<p>In language which echoes the rhythms of the 'tuk' band and the 'scat of the guitar strum', Kellman both celebrates the traditions of resistance and creative invention in the region and excoriates the islands of drugs, corruption and subservience to exter.</p>

The long gap

KELLMAN, ANTHONY

Peepal Tree

The island of Barbados is the central character is this epic poem, which combines narrative development, historical insight, and traditional folk sounds to tell the story of the island from the time of early Amerindians to the present day. Anthony Kellman invents his own Tuk verse forms that include the three-line tercet verse form, rhymed couplets in tetrameter, and rhythmic patterns of the snare drum. These provide a cadence to each section of the poem, whose sound is organic to the people and cultures being described. Legendary figures including indigenous leader Samuel Jackman Prescod and invented characters provide windows into the polarizing and uniting issues in the nation's history and illustrate the suffering and achievement of Barbados's known and unknown heroes.

Limestone: An Epic Poem of Barbados

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Peepal Tree Press Ltd.

With settings ranging from the poet’s native Barbados across the southern United States to Brazil, this compilation is a reflection of 21st-century existence and an unlabored metaphor for individual life stages. Included herein are lovely accounts of both the tenacity of the very old and the curiosity of the very young. Exploring themes such as grandiosity, pretension, inequality, and regret, these poems also demonstrate a real human connection with the natural world.

South Eastern Stages

Based on the life of accomplished merchant prince King Ja Ja of Opobo, Anthony Kellman has created a richly imaginative and warmly human work of historical fiction. Weaving between the official records and the satirical and cynical traditions of the “tuk” song, Tracing Ja Ja traces the emerging love between an ailing African king in exile and his Barbadian servant Becka. When Jubo Jubogba began life as a trader’s slave, paddling the great house’s canoes, no one could’ve predicted his meteoric ascent to become Ja Ja of Opobo, a sage merchant king of the Niger’s rich river delta. Kellman’s psychological insight crosses ages and cultures, with a poet’s perception of the beauties of his island’s flora and fauna.

Tracing Ja Ja

United States

In the continuing rite of return to his native Barbados from longer and longer away, something has happened to Tony Kellman. No longer are these the alienated poems of the long gap, of belonging nowhere. With greater establishment in America has come the capacity to embrace his past and to see wholly afresh what was once familiar and unremarked.

Wings of a Stranger