This is a general introduction intended primarily for readers of poetry who are making their first approach to the poetry of the Anglophone Caribbean; it pays particular attention to the history of the literary culture, and to the literature's relationship to Caribbean, European, African, and American writing. While the book provides a grounding in the literary history of the West Indies, this is an introduction to issues and developments rather than a chronicle; its emphasis is less on the history per se than on the dynamics of that history. It is not a survey, or a thematic review, or an account of the cultural background. Instead the point here is to provide categories for thinking about this poetry, and to investigate the poems as poems, rather than as documents of social/political developments. The emphasis will be on the texts, and on what they reveal about what West Indian writers are doing when they write poetry. How are writers using the particular resources of poetry (as distinct from those of prose, drama, journalism) to address their concerns? What kinds of problem arise in the act of writing? What decisions are being made about such matters as audience, language, and strategies of representation?

Apart from oral poetry and some scattered early publications, Caribbean poetry in English begins around 1920 – long after colonization, the colonial wars, slavery, emancipation, and indenture.