Claude McKay and the Pestilential City The Metropolis, the Clinic, the Crisis

Born in Sunny Ville, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, in 1890, Festus Claudius McKay grew to adulthood in what by all accounts (including his own) was something of a rural idyll. His "Green Hills of Jamaica" are an Edenic garden to which he will return repeatedly in his poetry. Before leaving for the USA in August 1912, McKay had published two volumes of poetry in Jamaican English: Songs of Jamaica (1912) and Constab Ballads (1912).1 Although these books would come to be considered ground-breaking, at the time of first publication they received a mixed response; consequently, McKay wanted to prove himself "a real poet".2 His recitations at island literary groups had been greeted with some reservation, which he felt at the time. He writes: