Sin/tax: grammar, hybridity and resistance in contemporary black poetry

Abstract

Abstract: This essay interrogates the various imperatives towards syntactical fragmentation and ‘radical unintelligibility’ that are prevalent among the avant-garde poetic community, arguing that they are insufficient to the adaptive stylistic needs of many contemporary poets of colour. Building upon classic postcolonial theory, it posits that a dialectic of grammatical ‘abrogation and appropriation’ more fruitfully captures the hybrid style of many poets working at the interface with prose and lyric essay, often for radical political ends. After defining and deconstructing two syntactical ‘dogmas’ of the avant-garde (respectively, disjunction and ‘Total Syntax’), it investigates how the work of three contemporary black poets (M. NourbeSe Philip, Claudia Rankine and Harmony Holiday) demonstrates an ambivalent, self-reflexive relationship with grammatical syntax that suggests varying positions on political questions to do with assimilation, decolonisation and reparations. The final section of the paper explores how this negotiation between grammar and disjunction is starting to define poetry of colour in the British context, ending with a syntactical reading of Vahni Capildeo’s Measures of Expatriation.