This epic trilogy traces the migrations of African peoples in and from the African continent, through the sufferings of the Middle Passage and slavery, and dramatizes 20th-century journeys to the UK, France and the US in search of economic and psychic survival. The Arrivants exemplified Brathwaite’s ambition to create a distinctively Caribbean form of poetry, which would celebrate Caribbean voices and language, as well as African and Caribbean rhythms evoking Ghanaian talking drums, calypso, reggae, jazz and blues.

His dazzling, inventive language, his tragic yet unquenchable vision, make Kamau Brathwaite one of the most compelling of late twentieth century poets.

Brathwaite, a scholar of history, literature and philosophy and a professor emeritus at New York University, was interested in what unified the diverse Caribbean before colonialism fractured it.

Kamau Brathwaite is a connecting spirit. He explores the African presence in Africa, the Caribbean, and the world, not in its staticness but in its movement, in its changingness, in its interactions.