


was still under British rule, and for any writer to have produced in a
language other than Standard English (SE), let alone Creole, was totally
absurd if not suicidal. Nevertheless, our poet was convinced that the
language of the masses was capable of containing the ancient art of
poetry and that the common people could develop an appreciation
and understanding of poetry if it were composed in the variety he or
she understood.
 As another main point of attack, her fiercest critics have dismissed
the notion of her work as 'legitimate' literature on the basis that a large
quantity of her verse was created for performance (i.e. stage and radio)
and she has constantly had to remind them that she started writing
before she started performing. This claim of illegitimacy would
indubitably suggest that literature cannot originate as orature, and vice
versa. This would totally 'illegitimise' drama as literature, because it is
essentially a performance-oriented art not a scribal one. Morris in
"Louise Bennett in Print" (1982) has provided an effective rebuttal to
this notion so I need not spend time on it.
 Bennett's conscious decision to use JC in writing poetry testifies to
her unstinting belief in, and pride for the creative expression of the
masses. Although the Creole is a product of slavery and colonisation,
the poet employs it as a medium for empowering the dispossessed, by
holding it up as one of those things that is undeniably ours. She views
the Creole as a legitimate language with its very roots in Africa, an idea
somewhat along the lines of that expressed by Grace Nichols in
"Epilogue":

 I have crossed an ocean
 I have lost my tongue
 from the root of the old one
 a new one has sprung.

 Even as she celebrated fifty years of participation in the Arts, the
people's poet could not evade the urge to mention the development
with regards to attitudes towards the vernacular:

 For Jamaica talk was less-counted
 Low-rated, poppishow.
 But now Jamma talk tun "Culture"
 An' Jamaica Culture dah flow -

 Miss Lou, like all good writers has a message to convey, but while
other writers were busy trying desperately to get the over-lords to