Five (More) Questions With Malachi

GP: Malachi, it's been 14 years since I last interviewed you  How has your work changed since that interview?

Malachi: A lot has changed in my life and career since 2006. I would like to think that I am now a more mature writer and student of life. I'm no longer shackled by the constructs of a 9 to 5 in a system that always forced me to stand firm and uphold my principles. I am my own man. I don't need to beg, bow, or borrow. I am totally liberated.

I have also grown in my writing. My pen is deliberate and concise. Traveling the world and experiencing different cultures has also contributed enormously to my world view and growth. I am also writing more prolifically. I have written some short stories, finished one work on the turbulent era in Jamaica, Blood Fi Blood, Fire Fi Fire: I Was There Too, almost completed another piece on my journey in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, and I’m working on other projects.

The launch of my annual Jamaican Poets Schools Nomadic Tour has been great. Taking poetry into schools and communities and see students, young poets, and academics come alive in real-time.

Finally, I’m hosting a radio show, Strictly Roots dub poetry, and more on WZOP 92.7 and WZPP 96.1 FM. It has always been a dream of mine to take poetry to the people via the airways. It is working magic. Other radio personalities are now playing poetry as part of the shows.

 

GP: On the title track, "Ticked Off," you've expanded the meaning of "I Can't Breathe." Why do you think George Floyd's death has sparked such a worldwide outrage?

Malachi: What the world witnessed was brutal, horrific, and downright disgusting. It is like the officer was saying, "I got this; stand back, this neck is mine." 

It was my neck. It was my people's neck. For 400 hundred years, we have been saying that this is happening, but the truth was always covered up while we suffered and bled and died. In a world with so many intuitions of justice and Christianity, it's perfectly normal to lynch a black man because we are always wrong.

GP: In a collection with so many hard-hitting poems about social justice, I was surprised by the inclusion of "Blacker de Berry." Why did you include this poem in this collection?

Malachi: I'm proud of how my beautiful black mothers and sisters, queens, and empresses, have come into their own. So, this ties into the contemporary narrative. I love to uplift and elevate them, hence the inclusion. I took into consideration too that the original recording could have technically been better. Hopeton Lindo told me recently that it was his favorite poem, and then Taurus Alphonso said I should redo it and change the arrangements.

GP: I've also noticed that you have branched out to tackle the theme of mental health on the track, "In my Head." Why did you think it was necessary to deal with this issue?

Malachi: The song, “Say My Name” by Novel-t kept calling me. I met a young man, Haile Clacken, some years ago at the Talking Tree Poetry Festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica. I started a conversation with a librarian, and this young man walked over. She introduced him to me, and we had a nice conversation. He told me he liked my poems. Less than a year later, the librarian sent me a message on What's App with the photo of Haile and asked me if I remembered him. I replied, yes, of course. She responded he was shot and killed.

Well, actually, he was murdered. Haile, a trained teacher, attended college overseas, suffered from mental illness. On the day he was murdered, he set out on foot to visit his only child and suffered a mental lapse along the way.

Haile climbed on top of an armored car, and they drove off with him on top. The driver tried to dislodge him by driving aggressively. To avoid falling off Haile clung to the vehicle's wiper. When the vehicle stopped, Haile climbed down. There was no struggle with the guard. He just blasted him. Many people witnessed the crime. The guard was charged for murder, and in typical Jamaican justice fashion, four years later, the case still hasn’t been tried.

My good friend, Jean Binta Breeze, also suffers from mental illness and has written about it in her poetry. It is a real issue that needs our collective attention. There is also a new branch of study/philosophy that deals with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade post-traumatic syndrome. The way we kill each other too on our streets is a manifestation of this mental illness.

GP: Bob Dylan seems to be an unlikely candidate for your homage in "Beat Down Zion's Door." Why did you choose that song by Bob Dylan?

 

Malachi: I have always been fascinated by this song, but instead of just “knocking,” I am convinced that we need to beat down some constructs that are tied to and justified by religion(s). Many have become prisoners to holy books, and in the process, truths, rights, and justice are trampled.

