PHILIPSBURG:--- Ixion & The Soufrière Suite by Shake Keane, a giant of Vincentian and Caribbean poetry, is a doublepack anniversary book, said Lasana M. Sekou, projects director of House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP).
The 2025 book, Ixion & The Soufrière Suite is arriving early, thanks to HNP, just in time for the holiday season! Readers and literature lovers can find it now at Gaymes Bookstore in Kingstown, St. Vincent, and Arnia’s Bookstore on Zagers Road/Bush Road in St. Martin.
Ixion was first published in Guiana in 1952. In 1979, the same year the Soufrière volcano erupted and devastated the newly independent St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Keane responded defiantly with The Volcano Suite, now retitled The Soufrière Suite in the new anthology.
After more than 70 years since their original releases, both books are being republished in a special collector’s edition for the first time, said Sekou.
“The collections have in common the poetic representation of upheaval and turbulence of different types. … The two poetry sequences in Ixion & The Soufrière Suite show the extent to which Shake Keane was a precursor of today’s heightened ecological awareness,” said Keane biographer and UWI lecturer Philip Nanton.
New generation authors, whose poetry literary critics have compared to aspects of Keane’s iconoclastic and disaster writings, include N.C. Marks (St. Vincent and the Grenadines), Celia Sorhaindo (Dominica), and Richard Georges (Virgin Islands).
Ixion & The Soufrière Suite has been in the works at the St. Martin indie press for some time, said HNP president Jacqueline Sample.
In 2005, HNP published Keane’s authoritative volume, The Angel Horn—Shake Keane (1927-1997) Collected Poems, and launched it at the St. Martin Book Fair before an audience of over 200 people, said Sample.
During the event, Dr. Margaret Bynoe, the poet’s widow and an invited guest at the literary festival, presented Sekou with out-of-print poetry volumes by Shake Keane for consideration of republication by HNP, said Sample.
It should be noted that Keane, in a rare move for the major writers of his generation, began publishing in the region before he gained fame in international jazz circles while living in England during the 1950s and 1960s. He is still probably better known as an innovative jazz trumpeter, arranger, and as a member of the ground-breaking Joe Harriott Quintet than for his poetry, said Sekou.
A towering figure representing his country at the very early editions of CARIFESTA, Keane is also remembered as the winner of Cuba’s prestigious Casa de las Americas Prize for Poetry (1979). In 1981, the poet, musician, educator, raconteur, emigrated to the USA, a form of self-imposed exile, said his publisher.
Keane’s poetry has appeared in Bim, Kyk-over-al, Savacou, and Caribbean Quarterly. His work has been anthologized in Caribbean Voices; The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse; The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry; and the recent high school literary textbook Disaster Matters: Disasters Matter. The music CD Real Keen: Reggae into Jazz, was released in 1991 in London.
According to HNP, Keane’s contemporaries and admirers such as George Lamming, Kamau Brathwaite, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Gordon Rohlehr, Edward Baugh, Adrian Fraser, Philip Nanton, Val Wilmer, and Cecil Blazer Williams, are among those who hail the Vincentian as one of the innovative fathers of modern Caribbean literature. Shake Keane died in Norway, in 1997, on a jazz tour.
