‘Literary’ versus ‘Cultural’ Texts in the NEAB Anthology

This chapter reflects on the increasingly influential links drawn between literary reading and cultural formation in state education at the end of the century. Building on the implementation of multicultural initiatives under Thatcher, it focuses on the emergence of literary categories distinguishing the ‘English literary heritage’ from ‘other cultures and traditions’. It begins by locating these ideas in the mind of the cosmopolitan poet and state English advisor C.B. Cox before turning to their codification in the NEAB GCSE Anthology (1996, 1998), a school reader that introduced a new contemporary canon of postcolonial poetry. The chapter concludes with detailed readings of three anthologized poems by Sujata Bhatt, Kamau Brathwaite, and Tatamkhulu Afrika, demonstrating how we might reimagine the Anthology’s ideas of organic language, culture, and representative ethnic identity.