AGARD, John

---

Nationality: British (immigrated to England in 1977). Born: British Guiana (now Guyana) 1949. Career: Has worked as an actor and a performer with a jazz group. Awards: Casa de las Américas Poetry prize, Cuba, 1982; Children's Rights Workshop Other award, 1986. Address: c/o Hodder & Stoughton, Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 2YA, England.

Publications

Poetry

Shoot Me with Flowers. Privately printed, 1973.

Man to Pan. Havana, Cuba, Casa de las Américas, 1982.

Limbo Dancer in Dark Glasses. London, Islington Community Press (for Greenhearb), 1983.

Mangoes and Bullets: Selected and New Poems 1972–84. London, Pluto, 1985.

Lovelines for a Goat-Born Lady. London, Serpent's Tail, 1991.

Poetry (for children)

I Din Do Nuttin and Other Poems, illustrated by Susanna Gretz. London, Bodley Head, 1983.

Say It Again, Granny!: Twenty Poems from Caribbean Proverbs, illustrated by Susanna Gretz. London, Bodley Head, 1986.

Lend Me Your Wings, illustrated by Adrienne Kennaway. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1987.

The Calypso Alphabet, illustrated by Jennifer Bent. New York, Holt, 1989.

Go Noah, Go! London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1990.

Laughter Is an Egg, illustrated by Alan Rowe. London, Viking, 1990.

Life Doesn't Frighten Me at All. New York, Holt, 1990.

The Emperor's Dan-Dan. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1992.

From the Devil's Pulpit. Newcastle upon Tyne, Bloodaxe Books, 1997.

Get Back Pimple! London, Puffin Books, 1997.

Other

Letters for Lettie and Other Stories (for children), illustrated by Errol Lloyd. London, Bodley Head, 1979.

Dig Away Two-Hole Tim (for children), illustrated by Jennifer Northway. London, Bodley Head, 1981.

Wake Up, Stir About: Songs for Assembly, with others. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Unwin Hyman, 1989.

Editor, with Grace Nichols, A Caribbean Dozen, illustrated by Cathie Felstead. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Candlewick Press, 1994.

Editor, with Grace Nichols, No Hickory, No Dickory, No Dock: A Collection of Nursery Rhymes, illustrated by Cynthia Jabar. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Candlewick Press, 1994.

*

Critical Study: "A Common Tongue: Interviews with Cecil Abrahams, John Agard, John Harne, and Wole Soyinka" by Siga Asanga, in Canadian Journal of African Studies, 24(1), 1990.

*  *  *

Although associated with oral performance and protest poetry, John Agard also writes good love poetry (usually to his wife, the poet Grace Nichols) and books of verse for children. He creates personae unifying his books and has a talent for punning and for finding unexpected metaphors in otherwise dead language. He also has a sense of rhythm and an attractive personal voice. Shoot Me with Flowers was self-published in Guyana at the time of flower power and peace and love, the Beatles, Vietnam, and black power. Agard has continued to develop beyond the counterculture and its politics, and his works range from intimate poems to those of Man to Pan, a cycle for performance with steel drums.

During 1975 Agard joined All-ah-We, a group of actors and performers in Guyana. This helped him create characters, tell stories, and use Creole, and it improved his ability to work with audiences. He enjoys the surreal invention found in the best calypsos, and his style of performing and use of Creole are calypso-influenced.

Man to Pan, published in Cuba, celebrates the history of the steel band and is largely political. It begins with "Pan Recipe," which claims that the origins of the steel band are found in the response to the centuries-old "rape" of a people as expressed in drums in shantytowns. The poems approximate the various rhythms and tones of pans in a steel band, and there are even visually shaped poems meant to represent rhythms and sounds. Agard wishes to speak for a community, but his politics and his slogans do not always go hand and hand as well as they might with his making of poetry from sounds and rhythms: "and to me octave / is a word dat rhyme with slave." Too much is asserted: "Beethoven to kaiso / shantytownsound turn concerto."

