Edward Kamau Brathwaite, CHB (/kəˈmaʊ ˈbræθweɪt/; 11 May 1930 – 4 February 2020),[1] was a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon.
[13] He began his secondary education in 1945 at Harrison College in Bridgetown, and while there wrote essays on jazz for a school newspaper that he started, as well as contributing articles to the literary magazine Bim.
honours degree in history from Pembroke College, Cambridge,[4][14] and he also began his association with the BBC's Caribbean Voices programme in London, where many of his poems and stories were broadcast.
This saw him "witness Kwame Nkrumah coming to power and Ghana becoming the first African state to gain independence, which profoundly affected his sense of Caribbean culture and identity", and he was also able to study with the musicologist J. H. Kwabena Nketia.
In 1966, Brathwaite spearheaded, as co-founder and secretary, the organization of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) from London,[5] other key figures involved being John La Rose and Andrew Salkey.
[20][22] Brathwaite described the years from 1986 to 1990 as a "time of salt," in which he chronicled the death of his wife in 1986, the destruction of his archive in Irish Town, Jamaica, by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, and his near-death experience as a result of a Kingston shooting in 1990.
[24] In 1994, Brathwaite was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature for his body of work, nominated by Ghanaian poet and author Kofi Awoonor, edging out other nominees including; Toni Morrison, Norman Mailer, and Chinua Achebe.
[37] Announcing that the award, which recognises his contribution as a literary critic, literary activist, editor, and author on topics of Caribbean literature, as well as honouring the year of his 90th birthday, would be presented to his family in Barbados at a ceremony March, Bocas founder and director Marina Salandy-Brown said: "It now seems even more significant to honour him and, in this time of mourning, it is a small consolation to know that news of the award brought Prof Brathwaite pleasure in his final days.