Andrew Salkey

He was born as Felix Andrew Alexander Salkey in Colón, Panama, to Jamaican parents, Andrew Alexander Salkey, a businessman, and Linda Marshall Salkey. When two years old, Salkey was sent to Jamaica, where he was raised by his grandmother and his mother, who worked there as a teacher, while his father continued to work in Panama. Salkey was educated at St George's College, in Kingston, and at Munro College, in St. Elizabeth, After reading V. S. Naipaul's first story, Salkey encouraged him to continue writing. At the BBC, Salkey co-wrote My People and Your People, with D. G. Bridson, a radio play about a love affair between a West Indian migrant and a Scottish skiffle player. Salkey was a part of the West Indian Students Union (WISU), which provided an effective forum for Caribbean students to express their ideas and provided voluntary support to the "harassed" working-class Caribbean immigrant community, during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The association also included Gerry Burton and Arif Ali. In the mid-1950s, Salkey taught English at Walworth Secondary School (also known as Mina Road School), an early comprehensive just off the Old Kent Road in South-east London. His first novel, A Quality of Violence – set around 1900 and narrated in a Jamaican patois – was published in 1959, and his second, Escape to An Autumn Pavement, in 1960. That same year Salkey edited one of the first anthologies of Caribbean short stories, West Indian Stories, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of folklore and popular culture. His novels that followed were The Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover (1968), The Adventures of Catullus Kelly (1969), and Come Home, Malcolm Heartland (1976). Thereafter, Salkey concentrated on writing poetry and reworking tales of Caribbean folklore. As noted by Eleanor Casson, archivist and cataloguer at the British Library, Salkey "had a significant influence on the development of Caribbean literary activism in London during the 1960s and 1970s through his unwavering support of two of the first black publishing houses in London New Beacon Books and Bogle L'Ouverture (BLP)." In 1966, he co-founded with John La Rose and Kamau Brathwaite the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), as a platform for Caribbean artists, writers, actors and musicians. During the latter part of his life, Salkey was a professor of creative writing at Hampshire College in Amherst, where he went in 1976. Salkey was good friends with Austin Clarke, and the two had a long correspondence, a great deal of which is available in Clarke's files at the McMaster University Archives in Hamilton, Ontario. ==Literary work==

The settings of Salkey's novels show a constant back and forth between his country of origin and the countries in which he lived. His first novel, A Quality of Violence (1959), is set in a remote area of Jamaica; the second novel, Escape to An Autumn Pavement (1960), is set in London, and is a novel of exile; his 1968 novel, The Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover, is a return to Jamaica and a "damning indictment of the nihilism of middle class Caribbean life". == "Salkey's Score" ==

Salkey was a director and constant supporter of the London-based publishing company Bogle-L'Ouverture founded by Guyanese-born Jessica Huntley, who (together with a committee comprising Louis James, John La Rose, Marc Matthews, Mervyn Morris, Jason Salkey, Anne Walmsley, Eliot Salkey and Ronald Warwick) organised a two-day symposium and celebration called "Salkey's Score". Held on 19–20 June 1992 at the Commonwealth Institute, the event paid tribute to Salkey in respect of his work in London in the 1960s and 1970s with the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM); his journalism on the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices; his contributions to developing the teaching of Caribbean writing in schools; the importance he gave to the relationship of Africa to personal and communal Caribbean identity; his work in Cuba; and his prolific output of novels, poetry and other writings. At the event, Robert Chrisman, editor of The Black Scholar, presented Salkey with the Black Scholar 25th Anniversary Award for Excellence in the field of Literature, and other presenters included broadcaster Trevor McDonald, publisher Eric Huntley, publisher/editor Margaret Busby, poet-novelist Edward Kamau Brathwaite, New Beacon Books founder John La Rose, writer E. A. Markham, CAM member Louis James, professor of feminist studies Jill Lewis, Arts Council literature director Alastair Niven, and Anne Walmsley, author of The Caribbean Artists Movement 1966–1971. == Personal life ==