Agard's first volume of poetry for adults published in England was Limbo Dancer in Dark Glasses, in which black protest poetry becomes something larger and mythic and more inclusive. The Limbo Dancer moves through various stages from birth to death, with the promise of resurrection. He becomes the dance of life, the survival instinct, sex, even another name for the libido. He combines Frantz Fanon, Marx, and Freud into the black slave's survival dance. The Limbo Dancer, like the Palm Tree King and the Wanted Man, is one of Agard's fanciful personae imagined from street characters, history, the poet, and the revolutionary. "Limbo Dancer's Wombsong" sets the tone of the dancer as an amused and amusing cool cat who speaks English with traits of West Indian dialect: "believe me it was fun / in the primal womb / like great balloon." Born of the "mother of universe," he stretches from Africa to Brazil. He is six million Jews, and he is Stephen Biko, all of the oppressed victims of evil. He is also difficult to interpret. Is he bending over backward in supplication or in aggression? In "Limbo Dancer at Immigration" he is not wanted: "It was always the same / at every border / at every frontier." His dance is a multiple revolution combining Fanon, Che Guevara, Angela Davis, the Kama Sutra, and the joys of natural childbirth. He is part of the masses and is among the children of Soweto and the miners of Gdansk. He is Christ, a black entertainer, someone who will always return.

Mangoes and Bullets consists of new poems under the title "Wanted Man" along with selections from Agard's earlier volumes. It begins with "Dedication": "Remembering Walter Rodney & Maurice Bishop / two of our Caribbean dream-doers." "Immigrant Neighbors" ironically contrasts the horror felt by the white British when "your immigrant neighbours / slaughter a sheep / in view of the street" or a loud all-night party with the viewing of "a video nasty"—"our little ones just love to see / a monster's blood spatter": "Why can't these foreigners / be more like us / why can't they act civilized / and organise a decent fox hunt." Agard amusingly assumes the persona of a wanted man, wanted because of his crimes with Standard English. In "Listen Mr Oxford Don" he says, "I didn't graduate / I immigrate":

   I ent have no gun
   I ent have no knife

   but mugging de Queen's English
   is the story of my life
   …
   I ent serving no jail sentence
   I slashing suffix in self-defence
   I bashing future wit present tense
   and if necessary
 
 
   I making de Queen's English accessory
   to my offence.

Lovelines for a Goat-Born Lady is dedicated to Nichols. The term "goat-born" refers to the sign under which the "lady" was born, and the love poems use many of the usual motifs of such poetry but with a Guyanese difference. She is at times referred to as "Mudhead woman," with a footnote explaining that "mudhead" is a Guyanese term of affection for those from the low-lying silted coastland. The poems are charming in their use of West Indian terms and in the many variations Agard finds in writing a love poem: "Starapple of my eye / my firefly in pitchdense of night." In later poems the woman is pregnant: "Your belly big with child / is geography made new." Agard sometimes sounds like a Cavalier poet: "Lead me to your wanton parts / that I may graze / with holy glee."

Besides Agard's mischievous poems, From the Devil's Pulpit includes delightful drawings of deviltry by Satoshi Kitamura and pages of such quotations and pseudoquotes as "God is good and The Devil isn't bad either" ("Irish Proverb") and "Spell my name backwards. / Ask yourself: Have you LIVED?" ("Yours Truly, the Devil"). In "Book of Temptation" Agard offers short, witty poems giving the devil's perspective on life. His devil is a social satirist and comedian, and the poems include "The Seeds of Wimbledon," "The Devil at Carnival," "Glory Glory Be to Chocolate," "Light Up Your Pipes," "Coffee in Heaven," "The Devil's Plenary Address to a Conference," and "I Pity You Your Clocks." There also is a section titled "A Fiend of the Arts" that includes "Mona Lisa You Teaser," "Lucifer Relaxes with a Michael Jackson Video," and "Lucifer Addresses Hollywood's Oscar Ceremony." At times the poet is a conventional moralist complaining of the horrors of nationalism, ethnic hatred, and civil war in Rwanda, Ireland, and Bosnia. Agard has a philosophy; life consists of balance, opposites, and temptations, and every god needs a devil, every order needs a disorder, and every established hierarchy needs skeptical mockery.

While most of the verses for children in Get Back, Pimple! have titles such as "Exams Blues," "Not-Enough Pocket-Money Blues," and "Blind-Date Blues," others, such as "Angela Davis and Joan of Arc Rap," are political.

—Bruce King