A Literary Friendship: Selected Notes on the Kamau Brathwaite, Gordon Rohlehr Correspondence

For fifty years, Gordon Rohlehr was the regular correspondent, sometimes confidant and always the critic who best understood what Kamau Brathwaite’ s poetry achieved. In revisiting the trajectory of this mutually enriching relationship, what stands out is Rohlehr’ s independence of view and his willingness to say when he thought his friend was wrong or unreasonable. Moving in its portrayal of a friendship frequently at odds with the political direction of the Caribbean world, this is also an essential record of the making of Caribbean literature.