Meck West Indies Federate': Celebrating the Arts of Regional Integration in the Poetry of Louise Bennett

• Author: Carolyn Cooper
• Pages: 31-51

‘Meck West Indies Federate’ 31

Jamaican:

Dear Departed Federation,

Referendum murderation

Bounce you eena outa space

Hope you fine a restin place.2

English:

Dear Departed Federation,

Murdered by the Referendum

Sent reeling into outer space

Hope you find a resting place.

Louise Bennett’s substantial body of creative writing illustrates the

potency of popular culture as an important site of public debate about emotive

constructs such as ‘nation’, ‘independence’, ‘federation’, ‘regional

integration’ and the like. Bennett’s poetry cunningly interrogates both the

Federation and Independence movements of the late fifties and early sixties.

Her wry wit humorously critiques the political leadership of the day and,

by extension, their successors who are now engaged in a renewed ‘regional

integration’ process. Bennett’s subversive poetry demystifies the grandiose

rhetoric of the elite, underscoring their failure to articulate their elevated

vision of political transformation in the region in a language that the masses

of Caribbean people could truly understand.

In a paper entitled ‘Communication Between the Elite and the Masses’,

presented at the Second Conference of Caribbean Scholars held at the

University of the West Indies, Mona in 1964, Trinidadian linguist Mervyn

Alleyne analyses the very problems of miscommunication, whether

deliberate or accidental, between social and linguistic groups that Louise

Bennett highlights in her satirical poems:

‘MECK WEST INDIES FEDERATE’:‘MECK WEST INDIES FEDERATE’:

‘MECK WEST INDIES FEDERATE’:‘MECK WEST INDIES FEDERATE’:

‘MECK WEST INDIES FEDERATE’:

CELEBRATING THE ARTS OF REGIONALCELEBRATING THE ARTS OF REGIONAL

CELEBRATING THE ARTS OF REGIONALCELEBRATING THE ARTS OF REGIONAL

CELEBRATING THE ARTS OF REGIONAL

INTEGRATION IN THE INTEGRATION IN THE

INTEGRATION IN THE INTEGRATION IN THE

INTEGRATION IN THE POETRY OFPOETRY OF

POETRY OFPOETRY OF

POETRY OF

LOUISE BENNETTLOUISE BENNETT

LOUISE BENNETTLOUISE BENNETT

LOUISE BENNETT11

11

1

Carolyn Cooper

44

44

4

32 RECONCEPTUALIZING THE CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY

In Jamaica, for example, we have seen that from the very beginnings

of the modern period, persons outside the class of workers and peasants

and belonging to a different sub-culture have been representing the

masses and have been conceptualizing and formulating in their own

way the problems and aspirations of the masses. Because of a conflict

of interest and differences in orientation and background, these persons

in their conceptualizations and formulations may be completely out

of touch. The formulation by the elite of other more general political

issues involving the whole community again may receive different

interpretations from different groups. This was illustrated during

the last general election in Jamaica in 1962 when the party now in

power seems to have had considerable pains in formulating its concept

of freedom and independence which it was offering to the people, and

when there was a great deal of evidence of certain discrepancies between

the elite formulation and the mass decoding and interpretation.3

Indeed, the language of Bennett’s poetry — the Jamaican vernacular —

itself draws attention to one of the major discrepancies between the

formulations of the politicians and the decodings of the undifferentiated

‘masses’. Much of the public debate on Federation was being conducted in

English, not Jamaican. In the poem ‘Big Wuds’ [Big Words] Bennett focuses

on the grandiloquent rhetoric of the times, which in popular discourse is

decoded and interpreted far differently than the elites had intended. The

highflown language of the Federation movement is represented as having

little substance; the big words are ridiculed for being pretentiously bookish

and foreign:

JAMAICAN:

Missis mine yuh bruk yuh jaw-bone

All dem big wud yuh dah-sey

Bout “New Nation”, “Federation”, “Delegation”,

Gal, go weh.

Wat a way yuh elevated!

Gal, is wha yuh chattin bout?

Nowadays is so-so big wud

Dah-fly outa fe yuh mout!

Oh, is newspapa yuh readin

Meck yuh speaky-spoky so!

Read more, pop tory meck me hear

Ow Federation go. (164–65)