Introduction
Among his many other pursuits Cliff Lashley was a librarian. It is in this spirit that we undertake this bibliography. As Lashley asserts in a paper delivered in 1972 at the International Library Conference and published that same year in Jamaica Journal, “a national library, is ‘the mind of society,’ ‘the only effective repository of racial memory,’ ‘a live depository of the cultural past.’”1 Lashley’s reflections on the role of the library, and by extension the role of librarians, in postcolonial Jamaica was resonant particularly because he was articulating this only a decade after Jamaican independence. Lashley saw the librarian as a key figure in collecting, assembling, sharing, and democratizing culture. It is also in that context that Lashley argued that in our societies “we must recreate the profession of librarianship.” Rather than forwarding an understanding of their work in terms of “objectivity,” he instead saw it as inherently political: “Librarians in developing societies must have as their passionate concern to work for the health of the whole body politic: they must be political.”2 While Lashley offers us this broad manifesto he also importantly attends to the intricate processes and practices that make the librarian’s work possible. For instance, he references some of the procedural tasks that librarians undertake, noting their role in handling “legal deposits” as well as the performance of “some of the basic activities such as producing bibliographies,” which he saw as essential duties.3 In other words, Lashley saw bibliographies as political practices.
Lashley’s work also importantly advocated for attending to new tools and avenues for doing this cultural work. (This was part of his call to “re-create the profession of librarianship.”)4 Indeed, we might read that 1972 essay as preempting some of the discussions happening today in the field of the digital humanities, in which there are ongoing conversations about new technologies, the relationship of these to older archives and practices of archiving, and debates about open access sharing of intellectual work. Lashley offers an early reflection on some of these questions when he challenges us that
We might have to find a new formula for obtaining the nation’s printed production free of cost because maybe copyright should be abandoned in developing countries so that all knowledge would be free. Certainly we will not primarily collect and preserve written materials. We will use electronic technology to collect preserve and disseminate the spoken word. Our collecting must be active.5
This Zotero bibliography represents one attempt to actively collect and more freely share his work, utilizing new bibliographic formats while attending to the librarian’s fundamental task of assemblage, of cataloging and collating material, which Lashley saw as invaluable.
Lashley’s understanding of intellectual work as not strictly private property also informed his literary practice in other ways. It is true that Lashley wrote prolifically but published little. In a 1968 issue of Black Orpheus, a Pan-African literary journal established in Nigeria, Arthur Drayton confirms that the Jamaican bibliophile “destroyed more than half of what he ha[d] written and ha[d] never been overly concerned with publishing.”6 Sharing work for Lashley was about more than publishing it in journals or periodicals; sometimes his mode of “publishing” involved simply mailing a poem in a letter to a friend.7 In Drayton’s profile, Lashley himself self-consciously opines that he is “not a poet” and goes on to apologize both for publishing works that reflect “after all a very personal activity and for displaying the results of this activity to the public.”8 These philosophical tensions between how one generates writing and what and where one publishes would continue to influence Lashley’s relationship to intellectual life.
The result of this is a scattered and incomplete archive, made even more complex by the transnational dimensions of Lashley’s life. That we have so little of Lashley’s writing readily available for public sharing means that we may never be able to grasp the full extent of his literary and aesthetic capabilities. Similarly, there are legendary accounts of his participation in various conferences, but his intellectual thought, shared in these venues and moments but not archived in print, is impossible to capture in a bibliographic project such as this; we are able to mention and include only a few conference papers as part of this project.
That said, we do have access to select works that we have brought together to share. This digital project is part of a larger conversation about how attention to a single life can also shed light on key cultural moments and movements. Lashley attended the University College of the West Indies in the late 1950s, a period that “played a vital and necessary role in enabling shifts in cultural values and also in laying some of the ideological and critical foundations for literary decolonization in the region.”9He held board member positions at region-defining publications such as Savacou and New World Quarterly and edited the Journal of the College of the Virgin Islands and Black Images (the latter was the first Black radical publication in Canada). While he may not have published often, Lashley remained persistently and loudly involved in Caribbean critical and creative life and participated in shaping the community, voices, and venues that we now accept as cornerstones of Caribbean literary and artistic critique.
