Eric Roach (1915-1974) was a Tobagonian poet, dramatist and journalist described by Kamau Brathwaite as “the most splendid voice of the Caribbean Renaissance.”

His poems are notable for their invocations of history, their political engagement, and their alternating attitudes of hope and despair. He was a fervent supporter of the political project of the West Indies Federation, but when by 1962 the union had entirely collapsed, a pessimism began to take hold in his writing. A stack of unpublished poems were left on Roach’s desk on the morning he drank insecticide and swam out into Quinam Bay. One of these, At Quinam Bay, describes a landscape scarred by colonialism and slavery.

He’s seen and known and done too much;
Bone-weary as Colon himself,
soul-wretched as the slaver’s crews,
heartsick as any dying slave
he walks to bay,
every dream he dreamed long drowned,
every love sunk underground,
every vision vanished.
Will the sea yield him quiet death.
Wake him a ghost of the despairs
of all the dead who trafficked here?
(1974)