 Dylan is polite. I am tired, frustrated, angry, uncompromising. I am demanding answers. I want them now. I have no use for propaganda. The way the UN and other organizations that are here to protect the earth's sufferers have manipulated facts, leaves a lot to be desired. So, I want to have a chat with the Father and seek out his reasoning, so I barged in.

 

 

 

About Malachi

 

Malachi Smith is an accomplished Jamaican writer of poetry and plays, and an actor, performing in his own plays and other productions in live theatre and on radio and television. He is a fellow of the University of Miami’s Michener Caribbean Writer’s Institute where he studied poetry under Lorna Goodison and play writing under Fred D’Aguilar.

He was one of the readers at the first Talking Trees in May 2011, and appeared again at the second Talking Trees in 2012, and returns to the Talking Trees stage on May 27, 2017. Malachi's earlier appearances include being the headliner in 2004 at the International Dub-Poetry Festival in Toronto and in 2008 at the Love-In Festival in Miami with Richie Heavens and other greats. He also made three appearances in New York, and toured St. Kitts and Nevis in the summer of 2000 to rave reviews. More recent appearances include: 2012 - International Poetry Festival of Colombia, Medellin, Colombia; 2014 – International Poetry Festival of Nicaragua; 2015 – International Poetry Festival of Taiwan; 2016 – Poetry Africa, Durban, South Africa; 2017 – Polokwane Literary Fair, Limpopo, South Africa - Hon. Louise Bennett-Coverley Reading Festival, Broward Community College; and 501 Café, New York. 2018 – Honduras International Poetry Festival, University of the West Indies, Bookophilia and other locations in Jamaica; 2019 – Festival Contemporanea San Cristobal, Mexico, La Guagua Poetry Festival, Lowell, Massachusetts; 2020 – Toured Jamaica with Judith Falloon-Reid’s, An Awe Inspiring Journey – Down in Antarctica (featured on the team song with Falloon-Reid).

 

His awards include the 2016 Akamedia Award in the Reggae Category for his poem How Yuh Mek Har and the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s (JCDC) 4^th Place Choice Writer (gold and bronze medals) 2018; Best Adult Poet in 2017 and 2014, following earlier JCDC awards: 2009 most outstanding writer in the poetry and 2006 four Literary Awards for poetry and playwriting. Also, in 2006 he won the Joe Higgs Music Award for dub poet of the year, and was nominated for the dub poet of the year in the Reggaesoca Awards, and for the poet of the year in the Martin’s International Music Awards. He has been a nominee in the IRAWMA Award for Best Poet (2012 -2016). Malachi was one of the 50 Jamaicans living in the USA, who were special honored for their contribution to Jamaica on Jamaica’s 50 year of independence.

Launched Jamaican Poets School Nomadic Poetry Tour in 2017. Coordinates the annual, Louise Bennett-Coverley Writer’s Clinic. Featured on the 2020 Yasus Afari produced album, Dub Poetry Ina Yu Face.

The documentary film, Dub Poetry: the life and work of Malachi Smith premiered in 2007. 

Malachi’s CDs include Hail to Jamaica, released in 2011; Scream, released in 2014; and his latest 2017 release, Wiseman. He is awaiting publication of two new poetry collections, The Gathering and Stony Gut, and is currently writing a series of short stories.

An alumnus of Florida International University (M.S.C.J. & B.Sc.), Miami-Dade College (AA) and Jamaica School of Drama, Malachi was one of the founding members of Poets in Unity, a critically acclaimed ensemble that brought dub-poetry to the forefront of reggae music in the late 1970s, and carried it forward for a decade.

In addition to being a poet, Malachi served in the police force in Jamaica and in Florida, retiring from the latter in 2016. He was a freelance writer for the Jamaica Daily Gleaner (Overseas Edition), a board member of the Jamaica Ex-police Association of South Florida, as well as the Caribbean Education Foundation; and the Honorable Louise Bennett-Coverley Heritage Council. Malachi is married to his childhood sweetheart Marcia and has two sons Maurice and Marlon.

