PARAGONREVIEW

Issue 5

The Archie Markham Archive

The Brynmor Jones Library has recently acquired the papers of EA Markham, the highly respected Anglo-Caribbean writer and poet. Archie Markham was born in Montserrat in 1939, and has lived mainly in Britain since the 1950s. He directed the Caribbean Theatre Workshop for a couple of years and, from 1972-74, was a member of the Cooperative Ouvriere du Batiment restoring houses in the South of France. From 1983-85 he had a spell as a Media Coordinator in Papua New Guinea. Markham has held Residencies in various universities and colleges, including Creative Writing Fellow of Hull College of Higher Education, 1978/79. He has edited a clutch of literary magazines, including, at present, Sheffield Thursday. He organises the annual, international Sheffield Thursday poetry and short story competitions. He is currently principal lecturer in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University.

Markham's literary output, from the mid-1960s, has included plays - Tim, I'm in Danger of Losing my Respect for You (with others, Theatre 69); The Masterpiece and, with the Caribbean Theatre Workshop (1970-71) The Private Life of the Public Man and Dropping Out is Violence. He has published several volumes of poetry, notably Human Rites (1984); Living in Disguise (1986); Towards the End of a Century (1989); Letter From Ulster & The Hugo Poems (1993), and Misapprehensions (1995). In 1989 he edited Hinterland, the Bloodaxe book of Caribbean Poetry, and in 1996, The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories. He has also written a travel book, A Papua-New Guinea Sojourn: more pleasures of exile (Carcanet, 1997).

Also, as editor, he has produced two 'disaster' books: Merely a Matter of Colour ('The Uganda Asian Anthology', with Arnold Kingston, 'Q' Books, 1973) and (with Howard Fergus) Hugo versus Montserrat (Linda Lee Books, 1989) - on the aftermath of a hurricane which devastated Markham's Caribbean islands of Montserrat and St Caesare. In 1986 Ambit brought out Markham's first collection of short stories, Something Unusual. His other two collections are Ten Stories (PAVIC) and Taking the Drawing-Room through Customs (Peepal Tree Books, 1996).