And then, there were three

Two writers from Jamaica and one from Trinidad and Tobago have made the shortlist for the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. They will vie for the US$10,000 cash award. Sponsored by One Caribbean Media (OCM), parent company of the Express and TV6, the prize is presented as part of the annual literary festival, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

From a long list of ten titles in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, the prize judges have chosen a winning book in each category.
  
Kei Miller’s Writing Down the Vision was chosen from the non-fiction list, and fellow Jamaican Lorna Goodison’s Oracabessa was selected from the poetry category, while Trinidadian Robert Antoni’s As Flies to Whatless Boys was chosen from the fiction list. 

Miller’s work, Writing Down the Vision, is a collection of essays that present a range of experiences—personal and public—which the writer uses to articulate his vision and understanding of the realities of life in Jamaica and the Caribbean.

The judges praised Miller, saying: “Miller is an original thinker, a writer who knows his own mind and is wary of orthodoxies. He is uncompromising and honest in his interrogation of issues and his experiences of the worlds he inhabits, cutting through the normalcy to reveal the realities of these worlds.” 

Oracabessa by Goodison is a book of risky journeys, mappings and re-mappings through Spain, Portugal, Canada and her homeland of Jamaica as the poet navigates place, history and imagination.

According to the judges: “In Oracabessa the distinctive voice of Lorna Goodison—an elegant, captivating fusion of international English and Jamaican Creole—presents segments of autobiography as a series of travels. Goodison’s persuasive art is a many-sided celebration of spiritual search.” 

Antoni’s novel, As Flies to Whatless Boys, is accented with West Indian cadence and captivating humour. It provides an unforgettable glimpse into 19th-century Trinidad and Tobago.

The judges added: “With mischief, ingenuity and linguistic verve, Antoni reinvents the idea of the region’s islands as zones of perilous fantasy, where dreams come to grief but still make history.” 

The winner of the overall OCM Bocas Prize will be announced on Saturday, April 26, as part of the fourth annual NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

The 2013 prize was won by Monique Roffey for her novel Archipelago; the 2012 prize was won by Trinidadian Earl Lovelace for his novel Is Just a Movie; and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott was winner of the inaugural 2011 prize for his poetry collection White Egrets.

The final cross-genre judging panel, headed by celebrated Jamaican poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, will include poet and academic Mervyn Morris, writer and academic Hazel Simmons-McDonald, literary critic and academic Ken Ramchand and Marjorie Thorpe as representative of the prize administrators.

For further information, visit www.bocaslitfest.com/ocm-bocas-prize

2014 OCM BOCAS PRIZE WINNERS:

FICTION: Robert Antoni – As Flies to Whatless Boys – Akashic Books 
POETRY: Lorna Goodison – Oracabessa –Carcanet
NON-FICTION: Kei Miller – Writing Down the Vision – Peepal Tree Press

Happy Birthday, Lorna Goodison

When I was in first form at Jamaica College, nearly every boy in 1 Murray drooled and doodled while Lorna Goodison tried to teach us color, value, and texture. Lorna taught us art for about two or three years, and then, she left. The next time I saw her was when she was invited by our drama teacher, Dennis Scott, to talk with our literary club. Lorna talked passionately about art, Rastafari, and music. Afterwards, she gave us a writing exercise to compose a Reggae song. We toyed with the idea for some time and she offered a few suggestions. At the end of the exercise, Dennis asked her to read a poem.

Miss Goodison was also a poet? We listened intently as she read one of her poems. I can't remember the name, but I'll never forget the awe that I felt after her reading. She was like a saint. Saint Lorna.

The feeling never left me.


When I decided that I wanted to be a poet and I was searching for models by reading everything that Derek Walcott had ever written, I tried writing a poem like Lorna's "She," which was published in Savacou 13: Caribbean Women. Of course, I failed miserably. No one can write like Lorna Goodison.