 

 

Book Launch: "The Gathering" by Malachi Smith

The Gathering
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Jepa's Place,
7153 West Oakland Park Blvd.
Lauderhill, FL 33313

"The Gathering takes us on a lyrical dance...at once rub-a-dub, at once three-step, at once quiet crooning in your ears as you 'rent-a-tile' ...Malachi, the word-Smith, has given us a poetry collection that seamlessly moves us through the soundscapes where love, history, memory, and the prophets sway our most powerful imaginings."
~Heather Russell, author of Legba's Crossing: Narratology and the African Atlantic

"One of Jamaica’s most compelling performance poets, Malachi Smith is offering here praise-poems mainly, and elegies, with these and other pieces raising questions about love, guilt,  identity, culture, politics, and eye-opening experiences in travel.  There are shafts of protest, but the dominant mood is of compassion.  The policeman dub poet is a 'healer-man.'"   
~Mervyn Morris, OM

"In The Gathering, Malachi displays his characteristic lyrical gifts in the exploration of subjects as diverse as travel, family, drug addiction, and the plight of the sufferahs. In these poems, the call of the Caribbean dances through memories that trigger his imagination and the various masks he employs to dramatize events. Sometimes a wizened storyteller, sometimes a prophet with magisterial lines, “Let them come,” Malachi delves into the political and class conflicts that divide the people of Jamaica and its diaspora, yet these differences disappear under the gaze of a poet who believes in the power of redemption."
~Geoffrey Philp, author of Garvey’s Ghost.

"Malachi's poems travel skillfully, confidently from the stage to the page. Here is an experienced bard and guide who writes and chants...With compassion about life in all its heartbreak and beauty, he has walked the walk and talked the talk for a long time. This gathering of poems is his generous gift to us. Give thanks."
 ~Lorna Goodison, Poet Laureate of Jamaica and winner of the prestigious 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize.

"Malachi Smith is the most dynamic poetry performer I've ever had the pleasure to witness."
~ Philip Hammial, Australian poet and sculptor.

Launch of Malachi Smith's "Wiseman"

On May 18, 2017, Malachi Smith will celebrate the release of the seventh CD, Wiseman, at Jepa’s Place, 7153 W. Oakland Park Boulevard, Lauderhill, Florida.

The new CD is an extension of many of the concerns that have been part of Malachi's oeuvre for the past thirty years. From the nostalgic “Concrete Rose” to the topical “Brexit,” Malachi displays his talent for lyrical phrasings set to the riddims of reggae music.

Malachi also displays his characteristic sense of humor even when he is describing political turmoil in the United Kingdom in "Breakaway":

There is great weeping on the Thames
From Glasgow to the plains
The ghosts of Cromwell and Churchill in a fight
Since Great Expectations, what a Dickens' night

And, of course, there is also romance in "Sticky Situation":

Late in the evening enjoying the breeze
At a little bar by the side of the road
Threw down the stress and heavy load
Holt and Gregory coming through the speakers

A superbly engineered CD and with a team of veteran musicians, Wiseman reveals a dub poet at the height of his craft.

***

Excerpt from "de book of Mary" by Pamela Mordecai

JESUS TAKES LEAVE OF MARY AND GOES INTO THE DESERT

Plenty hard to believe my son turn
thirty dis winter season just gone!
Not dat me never watch

every minute, each day, as him grow.
But is like you see and you don’t notice,
and den, all of a sudden dis big

somebody hold you face in him hand
kiss you on you forehead,
say, “Mums, I going now.”

Never mind how much time
I protest and ask why him must go
off alone to a place wid no water, no food,

not a green thing to lift him spirit...
“Mums,” him say “why I would
leave dis house, you and Gran, best cook food

in dis town, my sistren and bredren,
and de whole family, plus de woodworking, too,
all I love, if it was up to me?”

I breathe deep, gaze on him
from him head to him toe, one last time.
“See three loaf of new bread I just bake

in dat bag, and a wineskin your gran
send wid Judith daughter dis morning.
She say, send, tell her when you going.

“I going stop by de yard
as I leaving, to tell Gran goodbye.
Big thanks for de eats and de drink,

but you know my food in de wild
going be fasting and prayer, my Mums.
I sure you don’t want my Papa up so...”

and him turn him eye up to de sky,
“to vex wid me right as I start out?”
“Why you can’t pray here, son?

I will keep food and drink far from you.
I will honour your fast. Is a thing I do for
Joseph plenty times when him was still wid us.”

Him bend down and kiss me,
say, “Mums, dis not de worst.
Me must get ready for some dread things.”

