Beyond Calypso: New Perspectives on Samuel Selvon
2 July 2011, University of Warwick
Malachi McIntosh (Warwick) & Stephanie Decouvelaere (Lyon 3)
Beyond Calypso: New Perspectives on Samuel Selvon was a collaborative effort that involved representatives of the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies at Warwick and the Institute of Transtexual and Transcultural Studies at the University of Lyon 3,and the support of the HRC conference fund. The concept emerged from a meeting between Malachi McIntosh and Stephanie Decouvelaere at the Society for Caribbean Studies’ 2010 conference. Two early-career scholars, McIntosh and Decouvelaere were both in the midst of research into the life and work of the 1950s-era first-wave of Caribbean writers. Both felt that, of all the writers they worked with, the Trinidadian author Samuel Selvon (1923-1994) was the least often subject to thorough critiques despite his fundamental importance to the development of Caribbean literature. The conference was designed to address this issue by uniting scholars from across Europe and the Caribbean to share new work on the author, advance insight into his oeuvre, and create a publishable programme of contributions.
The event successfully met all of its objectives. Twenty-five established and early-career scholars came together on 2 July2011 for a day of conference papers, creative writing, and archival material all focused on Selvon’s life and work. The day began with a keynote speech from Alison Donnell, Reader at the University of Reading and a pioneer into new approaches to the major figures in the Caribbean canon. Dr Donnell’s paper, “Kinship, Friendship and Living together in Selected Writings of Sam Selvon”advanced the argument that Selvon’s texts, unlike more recent Caribbean writing from the likes of Andrea Levy, showcases the conflicts and strains that are a necessary part of “living together” in mixed communities and therefore challenged anodyne perceptions of multiculturalism. Dr Donnell’s primary focus was Selvon’s The Housing Lark and how that utterly neglected text used its narrative of a group of Caribbean immigrants’ attempts to save for a home to explore the sacrifices and successes that emerge from sharing space.
The day continued with a papers from Lorna Burns, of Glasgow University, and Stephanie Decouvelaere that advanced Dr Donnell’s thoughts on Selvon’s under-read texts. Lorna spoke aboutAn Island is A WorldwhileStephanie’spaper analysed Selvon’s screenplay and radio plays. Lorna’s paper intertwined Selvon’s writing with the theory of Gilles Deleuze to focus upon the way in which his particular brand of humanism functioned on the page; while Stephanie revealed tension in Selvon’s portrayal of the second generation of Caribbean immigrants in London that hinted athis prejudicial attitudes toward their handling of the first generation’s legacy.
The second half of the day began with a presentation of archival video footage of Selvon reading from his novel The Housing Lark in the company of Susheila Nasta and David Dabydeen. Selvon’s reading was introduced by a video message from his grandniece Alison Gibb. Alison spoke of the man she knew, the human being behind thewriting, a figure notable for his family focus and eschewal of the literary world. After Selvon’s reading, the audience heard papers from Letizia Gramaglia, of Warwick, and Kate Houlden of Queen Mary University London, on “Selvon in the Archive” and “‘The Sex Life Gone Wild’: Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956) and Andrew Salkey’s Escape to an Autumn Pavement (1960)”. Letizia spoke of the controversy surrounding an early Selvon short story, “Behind the Hummingbird”. The story, broadcast on the BBC radio show Caribbean Voices, featured negative portrayals of life in Trinidad and garnered Selvon a short-term ban from the BBC. As a compliment to Letizia’s brief foray into the darker side of Selvon’s writing, Kate considered at the representation of black male sexuality in Selvon’s most famous novel and how it was compatible with a stock of writing on mixed relationships and deviant sexuality by his contemporaries. By engaging with the more controversial aspects of Selvon’s work, both papers read against the grain of standard Selvon criticism, which, in the main, is concerned with the author’s humour.
The day concluded with presentations from the prolific Trinidadian author Vahni Capildeo and Professor Kenneth Ramchand, current President of the University of Trinidad and Tobago and a personal friend of Selvon’s during his life. Vahni’s presentation included a paper on the reactions of Trinidadian women readers to Selvon’s representation of their community and her own story that adapted Selvon’s themes of displacement and longing for home to twenty-first century England. Professor Ramchand closed the day with a wide-ranging lecture, “The Other Samuel Selvon”. In his presentation he blended knowledge of the man with knowledge of his writing and presented insight into both areas. He advanced the idea that Selvon was a philosopher and a poet, re-casting the author as one concerned with deep existential themes from his earliest work, but who soured into a harsh satirist when his career progressed and his work failed to address the problems that preoccupied him.
The conference was a resounding success and, in line with the organisers’ aims for its outcome, they have recently confirmed that papers will be collected in upcoming special issues of Wasafiri (2013) and The Journal of West Indian Literature (2012) that they will co-edit.
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