James Berry was born in Boston, Jamaica on 28 September, 1924 . One of six children. his parents were subsistence farmers,
and he enjoyed an early life of rural rhythms and experiences. By the age
of ten, however, the young writer began to feel frustrated by what his
village could offer. “I began to be truly bewildered by my everyday
Jamaican life,” he remarked in a Horn Book piece quoted in Authors and
Artists for Young Adults. “I felt something of an alien and an outsider
and truly imprisoned.”
Indeed, rural Jamaica provided Berry with few opportunities.
Though
eager to learn about the wider world, the boy had access to few books.
He had to share his single school text with all the other members of his
family. But, through Bible stories and traditional folk tales, the
young writer began to nurture what he described in the Horn Book as an
“inner seeing,” who had “an inner life that could
not be shared.ranged from the lyrical to the caustic, but almost all of them intimately caught the speech patterns of his native Jamaica.
Berry helped to enrich and diversify the capacities of the English
language, making conversational modes of West Indian expression, which a
previous generation would have considered exotic or barely literate,
normal and easily understood. In doing so he gave literary
respectability to forms of language increasingly heard in the streets
and playgrounds of multicultural Britain”
When he was 17, during World War II, Berry went to work in the United
States. But he resented the treatment of blacks there, and returned to
Jamaica after four years. After opportunities in the West Indies had not improved, in 1948 , as past of the Windrush generation
Berry decided to try his luck in London. Working and attending school at
night, Berry obtained training as a telegrapher, and worked in that
field for more than two decades. At the same time, he began to write
short stories and stage plays. and became involved over the years with many social and cultural organisations in North London, including being sessions organiser for the Carribean Artists Movement.
He became a much loved poet , helping to enrich and diversify the capacities of the English
language, making conversational modes of West Indian expression, which a
previous generation would have considered exotic or barely literate,
normal and easily understood. In doing so he gave literary
respectability to forms of language increasingly heard in the streets
and playgrounds of multicultural Britain. In 1976 he compiled the anthology Bluefoot Traveller and in 1979 his
first poetry collection, Fractured Circles, was published. In 1981, he then won the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition, the first poet of
West Indian origin to do so. He also edited the landmark anthology News for
Babylon (1984), which was considered “a ground-breaking publication because its
publishing house Chatto & Windus was ‘mainstream’ and distinguished
for its international poetry list”.
A pioneering writer and activist, his powerful poem ' Outsider’ was influenced by
his own experiences of racism and urgently seeks action for equality.
Each stanza questioning ‘If you see me’ is direct criticism and evoked
pathos at the lack of education, acknowledgement, and action against the
racism embedded in the UK. Sadly so relevant to this day. Black lives matter
Outsider - James Berry
If you see me lost on busy streets
my dazzle is sun-stain of skin,
I'm not naked with dark glasses on
saying barren ground has no oasis:
It's that cracked up by extremes
I must hold self together with extreme pride.
If you see me lost in neglected
woods, I'm no thief eyeing trees
to plunder their stability
or a moaner shouting at air:
it's that voices in me rule
firmer than my skills, and sometimes
among men my stubborn hurts
leave me like wild dogs.
If you see me lost on forbidding
wastelands, watching dry flowers
nod, or scraping a tunnel
in mountain rocks, I don't open
a trail back into time:
it's that a monotony
like the Sahara seals my enchantment.
If you see me lost on long
footpaths, I don't set traps
or map out arable acres:
it's that I must exhaust twigs
like limbs with water divining.
If you see me lost in my sparse
room, I don't ruminate
on prisoners and falsify
their jokes, and go on about
prisons having been perfected
like a common smokescreen of mind:
it's that I moved
my circle from ruins
and I search to remake it whole.