For unlike Walcott, from whose work a young poet can learn forms such as the sonnet and how to use allusions drawn from Greek and Roman mythologies to create Odysseus-like characters or from Shakespearean drama to construct Calibanesque figures, Lorna's poems, while drawing from a similar landscape as Walcott's, does not seek to transform the characters into anything other than what they are. Her speakers remain obstinately Caribbean with red dirt under their fingernails, and smelling of rum and carbolic soap. Also, her sense of line, like brush strokes, carry the signature and confidence of the artist.

There was nothing that she could teach me because the images and the associations that she had made in her art held deeply personal meanings, yet she managed to translate those sentiments to the page so that her readers could experience similar emotions. In other words, what I learned from Lorna was that if I wanted to write like her, I would have to live my own life and to use the experiences and associations from my life. And that couldn't be faked. If I wanted to be a poet like Lorna, I would have to write my own poems.

Give thanks, Lorna. Give thanks!

***

Today is Emancipation Day in Jamaica

"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery/ None but ourselves can free our minds." ~ Lyrics from Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" taken from a speech by the Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

A Song of Freedom (for Asif Khan)

From the splintered nations of Africa

through London and the endless rows

of houses, repetitive as sin, orphans 

of empire barged along the Avon 

in the wake of restored galleons, symbols 

of our mothers’ grief, our fathers’ shame

on a river that forgave, but would never forget

our tortured questions of birthright that rise 

with vespers from Bristol Cathedral 

where newly ordained curates stroll

across College Green to embrace 

children in starched dresses and suits 

under the gaze of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, 

books tucked under his arm, in this city of refuge.

***

A poem for the writers from the African Diaspora, who participated in the Yardstick Festival: Lorna Goodison, Tanya Shirley, Lemn Sissay, Warsan Shire, Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Nick Makoha, Leeto Thale, Jamal Safari, Emman Egya Sule, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Dean Atta, Chioma Okereke, and Dee Jarrett Macauley;  the organizer, Asif Khan and his team: Yoma Smith, David Danderson, Bertel Martin, Sam Downie, and Jon Craig; and Faruk Choudhury, the Lord Mayor of Bristol, a city of refuge.

Dispatches from the Yardstick Festival: Lorna Goodison

"Let's just end this discussion about postcolonial literature," said Lorna Goodison, effectively dismantling entire departments in Caribbean studies.. I'm learning so much from her (again). Even her offhand remarks are gold.  

Lineup for the Yardstick Festival

Inshallah, I will be joining these talented writers for four days of literary bacchanalia at the Yardstick Literary Festival on June 27-30, 2013.
Lorna Goodison,  Tanya Shirley,  Geoffrey Philp  Lemn Sissay  Warsan Shire  Mukoma Wa Ngugi  Nick Makoha  Leeto Thale  Jamal Safari  Emman Egya Sule  Nii Ayikwei Parkes  Dean Atta  Chioma Okereke 

If you are anywhere in the British Isles (or even if you're not!), come and full-joy (as I&I would say) four days of poetry, storytelling and all round good times:  http://www.yardstick.org.uk/2013-programme/#.Uccl_fmshzI

***

Global Writing Talent Heads to Bath for Major Literature Festival | Bath Business News

Businesses are being invited to support a festival that will bring an impressive array of international writing talent to Bath and Bristol later this month. 

A dozen of the best writers and performance poets from across the African Diaspora will take part in the Yardstick Festival from June 27 to 30.

Prestigious authors at the festival will include Lorna Goodison, Tanya Shirley, Geoffrey Philp (all Jamaican), Lemn Sissay (British Ethiopian), Warsan Shire (Somali), Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Kenyan), Nick Makoha (Ugandan), Leeto Thale (South African) and Jamal Safari (Congolese).

Also taking part will be Emman Egya Sule (Nigerian), Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Ghana), Dean Atta (British Jamaican) and Chioma Okereke (Nigerian)

Global writing talent heads to Bath for major literature festival | Bath Business News:

'via Blog this'

The Four Tribes of Anglophone Caribbean Literature

There's an old saying about your children keeping you young, and for the past week, I've seen the wisdom of that adage. My children love comics and frequently send me links to interesting stories about superhero movies or TED talks. One TED talk that caught my attention was Scott McCloud on Comics.