When I go to answer, him put one finger on
my lip. “Hush, Mums,” him repeat,
“believe me, if de choosing was mine

I would stay.”
And him look round de room,
touch de big water jug, scuff de rug

wid him foot, take him staff
and walk through de door –
never turn him head round to look back.


From de book of Mary

About Pamela Mordecai

Pamela ('Pam') Mordecai’s previous collections of poetry include Journey Poem (1989); de Man, a performance poem (1995); Certifiable (2001); The True Blue of Islands (2005), and Subversive Sonnets (2012). de book of Mary, from which “Jesus Takes Leave of Mary and Goes  into the Desert” comes, will appear in fall, 2015. In 2006 she published Pink Icing, a collection of short stories; her first novel, Red Jacket, appeared in February, 2015. She has edited and co-edited ground-breaking anthologies of Caribbean writing including Jamaica Woman (1980, 1985, with Mervyn Morris); From Our Yard: Jamaican Poetry since Independence (1987); Her True-True Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing from the Caribbean (1989, with Betty Wilson) and Calling Cards: New Poetry from Caribbean/ Canadian Women (2005). Her play, El Numero Uno had its world premiere at the Loraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto in 2010. In spring 2014, she was a fellow at the prestigious Yaddo artists' community in upstate New York yaddo.org. Pam and her family immigrated to Canada in 1994. She lives with her husband, Martin, in Kitchener, Ontario.

A List of Poetry Books by Jamaican Authors

By Kwame Dawes

After my survey of Jamaican poetry appeared last week, I received many calls from people about how to get hold of some of the key titles by Jamaican poets. Of course, many of the works of these poets are long out of print, but there is a rich range and body of poetry that is still in print and that would reward the time and resources spent to acquire them. Needless to say, this list is an edited list - meaning it is selective and somewhat, though guardedly, subjective. It is, in other words, hardly comprehensive in the same way that the survey was not. It will reflect embarrassing omissions, and for those I apologise in advance.

There are a number of anthologies that feature Jamaican poetry that will offer an even broader range of work to supplement what I have listed here. And for those who are interested in watching some of the poets in action, I strongly encourage you to search out names on YouTube, where most of these poets do appear performing their work. Of special interest in that regard would be anything by Mikey Smith, Jean Binta Breeze, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Owen Blakka Ellis, Lillian Allen, Michael St George, and Staceyann Chin, to name just a few. Finally, a great resource would be The Poetry Archive in the UK, where some of our major poets are featured: (http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet [2]).

JAMAICAN POETRY BOOK SAMPLER

Olive Senior Gardening in the Tropics (Idiomatic, Canada, 2009)

Tony McNeill Chinese Lanterns from the Blue Child (Peepal Tree, UK, 1998)

Lorna Goodison Controlling the Silver (University of Michigan Press, 2006)

George Campbell First Poems (Peepal Tree Press, UK, 2011)

LKJ - Selected Poems (Penguin, UK, 2006)

Geoffrey Philp Florida Bound (Peepal Tree UK, 1998)

Tanya Shirley She Who Sleeps with Bones (Peepal Tree, UK, 2009)

Mervyn Morris - I Been There Sort Of: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet, UK, 2006)

Dennis Scott - Uncle Time (University of Pittsburg Press, US, 1973)

Ishion Hutchison - Far District (Peepal Tree, UK, 2010)

Ann Margaret Lim - Festival of Wild Orchid (Peepal Tree UK, 2013)

Edward Baugh - It Was the Singing (Sandberry Press, JA, 2000)

Velma Pollard - Shame Trees Don't Grow Here (Peepal Tree UK, 1992)

SharaMacallum - The Face of Water: New and Selected Poems (Peepal Tree, UK, 2011)

Jean Binta Breeze - Spring Cleaning (Virago, UK, 1992)

Donna Aza Weir Soley - First Rain (Peepal Tree, 2006)

Millicent Graham - The Damp in Things (Peepal Tree, 2009)

Colin Channer - Providential (Akashic Books, US/ Peepal Tree, UK, 2015)

Kei Miller - Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (Carcanet, UK 2014)

Mutabaruka - The Next Poems/The First Poems (Paul Issa Publications, 2005)

