SOURCE: Morgan, Mary E. “Highway to Vision: This Sea Our Nexus.” World Literature Today 68, no. 4 (autumn 1994): 663-68.

In the following essay, Brathwaite's sister reflects on the importance of the Caribbean Sea as an influence on her brother's poetry. She attempts to show how the movements of the sea are reflected in the rhythms of Brathwaite's work.

1. We were brought up by the sea. I do not mean merely that as island people we saw the sea always there, but that our home was actually by the sea; the Round House where we grew up looked out on Brown's Beach and Carlisle Bay. And we came to appreciate, and to learn, the movement of the sea, which forms so much a part of Kamau's work. The sea, our highway out (migration, to study),¹ our wave-ride back—back to what Brathwaite calls “the centre,” after England and Ghana: “I had...