Acclaimed Bajan poet Kamau Brathwaite dies

Barbadian poet and academic Edward Kamau Brathwaite, widely regarded as one of the Caribbean's major literary voices, died on Tuesday at 89.

Trinidad and Tobago's Bocas Lit Fest said in a tweet: "All of us on the Bocas team are sad to hear the news that Kamau Brathwaite passed away earlier today in Barbados, at the age of 89. Poet, scholar, and editor, Brathwaite was a towering figure in Caribbean literature and intellectual life for half a century."

Brathwaite, according to a story posted on the Barbados Today website, famously coined the term "nation language" in championing creolisation in Caribbean culture and thought. He is credited with developing the concept of Creole identity, a predominantly Afrocentric mindset.

According to wikipedia, Brathwaite was born on May 11, 1930 and was widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. He was formerly a professor of comparative literature at New York University and in 2006, won the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his book Born to Slow Horses.

Brathwaite held a PhD from the University of Sussex and was the co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). He received both Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983.

The awards he garnered over his long career included the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Americas Prize for poetry and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum.