THE COLLECTION

KENVIL GILES ATKINS LEWIS POET

Kenvil Giles Atkins Lewis has seemed the embodiment of his age, both to his contemporaries and to modern readers. Kenvil’s eternal beauty of nature and the beauty of the seasons seems peculiarly Caribbean. his lyric gift for sound and cadence, a gift passed down from generations.

The lurid history of Kenvil’s family is interesting in itself, but some knowledge of it is also essential for understanding the recurrence in his poetry of themes of madness, murder, avarice, miserliness, social climbing, marriages arranged for profit instead of love, and estrangements between families and friends, disaster, farming, love, and hatred.

?Kenvil Atkins was born in the small Hamlet of Micoud, the 2nd son of the 5 children of Gonzague and Sylvestina of Micoud, Gonzague Hugh Atkins, a cultivated but embittered Engineer, it was in part to travel for adventure that Kenvil left the happy environment of Micoud, Kenvil began writing poetry well past his teenage years, he used writing as a way of taking his mind from his troubles. One aspect of his method of composition was set, too, he would make up phrases or discrete lines as he walked and store them in his memory until he had a proper setting for them.

As this practice suggests, his primary consideration was more often rhythm and language than discursive meaning. At the age of 40 his first volume of poetry, Timeless Poetry, and short stories were major part of the volume, although it also contained poems. It is a remarkable achievement for so young a poet, displaying great virtuosity of versification and the prodigality of imagery that was to mark his later works; but it is also derivative in its ideas, many of which came from his reading in his grandfather’s library. Few copies were sold, and there were only two brief reviews, but its publication confirmed Kenvil’s determination to devote his life to poetry.

Kenvil Atkins Lewis poet