Carlos Rigby (June 19, 1945 – May 23, 2017) was a Black West Indian poet from Laguna de Perlas on the Atlantic coast of

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...

Poetry

Known as "the poet Rigby" (''el poeta Rigby''), Rigby is often cited with

David McField David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...

as the most important poets of Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. Rigby's work particularly focuses on the oral poetic tradition, and incorporates a variety of languages including English, Spanish and Creole. One of Rigby's translators,

Stephen Henighan Stephen Patrick Glanvill Henighan (born 19 June 1960) is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, journalist and academic. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Henighan arrived in Canada at the age of five and grew up in rural eastern Ontario. He studied po ...

, notes that for Rigby as for many Nicaraguans of West Indian descent living on the country's Caribbean coast (and in contrast to Nicaraguans from the western part of the country), English was the language Rigby spoke at home, while Spanish was the language of his formal education and eventually the primary language for his poetry, though his poems also involve "Spanish-English puns and reinterspersed with

chant A chant (from French ', from Latin ', "to sing") is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes ...

-like refrains in Native American languages" spoken in areas surrounding where he grew up. Henighan writes:

As his translator, I found myself with the bizarre task of restoring Rigby's poetry to his mother tongue, which, through a fluke of history, is not his literary language. Rigby and I speak to each other in Spanish. Occasionally he will ask me the English word for something related to computers or television. The modern part of Rigby's life has taken place in Spanish; English, for him, is the language of a
rural In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are describ ...
, natural world, of parents and children living in villages in the jungle. My translations must find a way to reflect the fact that for Rigby, in contrast to the experience of most people on this planet, English is a language that expresses what the world was like before
technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
.

Political engagement

Among the Atlantic coast intellectuals who supported the

Sandinistas The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto Cé ...

from the early 1970s, Rigby also traveled to London in support of anti-colonial resistance over the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouzet ...

, as well as to New York, supporting the

Black Panthers The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. New ...

Works

"If I Were May"
in ''Volcán'', ed. Alejandro Murguia (City Lights Books, 1983), pp. 103–105.
"If I Were May"
trans. into English by Charles Tarzian, ''BOMB Magazine'', Issue 12, April 1, 1985.

References

External links

Antojología de Carl Rigby
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rigby, Carlos 1945 births 2017 deaths 20th-century male writers 20th-century Nicaraguan poets 21st-century male writers 21st-century Nicaraguan poets Afro-Caribbean culture African diaspora in Nicaragua Nicaraguan male poets