In his TED talk, McCloud developed a theory about comics and artists based on Jung's theory of the four basic functions of the psyche: sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling.

According to Jung, the psyche is an apparatus for adaptation and orientation, and consists of a number of different psychic functions. Among these he distinguishes four basic functions:

Sensation—perception by means of the sense organs

Intuition—perceiving in unconscious way or perception of unconscious contents

Thinking—function of intellectual cognition; the forming of logical conclusions

Feeling—function of subjective estimation

From these four types, McCloud has extrapolated four types of artists, Classicists, Animists, Formalists, and Iconoclasts, which he divided into four quadrants representing different attitudes toward beauty and truth; life and art; content and style; tradition and revolution.

Thinking Ground has a remarkable summary:

The Classicists admire craftsmanship and mastery of the art form. Their goals include creating lasting works of art which adhere to traditional aesthetic principles. Perfection is impossible, but that doesn't mean they can't try for it. According to McCloud, their catch-word is beauty, and they are an extension of Jung's sensation archetype.

The Animists are interested in content. They aim for the clearest presentation of their story or ideas. To some extent the medium must always interfere with the message, but the animist's focus on the content means they try to make the form as transparent as they possibly can. Their catch-word is content, and McCloud considers them an extension of Jung's intuition archetype.

The Formalists are fascinated with their chosen medium's form. They create their art to explore its boundaries and contours, to learn what it can be capable of and how it works internally. Their works of art incorporate experiments, and they often double as analytical critics. Their catch-word is form, and in McCloud's scheme they correspond to Jung's thinking archetype.

The Iconoclasts value truth and experience in art. To them art must be authentic, must show life as it is. They take aim at artistic conventions that gloss over the imperfections and disappointments at life. Artists who speak of "honesty" or "rawness" are voicing iconoclastic ideas. Their catch-word is truth, and they are Jung's feeling archetype.

As Jon Aquino states, "playing around with this, it's interesting to deduce that":

Tradition = Sensation + Intuition

Revolution = Thinking + Feeling

Art = Sensation + Thinking

Life = Intuition + Feeling

Revolution + Art = Form

Tradition + Life = Content

Art + Tradition = Beauty

Life + Revolution = Truth

As Mr. Trombley notes: "Each of these have specific reservations about the mediocre works of other three:

1. The Classicist accuses the animist of simplicity, the formalist of meaninglessness, and the iconoclast of ugliness

2. The Animist accuses the classicist of pointless overdrawing, the formalist of unnecessary density, and the iconoclast of pretentiousness

3. The Formalist accuses the classicist of artistic conservatism, the animist of pointlessness, and the iconoclast of self-absorption

4. The Iconoclast accuses the classicist of soullessness, the animist of dullness, and the formalist of meaningless abstraction

Damien G Walter continues with his observations:

Animists are the first artists, the shamen dancing around the tribal fire who drag raw emotion from their soul and give it to the audience. They are the instinctual artists, concerned above all with content.

Classicists worship at the altar of beauty, and yearn to create art that achieves greatness. They believe in objective standards of good and bad, and establish the canon of great artists who embody those ideals.

Iconoclasts are either the first against the wall when the revolution comes, or at the front leading the charge. They use art as a means of personal and political expression, and when asked will say that they value truth over all else.

Formalists love talking about art almost as much as they enjoy creating it. They are the experimenters of any given art, obsessing about details of style and technique in their own work and the work of others.

The real fun begins when you start to look at synergies and conflicts that exist between the tribes. Between the Classicists and Animists is the shared belief that tradition is important, a belief which both the Formalists and Iconoclasts give the finger to in favour of revolution and change. However, the Formalists and Classicists both believe first and foremost in the value of art, whereas Animists and Iconoclasts both make art secondary to life.

These might seem fairly arbitrary distinctions, until you relate them to those unending arguments in the arts, which start to look like ongoing territorial squabbles between competing tribes. What is the age-old debate between truth and beauty, if not a fight between the Classicists and the Iconoclasts? Who is more passionate about style v content than Formalists and Animists?

But every tribe has weaknesses to balance their strengths. For all their ability to move an audience, Animists are often the most colloquial and narrow-minded artists. Classicists might know what is great, but in constantly repeating it can easily become boring. While style-conscious Formalists can be so concerned with experimentation that their creations lack heart and soul. And the Iconoclasts, determined to change the world, risk making art consumed by negativity and anger.

From McCloud's formulations, I've realized that many Anglophone Caribbean poets fall into these quadrants:

Classicists: John Figueroa, Louis Simpson, Ralph Thompson

Animists: Jean Binta Breeze, Mutabaruka, Malachi Smith, Linton Kwesi Johnson

Formalists: Derek Walcott, Edward Baugh, Mervyn Morris, Dennis Scott

Iconoclasts: Kamau Brathwaite, Lorna Goodison, Tony McNeill

One of the startling revelations of this typology is that both Walcott and Brathwaite are revolutionaries, but in different ways. Walcott, "the mulatto of style" has shown a preference for art over the raw details of life. And as far as race and ethnicity are concerned, it wasn't that Walcott didn't think that he was black, he simply didn't have a form to express the horrors of the Atlantic Holocaust. It took him over thirty years to realize a form that could encompass his vision. The result was his magnificent work, Omeros.

The classification also helped me to see why many formalists are not viewed as "authentic" Caribbean writers. Caribbean literature and publishing is dominated by the Animists. In the popular mind, dub poetry and the "raw" stories of Caribbean life (content over form; truth over beauty) have become the de facto definitions of Caribbean literature.

Finally, I've also come to appreciate the catholic tastes of Jeremy Poynting and Peepal Tree Press, who have been publishing writers from all four tribes--an achievement that not many publishers, main stream and independent have been able to accomplish.

It will be interesting to see how far down the rabbit hole I will be heading with these new insights. But then, again, what did you expect from a magpie?

Women's History Month: Caribbean Women Writers

Caribbean Women Writers 

(L to R)

Pam Mordecai, Lorna Goodison, Olive Senior

Joanne C. Hillhouse, Hon. Louise Bennett-Coverley, Lisa Allen-Agostini

Opal Palmer Adisa, Diana McCaulay, Joanne Gail Johnson

In celebration of Women's History Month, here are a few of the Caribbean women writers whose work has been featured on this blog:

Caribbean Women Writers 

***

I am also giving thanks for the many women who have helped, guided, and inspired me through the years: Merty Philp (nee Lumley), Nadezka Philp (nee Ferro), my two daughters, aunts, sisters, my mother and sisters-in-law, Andrea Shaw, Andrene Bonner, Sokari Ekine, Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah, Yvonne McCalla-Sobers, Ida Does, Vanessa Woodward Byers, Michelle McGrane, Marva McClean, Ludy Rodriguez, Josett Peat, Donna Aza Weir-Soley,  Patti Harris, Gina Cortes-Suarez, Lou Skellings, Malou Harrison, Hannah Bannister, Dawn Marache-Allen, Heather Russell, Hazel Campbell, Diane Browne, Cynthia James, Jean Lowrie-Chin, Karean Hailey Williams, and Audrey Hadley.

 I am blessed to have known the pleasure of your company.

1Love,

Geoffrey

***

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• Fourth Annual Louise Bennett-Coverley Reading Festival (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
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Day 6 of Kwanzaa: Kuumba

"To do always as much as we can in the way that we can in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than when we inherited it."
In my own work this has meant building on the work of elders/ancestors such as Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Dennis Scott, Bob Marley, Mervyn Morris,Tony McNeill, Toni Morrison, George Lamming, Michael Anthony, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Rita Dove, James Baldwin, Lorna Goodison, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Orlando Patterson, and Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
In  a sense, my latest collection of poems, Dub Wise, is an homage to many of these writers. This blog is also a testament to my love and respect for their work. I hope that their work, especially the poets/writers who are not well known in North America, will live on through my poems and this blog.
One Love


***
Blog Disclosure Policy

Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through links to Amazon, Shambala Books, Hay House, or any of the Google ads or Google Custom Search.

***

Disclaimer of Endorsement

The documents posted on this Web site may contain hypertext links or pointers to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links and pointers are provided for visitors' convenience. I do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any linked information. Further, the inclusion of links or pointers to other Web sites or agencies is not intended to assign importance to those sites and the information contained therein, nor is it intended to endorse, recommend, or favor any views expressed, or commercial products or services offered on these outside sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites, by trade name, trademark, manufacture, or otherwise.

Reference in this Web site to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the site's visitors, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by this blog.

My Mother's Hands

My mother’s hands always fascinated me. She rarely wore a lot of make-up or nail polish, but like every boy growing up in a single parent home, I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known. In many ways, she resembled the mother in Lorna Goodison’s “For My Mother (May I Inherit Half Her Strength)”: “She could work miracles, she would make a garment from a square of cloth/ in a span that defied time. Or feed twenty people on a stew made from/fallen-from-the-head cabbage leaves and a carrot and a cho-cho and a palmful/ of meat.” But it was always her hands, plain and unadorned—a country girl’s hands--that told her life of struggle and triumph, and from which I’ve learned so much.

My publisher lists Struie, in Westmoreland, Jamaica, as the place of my birth, but it isn’t true. Struie is the birthplace of my mother, Merty Philp née Lumley. This biographical inaccuracy really doesn’t matter to me, for I would happily claim Struie—home of the Lumleys of Westmoreland--as my birthplace.

The Lumleys of Struie are a hardy lot. My grandfather, Andrew “Big Papa” Lumley, had homes in Jamaica and Cuba. In fact, one aunt, Hortensia Lumley-Hechevaria, lived in Cuba until she passed away a few years ago. Big Papa, a cook, baker, tailor, farmer, and shopkeeper, almost resembled the description of Stephen Dedalus's father in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a story-teller…a tax-gatherer.” Big Papa, also known as "Tailor," instilled in his nine children essential survival skills, many of which my mother passed on to me and they have had a profound impact on my life.

The first time my mother taught me to sew, it was by accident. She had been trying to thread a needle and she called me into her sewing room. I threaded the needle with ease and probably made some smug remark about her eyesight to which she answered, "Geoffrey, you ever hear this saying: ‘Hog ask him mumma, 'Mumma, wha mek you mouth so long?' And him mumma answer: 'Wait pickney, yu time a come.'”

After giving me this vital lesson by using a Jamaican proverb (she was also a primary school teacher who graduated from Mico), she showed me how to sew a button on a shirt. That evening she taught me a valuable skill that has served me well—like a few years ago when I was getting ready for an important interview, and wouldn’t you know it, the button popped off my shirt. I sewed on the button, got the job, but I was never able to thank that girl from Struie.

As with many country girls, if my mother’s hands weren’t cooking, they were planting. Something. She always had a garden wherever she lived. It’s part of the African folk tradition that has weathered slavery (and gentrification) and that many people from Jamaica and the Caribbean practice without thinking about the origins. Whether it was in Mona Heights, Carol City, or Sanford my mother always had a garden. 

And although she was not as obsessive about her garden as the main character in “The Day Mrs. Ho Lung Got Arrested” in Uncle Obadiah and the Alien, there were many times as a teenager (much to my embarrassment) that she sent me to gather cow dung from the open government lands in Mona Heights or Hope Pastures so that she would have fertilizer for her garden. Over time her garden grew and yielded an abundance of tomatoes, gungo peas, sorrel, mangoes (Julie, Number 11, Long Mango) sour sop, ackee, breadfruit, okra, and pumpkins in our backyard. And it wasn't because she had a "green thumb." Rather it was the tenderness she showed in everything that she did. Her generosity was evident at our Sunday dinners when we feasted on the bounty from her garden.

My mother loved cooking. It was her chance to share with us something that came from her hands—visible proof of her love for us. Now, I wouldn’t say she was a superb cook, but she taught me the basics of cooking meals such as curried goat, beef stew, and chicken soup. One of her specialties was a mean potato salad, which when I prepared it for my then girlfriend impressed her so much, she decided to give me a second chance. We’re now married.

And because I did not want to be a wutless son, I learned the lessons well. In turn, I have passed these skills on to my children. Learning how to cook, taught me how to be patient, and also to be resourceful—you’ve run out of milk, now what are you going to do? I’ve learned to provide for my family and sometimes, I’ve made a meal out of bare necessities. 

Learning to sew showed me that I needed to be tenacious and  no matter what kind of clothing emergency I faced—you never get a second chance to make a first impression—I could handle it. Finally, gardening always made me aware of my relationship with the earth under my feet—with the land itself, no matter where I've lived.

Today as my family and I celebrate Mother’s Day, I know the meal that I’ll prepare for my family would not have been possible had it not been for Merty Philp née Lumley from whose generous hands taught me how to live and love.

Happy Mother's Day!

***
First published: 2010-05-09 01:01
Eastern Daylight Time

Why Do I Write About Mona Heights?

Once upon a time, there was a place called Mona Heights…


In her review of Dub Wise, Mary Hanna called the collection "a gift." If she meant “a gift” in the way that Lewis Hyde in The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World defined it as an "act of gratitude," then all of my books have been gifts because they attempt to return to the source the sensory impressions that have affected my life's work.


And certainly, Mona Heights has been a source. My earliest memories of Mona Heights are of growing up with my sister, Judith, my brother, Ansel, and a house full of cousins. Down the street, my childhood friends, Paul Chin, David Griffith, and Paul Smith and always trying to keep out of trouble with our parents and extended "uncles" and "aunts": Uncle Danny and Aunty Joan Morrison, Uncle Welly Chin, Uncle Michael Witter, Uncle Michael "Jah Mick" and Aunty Ann-Marie Mowatt. The happier days of our childhood were filled with playing cricket, exploring the "open lands, of Hope Pastures, and skylarking at the annual Christmas fair.


It was an idyllic time. Even the streets had paradisiacal names: Garden Boulevard, Anthurium Drive, Daisy Avenue, and Plumbago Path,  where I grew up and which I’ve used as the setting for many of the short stories in Uncle Obadiah and the Alien.


This is not to say that there weren't problems associated with race and class. But our parents did what all parents should do--they protected us from the harsher aspects of life. They realized that Mona Heights was the beginning of a civil society in pre-independence Jamaica, and, as one of the first attempts to create an open middle class enclave in St. Andrews, Mona became a microcosm of Jamaican society with all its dreams, fears, and conflicts.


As we grew older, however, we began to become aware of the divisions, but we didn't care who was black, white, Chinese, East Indian, or browning. We belonged to a community.


We were friends and continued to be friends during the so-called communist threat of the 70's and long after the undeclared civil war broke out...

II

So why do I write about Mona Heights?



I’m a wild golden apple
that will burst with love
of you and your men,
those I never told enough
with my young poet’s eyes
crazy with the country,
generations going,
generations gone,
moi c’est gens Ste. Lucie.
C’est la moi sorti;
is there that I born.


(from Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948 – 1984, Noonday Press, 1986/1993; originally from Sea Grapes, 1976)

It was there on Plumbago Path with Long Mountain to my right, Wareika to my left, and a child's delight in dirt and green things that I first had a feeling of awe, of being part of something larger than myself. It's the place in Jamaica where I first fell in love and where I discovered the work of three artists who would have a profound effect on my life: Bob Marley, Derek Walcott, and Dennis Scott.


Watching the pouis blanket the lawn while listening to the whistle of the peanut man, or waiting for our gardener, Victor, to regale us with his off-color jokes about "toning" as the Nyabinghi brethren called out, "Broom, Broomie," gave me the time to think about what Lorna Goodison, speaking about her childhood in pre-idpendence Jamaica, has called, "a very complicated, complex, rich place."


Later in the interview, Lorna also revealed, "I can be a witness. I can say, ‘In my life I saw this, and I knew this about Jamaica. If it doesn’t exist now, believe me, it used to exist, and hopefully it can exist again."

I feel the same way, Lorna. I haven't given up.

21 Days/21 Poems: Motherhood

Mother, the Great Stones Got to Move

Mother, one stone is wedged across the hole in our history

and sealed with blood wax.

In this hole is our side of the story, exact figures,

headcounts, burial artifacts, documents, lists, maps

showing our way up through the stars; lockets of brass

containing all textures of hair clippings.

It is the half that has never been told,

and some of us must tell it.

Mother, there is the stone on the hearts of some women and men

something like an onyx, cabochon-cut,

which hung on the wearer seeds bad dreams. Speaking for the small

dreamers of this earth, plagued with nightmares, yearning

for healing dreams

we want the stone to move.

Upon an evening like this, mother, when one year is making way

for another, in a ceremony attended by a show of silver stars,

mothers see moon, milk-fed, herself a nursing mother

and we think of our children and the stones upon their future

and we want these stones to move.

For the year going out came in fat at first

but toward the harvest it grew lean,

and many mouth corners gathered white

and another kind of poison, powdered white

was brought in to replace what was green,

And death sells it with one hand

and with the other death palms a gun

then death gets death’s picture

in the paper’s asking

“where does all this death come from?”

Mother, stones are pillows

for the homeless sleep on concrete sheets.

Stone flavors soup, stone is now meat,

the hard-hearted giving our children

stones to eat.

Mother, the great stones over mankind got to move,

It’s been ten thousand years we’ve been watching them now

from various points in the universe.

From the time of our birth as points of light

in the eternal coiled workings of the cosmos.

Roll away stone of poisoned powders come

to blot out the hope of our young.

Move stones of the sacrificial lives we breed

to feed to suicide god of tribalism.

From across the pathway to mount morning

site of the rose quartz fountain

brimming anise and star water

bright fragrant for our children’s future

Mother these great stones got to move.

“Mother, the Great Stones Got to Move” by Lorna Goodison. To Us, All Flowers Are Roses. University of Illinois Press, 1995.

The typical poem in which motherhood is the theme usual limits itself to scenes of domestic conflict. But Lorna Goodison’s canvas is much broader than that. Summoning the great reserve of spiritual strength from the lineage of Caribbean women, Goodison confronts the imperial history of the Caribbean, political tribalism and drug trafficking as equally oppressive forces in the lives of the powerless for whom she speaks.

Yet the voice in the poem is never shrill. Slowly, determinedly the cadence builds, oracle-like, until the plea becomes palpable: “Mother these great stones got to move.”

About Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison was born in Kingston, Jamaica, one of nine siblings, and was educated at St. Hugh's High School, a leading Anglican high school in Jamaica and the Jamaica School of Art, before going to New York to study at the Art Students League. She had also been writing poetry since her teenage years; some early poems appeared anonymously in the Jamaica Gleaner.

In her 20s, back in Jamaica, she taught art and worked in advertising and public relations before deciding to pursue a career as a professional writer. She began to publish under her own name in the Jamaica Journal, and to give readings at which she built up an appreciative audience.

In the early 1990s, Goodison began teaching part of the year at various North American universities, including the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan.

Goodison's most recent book is a memoir, From Harvey River (2008). She has published eleven collections of poems: Tamarind Season (1980), I Am Becoming My Mother (1986, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Americas region), Heartease (1988), Poems (1989), Selected Poems (1992), To Us, All Flowers Are Roses (1995), Turn Thanks (1999), Guinea Woman (2000), Travelling Mercies (2001), Controlling the Silver (2005), and Goldengrove (2006). Goodison has also published two collections of short stories, Baby Mother and the King of Swords (1990) and Fool-Fool Rose Is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (2005).

She has also exhibited her paintings internationally, and her own artwork is usually featured on the covers of her books.

In 1999, Goodison was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica for her contributions to literature.

Goodison describes poetry as "a dominating, intrusive tyrant. It’s something I have to do--a wicked force".

Poet and literary scholar Edward Baugh says that "one of Goodison’s achievements is that her poetry inscribes the Jamaican sensibility and culture on the text of the world". Apart from issues of home and exile, her work also addresses the power of art to explore and reconcile opposites and contradictions in the Caribbean historical experience.