Neville Dawes - Fugue and Other Writings (Peepal Tree, 2012)

Louise Bennet - Aunty Roachy Seh: Selected Poems (Sangster, 1993

Claude McKay - Complete Poems (University of Illinois, US, 2014)

Mark McMorris - Entrepot (Coffee House Press, US, 2010)

Benjamin Zephaniah Too Black, Too Strong (Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2001)

Pamela Mordecai - Subversive Sonnets (TSAR Publications, Canada, 2012)

Louis Simpson - Struggling Times (BOA US, 2009)

Marcia Douglas - Electricity Cone to Cocoa Bottom (Peepal Tree, UK, 1999)

Opal Palmer Adisa - 4-Headed Woman (Tia Chucha Press, US, 2013)

Ralph Thompson - View from Mount Diablo (Peepal Tree, UK, 2003)

Claudia Rankine - Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, US, 2014)

Poetry books by Jamaican authors

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/art-leisure/20150809/poetry-books-jamaican-authors#.VckNg38ZinY.mailto

On My Bookshelf: Providential by Colin Channer

Channer’s debut poetry collection achieves an intimate and lyric meditation on family, policing, loss, and violence, but the work is enlivened by humour, tenderness, and the rich possibilities that come from honest reflection. Combined with a capacity to offer physical landscapes with painterly sensitivity and care, a graceful mining of the nuances of Jamaican patwa and American English, and a judicious use of metaphor and similie, Providential is a work of “heartical” insight and vulnerability.

No one, since Claude McKay’s folksy Constab Ballads of 1912, has attempted to tackle the unlikely literary figure of the Jamaican policeman. Now, over a century later, drawing on his own family knowledge of the world of the police, on the complex dynamic of his relationship with his father, and framed within the humane principles of Rasta and reggae, Channer has both explored the colonial origins of that police culture and brought us up to date in necessary ways. Here are poems that manage to turn the complex relationships between a man and his father, a man and his mother, and man and his country and a man and his children, into something akin to grace. Providential does not read like a novelist’s one-off flirtation with poetry, but an accomplished overture to what ought to be a remarkable literary journey for a writer of immense talent and versatility.

“…Written with pitch-perfect rhythm and a keen eye for supple, limber turns.” —Lorna Goodison, author of From Harvey River

“Channer writes with a moving vulnerability and much lyric grace, revealing new facets to familiar themes—home, family, history, and the evolving journey of self. A universal, timeless meditation.”
—Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas

Born in Jamaica to a pharmacist and cop. Colin Channer is named by Junot Díaz calls him “one of the Caribbean Diaspora’s finest writers.”

Mervyn Morris @ Liberty Hill Great House

"A Prayer for my Children": Jamaican Poetry, Part Two

Give thanks to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for including "A Prayer for my Children" in the second part of their review of a hundred years of Jamaican poetry: Jamaican Poetry Part Two. 


The programme (notice the proper way to spell the word) also includes:

"The Ark by "Scratch" by Ishion Hutchinson

"Piece in Parts (Fi Tosh R.I.P.)" by A-dZiko Simba

"Where We . . " by Makesha Evans

"Roads (Remembering Aimé Césaire)" by Velma Pollard

"Jamaica Language" by Louise Bennett

'Dis Poem' by Mutabaruka

You can listen to the poems here: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/poetica/jamaican-poetry-part-two/5518114

Part One

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/poetica/jamaican-poetry-part-one/5294724

"A Midnight Woman to the Bobby" by Claude McKay

"Cameo" by Una Marson 

"Landscape Painter, Jamaica" by Vivian Virtue 

"Negro Aroused" by George Campbell 

"Dutty Tough" by Louise Bennett 

"Shelling Gungo Peas" by Gloria Escoffery 

"Letter to My Father from London" by James Berry 

"History and Away" by Andrew Salkey 

"Sometimes in the Middle of the Story" by Edward Baugh 

"Valley Prince"  by Mervyn Morris 

"Uncle Time" by Dennis Scott 

"Brief Lives" by Olive Senior 

"Last Lines" by Pam Mordecai 

"Mrs" by Lillian Allen

"I No Longer Read Poetry" by Heather Royes 

"Riddim An' Hardtime' by Lillian Allen