> > Primary Bibliography


Your task here is find as many single-author works by your poet and/or inclusions of your poet’s work in anthologies and journals as you can, and compile these into a bibliography.  (Also include in your bibliography any recordings and films featuring your poet.  Such items, if they exist, may be particularly difficult to track down.)  In some instances, the Gale Literary Databases may have done much of this work for you, while others will require more legwork. But even if you're one of the lucky ones, you mustn't stop with Gale.

For instance, your poet might have work included in the following anthologies owned by the HSU library (please don't check them out):

  • Allnutt, Gillian, Fred D'Aguiar, Ken Edwards, and Eric Mottram, eds.  The New British Poetry, 1968-1988.  London: Paladin, 1988.  PR1227 .N48 1988
  • Berry, James, ed.  News for Babylon: The Chatto Book of West Indian-British Poetry.  London: Chatto and Windus, 1984.  PR9216 N43 1984
  • Brown, Stewart, ed.  Caribbean Poetry Now.  2d ed.  London: Edward Arnold, 1992.  PR9205.6 .C37 1992
  • Brown, Stewart, Mervyn Morris and Gordon Rohlehr, eds.  Voiceprint: An Anthology of Oral and Related Poetry from the Caribbean.  Harlow, UK: Longman, 1989.  PR9216 .V65 1989
  • Markham, E. A., ed.  Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies and Britain.  Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe, 1989.  PR 9205.6 .H5 1989

I can also let you glance at a few of my own anthologies which our library doesn't have—especially if you find references to them elsewhere first. (Just ask.)  Beyond that, however, your searching will need to be creative.  For instance, you may want to do an "Advanced Search" in Catalyst (the HSU library's online catalog) to turn up your poet in the "Table of Contents" of some other anthology I haven't listed. 

You mustn't limit your research to HSU's library, though, as it may not necessarily have much by these writers.  How else would you find such things?  You might come across bibliographic references in the single-author volumes and/or anthologies that you turn up. Bibliographic info may also be found in critical works about your poet, or even on the Web (but be wary).  In the latter two instances, you'll want to consult other members of your team.  But you will certainly need to refer to comprehensive databases that catalog books held by other libraries (WorldCat) and that index items published in journals (Academic Search, ArticleFirst, JSTOR, MLA Bibliography and Project Muse).  You might also check the catalog of the British Library (to find items that may only have been published in the UK).  And you never know what a search of a national on-line bookseller like Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk will turn up.  

When all else fails, hoof it down to the library and pore over some reference books.  The following, for instance, are all in the Reference section on the main floor, not in the stacks.  (This is not an exhaustive list; you may find other useful works on your own.)

  • Benson, Eugene and L. W. Conolly. The Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. 2 vols. New York: Routledge, 1994. HSU Main Reference PR9080.A52 E53 1994 (vol.1) and PR9080.A52 E53 1994 (vol. 2)
  • Berrian, Brenda F. and Aart Broek. Bibliography of Women Writers From the Caribbean.  Washington, D.C.: Three Continents, 1989.  HSU Main Reference PN849.C3 B47 1989
  • Dance, Darryl Cumber. Fifty Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Greenwood, CT: Greenwood, 1986. HSU Main Reference PR9205.A52 F54 1986
  • Fister, Barbara.  Third World Women's Literatures: A Dictionary and Guide to Materials in English.  Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995.  HSU Main Reference PN 849 .U43 F58 1995
  • Herdeck, Donald E., ed. Caribbean Writers. A Bio-Bibliographical-Critical Encyclopedia.  Washington, D.C.: Three Continents, 1979.  HSU Main Reference PN849 .C3
  • Lindfors, Bernth and Reinhard Sander. Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Black African Writers.  Dictionary of Literary Biography vol. 117. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. HSU Main Reference PN451 .D53 vol.117
  • Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth and Olga Torres, Caribbean Women Novelists: An Annotated Critical Bibliography.  Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993.  HSU Main Reference PN849.C32 P37 1993
  • Serafin, Stephen R., ed.  Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century.  4 vols.  Detroit: St. James, 1999.  HSU Main Reference PN771 .E5 1999

Compile and collate all the citations you've assembled, and put some thought into how to arrange them. (I'd recommend subsections for "Volumes of Poetry," "Poems Collected in Anthologies," "Poems in Journals," and "Other Work" (the latter category for fiction, essays, and so on).)  How should your entries be formatted?  MLA Style (as outlined in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed.).  Capital Community College in Hartford, CT has an excellent web-based introduction to MLA Style.

Other Courses > Eldridge Home