Kamau Brathwaite

I was born Edward, but found myself in Kamau, a name that carries memory. I have listened to the sea not as a metaphor but as a mother tongue — a language broken and reborn in the mouths of the enslaved. My typewriter is a drum, my page a score. I do not write; I chant. I gather fragments — of history, of song, of dream — and weave them into tidalectics, a rhythm of thought that ebbs and flows. I am not quiet, but neither am I loud. I am the low hum of a people remembering.