Abstract
This essay considers the place of Brian Lara in Caribbean poetry through two literary framing devices. It first situates the iconic image of Lara within the literary frames provided by T.S. Eliot's ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ and Kamau Brathwaite's notion of ‘mwe’, before unpacking Lara poems composed by writers and performers as well known as Jean Breeze, Howard Fergus and Paul Keens-Douglas. The discussion suggests that by reading these pieces as a collection Lara is shown to represent the Caribbean's ongoing negotiation between the one and the many, as well as the potentially hazardous over-investment in the individual hero. Consequently, the discussion is less concerned with the actions and personality of Lara than it is with his heroic image in poetry and the critical messages West Indies cricket and the Caribbean more generally may take from such literary representations.
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