Lashley was never lost in the crowd. He is recalled as a memorable figure whose literary sensibilities were a perfect marriage to conversation. For these reasons Frank Birbalsingh reminds us: “We should not be surprised if oral literary devices play such a central role not just in Cliff’s own conversational practice but in Caribbean literature as a whole.”10 In taking up this project of tracing Lashley’s intellectual and creative contributions we are reminded that so much of Caribbean intellectual work takes place off the page, much of it relegated to memory. The work of gathering Lashley’s writerly endeavors here hopefully adds to this culture of conversation that sustains the region. To take this conversation online via a digital database adds another layer of complexity and community. This project takes inspiration from a similar Zotero bibliography curated for sx salon 27 on the work of Kamau Brathwaite. Kelly Baker Josephs and Teanu Reid, in their introduction to that project, characterize it “as a living library on Zotero.”11For us, the publication of Lashley’s bibliography is also not a complete project; rather, drawing on Lashley’s own language, we see this as a “live depository.” We invite friends and colleagues who may have other dispersed material from the Cliff Lashley archive to add to this bibliography. We all have a responsibility to collect and record these material and ephemeral traces as best we can, ensuring both an oral and a written tradition by which we further prop up Caribbean studies.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the librarians at McMaster University’s Mills Memorial Library for their invaluable help in sourcing and accessing some of the material referenced in this bibliography. We would also like to thank Sonia Mills and Velma Pollard, who generously shared with us materials from their personal archives.
Additional Notes on the Project
The Timeline
For this project we set out to curate several sources of information to better help users understand the impact of Cliff Lashley’s career. The timeline, bibliography, and the Zotero database, however, remain a work in progress. To best engage with each of these resources means remembering that what is presented here is not the full picture of Lashley’s transnational endeavors. We remain open to receiving information and inquiries from the public that help in developing these resources further.
The Bibliography
While the Zotero database presents both primary and secondary resources in alphabetical order, the bibliography as presented here is divided into two parts. Part 1 (primary sources) organizes bibliographic entries chronologically from oldest to the most recent publication date to give a sense of the unfolding of Lashley’s career, thought, and contributions. Part 2 (secondary sources) includes citations for some of the scholars and writers who reference or cite Lashley in their published work. This part presents entries in alphabetical order in the manner of bibliographies based on the author’s last name. We include brief annotations to aid users and their understanding of the relationship between an entry and Lashley.
We invite, and encourage, site users, friends, and colleagues to contribute further information to improve the bibliography. Please contact Ronald Cummings (cummir7@mcmaster.ca) or Linzey Corridon (corridol@mcmaster.ca) with suggestions, revisions, or additions.
The Zotero
Users may access the Zotero library using this link: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4929434/cliff_lashley_bibliography/library
Ronald Cummings is an associate professor of Caribbean literature and Black diaspora studies at McMaster University. He is the coeditor, with Alison Donnell, of Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970–2020 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and the editor of Make the World New: The Poetry of Lillian Allen (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021). He is also an affiliated member of the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender, and Class at the University of Johannesburg.
Linzey Corridon is a poet, Vanier Canada Scholar, and a PhD candidate at McMaster University. His critical and creative writings can be found in, among other venues, sx salon, Wasafiri, the Puritan, and Canada and Beyond.
The Cliff Lashley Bibliography (PDF download)
Table of Contents
Additional Notes on the Project...............................................................5
The Timeline.......................................................................................5
The Bibliography.................................................................................5
The Zotero..........................................................................................5
Timeline of Cliff Lashley’s Literary and Professional Endeavors.............6
BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................10
PART I: PRIMARY WORKS.............................................................10
Poetry..........................................................................................10
Critical Prose...............................................................................10
As Editor......................................................................................11
Public Speaking Engagements...................................................11
PART II: SECONDARY SOURCES......................................................12
Poetry...............................................................................................12
Critical Prose....................................................................................13
Notes.....................................................................................................17
Compilers..............................................................................................17
[1] Cliff Lashley, “West Indian National Libraries and the Challenge of Change,” Jamaica Journal 6, no. 2 (1972): 31.
[2] Lashley, “West Indian National Libraries,” 33 (italics in original).
[3] Ibid., 31.
[4] Ibid., 33.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Arthur D. Drayton, “Poetry of Cultural Precariousness—Introducing Cliff Lashley: A New Caribbean Voice,” Black Orpheus 22 (1967): 49.
[7] Velma Pollard, personal correspondence with the author, 20 February 2021.
[8] Drayton, “Poetry of Cultural Precariousness,” 49–50.
[9] Ronald Cummings, “Caribbean Literary Historiography and the Jamaican Literary 1950s,” Small Axe, no. 63 (November 2020): 173. The University College of the West Indies, established in 1948, obtained full university status in 1967.
[10] Frank Birbalsingh, “‘Man I Pass That Stage’: Remembering Cliff Lashley,” Caribbean Quarterly 66, no. 4 (2020): 547.
[11] Kelly Baker Josephs and Teanu Reid, “The Kamau Brathwaite Bibliography,” sx salon, no. 27 (February 2018), http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/discussions/kamau-brathwaite-bibliography, para. 1.