Source: Wikipedia

Image: http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/7-february-2006/making-life/

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Lorna Goodison: One of the Best Writers You’ve Never Read

I wonder who the "you" is?

Although she began her career as a painter, Goodison is one of the best writers — Canadian, Jamaican or otherwise — you’ve probably never heard of. This should change with the publication of By Love Possessed, a virtuosic collection of short stories that, although it is only February, will likely stand among the best books released in 2011. Goodison doesn’t mind the lack of recognition. As she says while standing in the kitchen of her cozy Cabbagetown home, making hot tea on a cold January afternoon, “I know how blessed I am.”

Read more: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/02/04/she-comes-through-lorna-goodison-is-one-of-the-best-writers-youve-never-read/#ixzz1D1SUQ45Q

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A Conversation With...Garfield Ellis

Where were you born? Describe current family life.
  
I was born in a little place in the hills of St. Catherine, called Sandy Hill - two minutes and a line away from St. Faith’s. A little district surrounded by mist covered hillsides, with foot-wide tracks into agricultural grounds deep into the heart of the hills.

I live a quiet life in which I still struggle to carve a little space for my writing. I still wake at four in the mornings to write, and then, get to work by nine. I make sure I get in a bit of golf on the weekends as much for the walk and the exercise as for the game. And I make sure I find time for my family.

What do you do for a living? Why did you choose this vocation?

I now work as the director of Communications for a government agency. The search for a job to compliment my writing has brought me here.

Who are your three favourite writers? Why?

That’s a hard question – by category, maybe.

Poetry: My poet is Lorna Goodison. She is the most spiritual of all, and she is the minstrel of the common folk. But Martin Carter is a close second.

Caribbean Novelist: Well, George Lamming is high on the list because he is the Master and he writes his vision into his work and his vision is in the possibilities of the Caribbean people.

Then, there is Toni Morrison. She is the standard-bearer for passion and expression. Beloved will last for ages as one of the greatest pieces of artistic expression ever. I measure my work by this standard.

Popular Fiction: Robert Ludlum. I cannot leave him out. Bourne Identity is the second book I totally fell in love with, and which convinced me to follow the path of writing.

Western: I had to find a way to put in Shane by Jack Schaefer.
&
Short Story: “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, which is really a thirty-page poem.

What was the first book you fell in love with and how have your reading habits changed over the years?

The first book I fell in love with was Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I was sixteen years old when I read it and still remember lines form it. Still a Classic.

My reading habits haven’t really changed over the years. I prefer interesting books that go to different places in the soul; invite me to somewhere I have never been before. But my reading has widened a bit. I have read a lot more Caribbean stuff of late. I never grew up on them.

What are you reading now?

I am doing a lot of writing now and when I do, I hardly read. But I want to finish The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller.

What makes you laugh?

That is a good question for a writer in Jamaica these days. For sometimes, the laughter is more an expression of sorrow than it is of mirth. But what cracks me up . . . A great Clovis cartoon.

What are your other passions?

My passions are easy: Writing, My children, my woman lying soft against my body, golfing, a great play, walking for great distances and Dennis Brown songs.

About Garfield Ellis

Garfield Ellis   grew up in Jamaica, the eldest of nine children. He studied marine engineering, management and public relations in Jamaica and completed his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Miami, on full scholarship as a James Michener Fellow.

He is a two-time winner of the Una Marson prize for adult literature; in the first instance for his first collection of short stories, Flaming Hearts (pub. 1997), and later for the still unpublished novel, Till I’m Laid To Rest. He has twice won the Canute A. Brodhurst prize for fiction (The Caribbean Writer, University of Virgin Islands) 2000 & 2005 and the 1990 Heinemann/Lifestyle short story competition.

Garfield is the author of four published books: Flaming Hearts, Wake Rasta, Such As I Have, and For Nothing at All. His work has appeared in several international journals, including Callaloo, Calabash, The Caribbean Writer, and Obsidian III. A fifth book, Till I’m Laid To Rest is due in Spring 2010.

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