Salkey and Patricia Verden married in 1958 and the couple's two sons are Eliot and Jason Salkey. Salkey had been ailing for some time before his death, aged 67, on the morning of 28 April 1995, while in an ambulance on the way to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was buried at Mill Hill Cemetery in London on 11 May 1995. ==Legacy==

The Andrew Salkey Memorial Scholarship has been established at Hampshire College, as an "award for students who show exceptional writing promise". On 29 March 2013, Paul Gilroy was meant to attend the Andrew Salkey Memorial Reading, at the Hampshire College Cultural Center, but could not due to adverse weather conditions. In August 2018, Salkey's poem "History and Away", from his collection Away: Poems (Allison and Busby, 1980), was among those by six poets (the others being James Berry, Kwame Dawes, Lorna Goodison, Grace Nichols, and Jean "Binta" Breeze) that were displayed on the London Underground in a set entitled "Windrush 70, A Celebration of Caribbean poetry" to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the arrival in Britain of the ship Empire Windrush from Jamaica in June 1948, marking the beginning of the most significant West Indian post-World War II migration to the UK. In April 2022, Margaret Busby and Raymond Antrobus discussed Salkey's work – in particular his 1960 novel Escape to An Autumn Pavement and his 1973 epic poem Jamaica – in the podcast Backlisted, presented by John Mitchinson and Andy Miller. == Selected bibliography ==

• "Jamaica Symphony" (long poem, unpublished, winner of Thomas Helmore Poetry Prize, 1955). • A Quality of Violence (novel; Hutchinson, 1959; New Beacon Books, 1978). ; . • Escape to an Autumn Pavement (novel; Hutchinson, 1960; Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, Modern Caribbean Classics, 2009) • West Indian Stories (editor; Faber and Faber, 1960, 1968). • Hurricane (children's novel; Oxford University Press, 1964; 1979. Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, 1977. New York: Penguin, 1977) (winner of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis) • Earthquake (children's novel; Oxford University Press, 1965) • Stories from the Caribbean (editor; Paul Elek Books, 1965) • Commonwealth Poetry (editor of West Indian section; 1965) • The Shark Hunters (Nelson, 1966) • Drought (Oxford University Press, 1966). • Riot (illustrated by William Papes; Oxford University Press, 1967). • Caribbean Prose: an anthology for secondary schools (editor; Evans, 1967) • The Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover (novel; Hutchinson, 1968). • The Adventures of Catullus Kelly (Hutchinson, 1969). • Island Voices: Stories from the West Indies (compiler; Liveright, 1970). • Jonah Simpson (Oxford University Press, 1969), • Breaklight: an anthology of Caribbean poetry, chosen, edited and introduced by Andrew Salkey (Hamish Hamilton, 1971). • Havana Journal (Penguin Books, 1971). • Georgetown Journal: a Caribbean writer’s journey from London via Port of Spain to Georgetown, Guyana, 1970 (New Beacon Books, 1972). • Caribbean Essays: an anthology; edited and introduced by Andrew Salkey (Evans, 1973). • Jamaica: An epic poem exploring the historical foundations of Jamaican society (Hutchinson, 1973; Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1983). • Anancy’s Score (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1973) . • Joey Tyson (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1974). , • Come Home, Malcolm Heartland (novel; Hutchinson, 1976). • Writing in Cuba since the Revolution: an anthology of poems, short stories, and essays (editor; Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1977). , (pbk) • In the Hills Where Her Dreams Live: Poems for Chile, 1973–1978; winner of Casa de las Americas prize, 1979 (Black Scholar Press, ) • The River that Disappeared (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1979). • Land (Black Scholar Press, 1979) • Danny Jones (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1980). • Riot (Oxford University Press, 1980). • Away (poems; Allison & Busby, 1980). , (pbk) • The One: The Story of How the People of Guyana Avenge the Murder of Their Pasero With Help from Brother Anancy and Sister Buxton (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1985). • Anancy, Traveller (Bogle-L'Ouverture Press, 1992). • Brother Anancy and other stories (Longman, 1993). • In the Border Country and other stories (Bogle-L'Ouverture Press, 1998). ==Further reading==