Between Creole and Cambridge English: The Poetry of David Dabydeen

David Dabydeen's poetry belongs with 'a literature in broken English'.^ In this revised usage, the odium directed at deviations from an ethnocentrically prescribed form is displaced by the recognition that the writing practices of those who are outside the dominant culture have opened 'Eng. Lit.' to heterogeneous and heretical modes. The notion has been differently deployed by Dabydeen to define the Creole of his native Guyana as a hybrid language which speaks the dislocations and oppressions of its history: