Bibliography (Text Version)

PART I

PRIMARY WORKS

Poetry

Lashley, Cliff. “Exodus.” New World Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1966): 82.

---. “Spanish Town.” New World Quarterly 3, no. 3 (1967): 44.

---. “The Face.” New World Quarterly 3, no. 3 (1967).

---. “A High Wind Over Jamaica.” Black Orpheus 22 (1967): 55.

---. “Approach the city dump….” Black Orpheus 22 (1967): 57.

---. “A West Indian in London.” Black Orpheus 22 (1967): 54.

---. “Oneway Ticket Home.” Black Orpheus 22 (1967): 58.

---. “Rumtalk.” Black Orpheus 22 (1967): 56.

---. “If the Flutes Pans Instruments.” Folio 20, no. 3 (1968): 29.

---. “Late November London.” In New Voices of the Commonwealth, edited by Howard Sergeant, 74. London: Evans Brothers, 1968.

---. National Gallery.” Folio 20, no. 3 (1968): 26.

---. “Poem.” Folio 21, no. 1 (1968): 14.

---. “Poem.” Bim 12, no. 48 (1969): 262. 

---. “Poem.” Folio 21, no. 2 (1969): 26.

---. “British Museum.” Black Images 1, no. 2 (1972): 17-18.

---. “Caliban Tourist.” Black Images 1, no. 2 (1972): 16-17.

---. “Mirror Image.” Black Images 1, no. 2 (1972): 19-20.

---. “Oneway Ticket Home.” Black Images 1, no. 2 (1972): 18.

---. “Poems of Exile.” Black Images 1, no. 2 (1972): 16-20.

Critical Prose

Lashley, Cliff. “Consideration of Dress.” The Pelican 4, no. 8 (1957): 8.

---. “A Room on the Hill (Book Review).” Caribbean Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1971): 58-59.

---. “West Indian National Libraries and the Challenge of Change.” Jamaica Journal 6, no. 2 (1972): 31-33.

---. “Letters to the Editor.” Black Images 1, no. 2 (1972): 34.

---. “A Celebration of Black and African Writing (Book Review).” ASA Review of Books 4 (1978): 59-60.

---. “The Quashie Aesthetics.” Caribe 4, no. 4 (1980): 21-23.

---. “Caribbean Culture.” Caribe 4, no. 1 (1982): 14.

---. “Towards a Critical Framework for Jamaican Literature: A Reading of the Fiction of Victor Stafford Reid and Other Writers.” PhD. diss., University of the West Indies, 1984.

---. “Savouring the Performance/Text: Theoretical/Methodological Problems in the Criticism of West Indian Poetry.” In West Indian Poetry: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference on West Indian Literature, edited by Jennifer Jackson and Jeannette B. Allis, 11-17. St. Thomas: College of the Virgin Islands, 1986.

---. “Aspects of Protest Poetry in Jamaica.” In West Indian Poetry: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference on West Indian Literature, edited by Jennifer Jackson and Jeannette B. Allis. St. Thomas, College of the Virgin Islands, 1986.

 ---. “How Many Caribbeans? The Politics of Different Literatures/Languages. On the Political Context of W.I Literature.” Sargasso (March 1987): 7-11.

---. “Like a Strong Tree: Claude McKay 1889-1994, Jamaican Writer: A Native Reading.” Jamaica Journal 22, no. 4 (1990): 47-50.

---. “Theory of Jamaican Comedy Heh, Heh?” In The Comic Vision in West Indian Literature, edited by Roydon Salick, 49-53. Marabella: Printex Converters, 1993.

---. “Garth St Omer, Novelist.” In Saint Lucian Literature and Theatre: An Anthology of Reviews, edited by Kendel Hippolyte and John Robert Lee, 35-36. Castries: Cultural Development Foundation, 2006.

---. “A Room on the Hill (Book Review).” In The Fiction of Garth St Omer: A Casebook, edited by Antonia Macdonald, 32-33. Leeds: Peepal, 2018.  

As Editor

Lashley, Cliff, ed. Caribe: West Indians at Home and Abroad. New York: Visual Arts Research and Resource Center, 1980

Public Speaking Engagements 

Conference Presentations

Lashley, Cliff. “A West Indian Criticism of West Indian Literature.” Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies Conference, Kingston, Jamaica, January 3-9, 1971. 

---. “Reggae Music and Dub Poetry.” African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica, 1988 

---. “Rethinking Development: A Native/Humanistic Perspective.” ISER, Kingston, Jamaica, October 19, 1989.

---. “Theory of Jamaican Comedy Heh, Heh?.” Conference on West Indian Literature, Castries, St. Lucia, May 24-26, 1990. 

Interviews

Lashley, Cliff, interview by Christopher Laird, Barbados for Caribbean Eye: Tape Six, Banyan Productions, 1989.

Television Program Contributor

Laird, Christopher, dir. Caribbean Eye, 1, 7, “Independent Voices,” 1991. 

PART II

SECONDARY SOURCES

Poetry

Brathwaite, Kamau. Barabajan Poems. Kingston: Savacou Publications, 1994.

• Brathwaite briefly invokes the memory of Lashley, his friend, on page 80 of the collection. He conjures the gruesome memory detailing the discovery of Lashley’s scattered, decomposing limbs in Jamaica. 

Jones-Hendrickson, S. B. “Three Diamonds in the Sky.” Seasoning for the Mortar: Virgin Islanders Writing in The Caribbean Writer Volumes 1-15, edited by Marvin E. Williams, 78-80. St. Thomas: University of the Virgin Islands, 2004.

• Jones-Hendrickson pens this poem in memory of Cliff Lashley, George Beckford, and Carl Stone.

Pollard, Velma. “For the Gentleman of the Waterfront.” The Caribbean Writer. February 1993.

• Pollard writes this poem in the memory of her friend, Cliff Lashley after he was murdered.

Critical Prose

Ashcroft, Bill, Gabreth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989.

• In their fifth chapter, Ashcroft et al draw on Lashley’s writing and his ruminations on the complicated relationship between West Indian criticism, postcolonial theory, and other forms of criticism and critical theory, for example New Criticism. 

Austin, David. “The Gentle Revolutionary: Jan Carew at 90.” Stabroek News, September 27 2010.

• Austin profiles the illustrious life and career of Jan Carew. During Carew’s sojourn in Canada, he creates Cotopaxi Journal with input from several important West Indian figures. Cliff Lashley is named as one of these figures and contributors.

Baugh, Eddie. “Confessions of a Critic: (Keynote Address, 23rd Annual Conference on West Indian Literature, Grenada, March 8-11, 2004).” Journal of West Indian Literature 15, no. 1/2 (2006): 15–28.

• During a portion of Baugh’s keynote, he recounts the events of the ACLALS conference of 1971. Brathwaite gave the keynote at the event, which centred conversations on the importance of the Afro-centric movement to the Caribbean region. V.S Naipaul was designated as the official respondent. Things got heated to the point where Lashley got into an exchange with Naipaul, someone Lashley believed deserved to be shot for his intellectual beliefs.

---. “Epilogue: Coming of Age in the Fifties.” In Beyond Windrush: Rethinking Postwar Anglophone Caribbean Literature, edited by J. Dillon Brown and Leah Reade Rosenberg, 239-247. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.

• Baugh credits his development as a Caribbean scholar, a scholar who was privy to new developments in literature, because of his proximity to his fellow undergraduates. He names Lashley, a man who “published a sprinkling of poems” with a fair collection of writing left behind, as one of these undergraduate colleagues and interlocutors. 

Birbalsingh, Frank. “‘Man I Pass that Stage’: Remembering Cliff Lashley.” Caribbean Quarterly 66, no. 4 (2020): 538 - 549.

• Birbalsingh’s essay both vividly describes the peculiar life led by Cliff Lashley, and documents Birbalsingh’s friendship with Lashley across complicated racial, political, and cultural spaces and institutions across multiple countries and continents.

Bogle, Cornel and Michael Bucknor. “Imagining the [Unbounded] Grounds of [Caribbean Canadian] Consciousness.” Canada and Beyond 10 (2021): 11-50.

• Bogle and Bucknor briefly consider the significance of queerness and Caribbeaneaity to the project of recognition and recovery in a Canadian context. In foregrounding the values of recognition and recovery of queer West Indian legacies, Lashley’s writing and his time spent in Canada are highlighted and appreciated for the ways in which his contributions further diversify and shape queer Caribbean archives in Canada.

Brathwaite, Kamau. “Rex Nettleford & the Renaissance of Caribbean Culture.” Caribbean Quarterly 43, no. 1/2 (1997): 34-69.

• Brathwaite’s essay briefly dwells on the significance of several Caribbean intellectuals and their contributions to contemporary Caribbean society. He lists Cliff Lashley as one of several figures who represent a personal library of Alexandria, a figure representative of the Caribbean scholar’s dedication to cultivating and sustaining Caribbean memories.

Cummings, Ronald. “Caribbean Literary Historiography and the Jamaican Literary 1950s.” Small Axe 24, no. 3 (2020): 164–80.

• In his essay concerning cultural and political relations and orientations of the 1950s literary Caribbean, Cummings identifies Cliff Lashley as one of a few key figures of the foundational generation of Caribbean scholars. 

Dance, Daryl Cumber. “A Conversation with Velma Pollard.” CLA Journal vol 47, no. 3 (2004): 259-298.

• Dance interviews Velma Pollard, then Visiting Professor of English at the University of Virgina. During their conversation, Pollard reflects on her relationship to Lashley. She also shares a poem that she wrote for Lashley after learning about his sudden death.

Davis, Gerald L. I Got the Word in Me and I Can Sing It, You Know: A Study of the Performed African-American Sermon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.

• Davis mentions Lashley in the “Preface” to the monograph. Specifically, he thanks Lashley for the many opportunities to have discussion and arguments about his approach to the book’s subject matter and African American Culture.

Drayton, Arthur D. “Poetry of Cultural Precariousness - Introducing Cliff Lashley: A New Caribbean Voice.” Black Orpheus 22 (1967): 49-53.

• Drayton profiles Lashley for the readers of Black Orpheus. Lashley is described as a poet with “no particularly Jamaican or West Indian beat.” He is a writer whose work is often about “the struggle of the cultured West Indian to retain his West Indianness and at the same time are evidence and one outcome of that struggle.” All of that said, Lashley is also described as a writer who remains committed to ideas of blackness. 

Ferguson, Stephney. “Defining a Role for a New National Library in a Developing Country: The National Library of Jamaica, 1980-1990.” Alexandria 8, no.1 (1996): 65-74.

• Ferguson’s essay draws on previous writings by Lashley and his experiences as a librarian. She endorses Lashley’s sentiment that Caribbean libraries play a central role in transmitting the total racial memory of diverse experiences in the Caribbean region.

Girvan, Norman. “Introduction to the New World.” New World Journal, June 2017.

• Girvan’s essay historicizes and contextualizes the significance of New World to Caribbean and diaspora intellectual traditions. Lashley is mentioned as one of the many key figures who fostered interdisciplinary thinking and co-habitation at the journal, but also Lashley is a named as a poet who contributed to the richness of creative writing across journal issues.

Greene, Sue N. “Report on The Second International Conference of Caribbean Women Writers.” Callaloo 13, no. 3 (1990): 532–38.

• Greene chronicles the happenings at the 1990 ICCWW. Lashley attended the conference as an uninvited guest and speaker. She writes about his impatience with the discontent and the divide between authors and critics, and of him warning against the sin of “self-reflexive neo-colonialism” in West Indian Criticism.

Hudson, Peter James. “Black Images - An Essay.” Chimurenga Chronic, July 2008.

• Hudson’s essay chronicles the sociocultural and political significance of Black Images over its brief but important circulation. The early issues of the publication focused on highlighting Black Canadian arts and culture. Lashley is named as one of the crucial poets contributing to the journal and these spaces at the time.

Irvinite. “Considerations of Dress - A Reply.” The Pelican 4 (1957): 12.

• A female UWI student responds to Lashley’s piece in The Pelican critiquing women’s dress. She accuses Lashley of being a psychopath, then she goes on to critique the questionable and typically unkempt dress of her male colleagues at the university.

L.A.W. “Cliff Lashley, diminutive bespectacled young man….” The Pelican 6 (1959): 122-123.

• Lashley is the subject of this profile piece. He is described as boisterous, opinionated, and a lover of art. The author goes on to describe Lashley as a “Bundle of contradictions” (122), a person having to adjust to a less-than-ideal society. He is a student who influenced the lives of many who have come into contact with him.

Lindfors, Bernth. “Black Orpheus.” In European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Albert S. Gérard, 659-669. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1986.

• In Lindfors’s exploration of the history of Black Orpheus, Lashley is listed as one of the West Indian poets who made their first appearances during the literary magazine’s period of transformation and maturity. What was once a traditionally continental African literary magazine in content and form shifted towards the cosmopolitan.

Jamaica Library Association. Jamaica Library Association Bulletin 1976. Kingston: Research and Publications Working Party, 1976.

• Lashley is praised for his intellectual contributions to discourse on library science in Jamaica. More specifically, his essay on the significance of the oral tradition and the role of the national library is highlighted in the book reviews section of the 1976 bulletin.

O’Callaghan, Evelyn. “Engineering the Female Subject: Erna Brodber’s Myal.” Kunapipi 12, no. 3 (1990): 93-103.

• O’Callaghan briefly draws upon Lashley’s ruminations on narrative strategy and female personhood during a staff-postgraduate seminar at UWI, Cave Hill.

Nettleford, Rex M. Cultural Action and Social Change: The Case of Jamaica: An Essay in Caribbean Cultural Identity. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1979.

• In the “Acknowledgements” section of the text, Nettleford credits Lashley as one of his critical readers and editors of the work prior to the book’s publication.

---. “Dr. Cliff Lashley.” In From the Heart: Eulogies. Kingston: University of the West Indies, 2011.

• Nettleford’s book, published posthumously, eulogizes several important West Indian cultural figures who passed away in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Lashley is one of the figures eulogized in the ‘1990s’ portion of the book. Lashley is described as a native humanist and aesthete who loved people over everything else. 

Rae, Norman. “Letters to the Editor.” Kingston Gleaner. December 10, 1965.

• Rae writes to the editor of Kingston Gleaner criticizing Lashley's deplorable behavior in public after they witnessed him falling asleep during an arts production, one that Lashley would later review in Kingston Gleaner. Lashley confessed he had a bit too much to drink, in his published review of the show.