Calypso is a seminal collection of poetry by Kamau Brathwaite, part of his trilogy The Arrivants.

Through syncopated rhythms and African-Caribbean vernacular, Brathwaite reclaims cultural memory and articulates a postcolonial Caribbean identity. The poems reflect on forced migration, colonial violence, and spiritual survival. Brathwaite uses sound and rhythm as tools of resistance, re-inscribing ancestral voice into the written word.

Calypso is not just poetry, it is political, musical, and decolonial historiography. It challenges linear narratives and centres Black diasporic consciousness.

This reference was recommended by the Bartlett Pan-African Indigenist Collective.

The Collective is a space for critical dialogue, activism, and scholarship that foregrounds Pan-African Indigenist ways of knowing, being, and creating. Formed by members of the Bartlett community dedicated to uplifting the voices, knowledge, and cultural legacies of people of African heritage and their respective Indigenous communities and lands, it aims to challenge colonial legacies and inspire transformation within institutional structures, research and curricula. By integrating creative and scholarly practices, the Collective works to restore narratives that have been silenced or misrepresented. Their work advances decolonial efforts in higher education by creating inclusive spaces and centring diverse African knowledge systems. Bartlett Alternative recognises the Collective’s vital contribution to broadening intellectual and cultural horizons through radical inclusivity and exclusivity, and thanks them for sharing resources that foreground lived experience, land-based knowledge systems, and epistemic justice.

Department Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment