Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Poetry General

In Your Crib

by (author) Austin Clarke

Publisher
Guernica Editions
Initial publish date
Apr 2015
Category
General, Canadian, Caribbean & Latin American
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771830201
    Publish Date
    Apr 2015
    List Price
    $20.00

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

Two black men: the poet, an elder and veteran of last century's civil rights movement; and a nameless youth, swaggering and beltless, seduced by guns-and-gangs and expensive cars, and perpetually targeted by police. They are brothers by the colour of their skin, neighbours in the same “crib,” yet separated by a lifetime of experience. Invoking memories of his personal encounters with leaders like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and Amiri Baraka, the poet berates his heir for dropping the torch, and regrets his own failure to protect, inspire and speak out on the young man's behalf. In the tradition of Bob Marley's “Redemption Song,” In Your Crib is a lyrical plea, both indictment and lamentation, and a powerful account of the ongoing struggle for racial equality.

About the author

Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe in 2002, Austin Clarke has published ten novels, six short story collections, and three memoirs in the United States, England, Canada, Australia, and Holland. Storm of Fortune, the second novel in his Toronto Trilogy about the lives of Barbadian immigrants, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in 1973. The Origin of Waves won the Rogers Communications Writers’ Development Trust Prize for Fiction in 1997. In 1999, his ninth novel,The Question, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. In 2003 he had a private audience with Queen Elisabeth in honour of his Commonwealth Prize for his tenth novel, The Polished Hoe. In 1992 Austin Clarke was honored with a Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, and in 1997, Frontier College granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998 he was invested with the Order of Canada, and he has received four honorary doctorates. In 1999 he received the Martin Luther King Junior Award for Excellence in Writing.

Austin Clarke's profile page

Excerpt: In Your Crib (by (author) Austin Clarke)

You shall go then, into the storming winter / with no armament of friend nor guide. / The Benz shall, in a miracle of engineering, / drive you clean / into the hands / of the Law.