Does your family have one? A poet in the making? I have one (or two) in mine. What better gift can a loving parent or relative give to that budding Caribbean poet than a collection of poems by three generations of Caribbean poets? These poets--Martin Carter, Ian McDonald, Balwant Bhagwandin, and Kei Miller--have produced works that prove the Caribbean has a long-standing tradition of excellence in poetry.
Now of course there are some glaring omissions in my line-up--Derek Walcott comes to mind. But if I am to remain honest about the work I feature on this blog, I have to confess I am not as familiar with Derek Walcott the poet as I am with Derek Walcott the playwright. Give me time and I will fix that.
Two of the four poets I do feel comfortable featuring here today--Martin Carter, and Ian McDonald--are of Walcott's generation. Balwant Bhagwandin is about two decades younger, and Kei Miller is 30 years old. Within the past year or so, I have become quite familiar with their work, and I say with certainty, together they represent a significant portion of outstanding poetry from the Caribbean that the budding Caribbean poet (or the poet's parents and other family members) will appreciate and enjoy for years to come. I have to confess even further that I'm in hurry-up mode to familiarize myself with Walcott's poetry since this recent occurrence, and this apparent response. Sweet, ain't it? So if after reading that you're in hurry-up mode like me to read Walcott, treat yourself to this copy of his collected poems.
You can introduce your budding poet to Martin Carter's fiery, impassioned, and quietly sentimental verses in this collection titled Poems, edited by Stewart Brown and Ian McDonald.
I have featured several of Carter's poems on this blog, and will continue to do so in an effort to keep his work fresh and foremost in our minds. I truly believe (as I'm sure some of you do) that though we are not immortal, our good words should certainly be.
Read lines here from "Jail Me Quickly," "Where Are Free Men," and "They Say I Am."
[From “Jail Me Quickly”]
Black Friday 1962
were some who ran one way.
were some who ran another way.
were some who did not run at all.
were some who will not run again.
And I was with them all,
when the sun and streets exploded,
and a city of clerks
turned a city of men!
Was a day that had to come,
ever since the whole of a morning sky,
glowed red like glory,
over the tops of houses.
________
[From “Where Are Free Men?”] . . . . And what in dreams we do in life we attempt. But where are free men, where the endless streets? Since we were born our wings have had no rest Our prison of air is worse than one of iron! ________ “They Say I Am” They say I am a poet write for them: Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I solemnly nod. I do not want to look them in the eye lest they should squeal and scamper far away. A poet cannot write for those who ask hardly himself even, except he lies; Poems are written either for the dying or the unborn, no matter what they say. That does not mean his audience lies remote inside a womb or some cold bed of agony. It only means that we who want true poems must all be born again, and die to do so. ________
In the collection, Bhagwandin captivatingly chronicles a brief period in contemporary Guyana and gives us a feel for the fear, the horror, and the devastation of the period (which continues to be the case today), and one may find in his outcry, a call for help from those he is certain will (at least) care. Early this year, I featured some of the poems from I Hear Guyana Cry, and analyzed this one that I found particularly moving.You and your budding poet can also read and recognize strains and echoes of Carter's poems in Balwant Bhagwandin's collection titled I Hear Guyana Cry.
________
You can also experience the wide-ranged story of a poet whose vision of the "ordinary," (as Edward Baugh describes), underscores a great passion for life, and concern for the minute details so many of us tend to miss or take for granted. ________ His passionate verses can both move the reader to raise a fist in celebration of the one who rebels against those who view immigrants from some parts of the world suspiciously in one cold, damp Island, and to appreciate the other Island of birth, which shaped his vision of the world. Here are two of Miller's poems from There is an Anger that Moves that continue in the tradition of Caribbean poetry. Like his predecessors, Miller's poetry fosters new understandings of the people and countries in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora, and pays tribute to our many ways of life...and will do so for generations to come. And this most recent collection of Ian McDonald's poems is remarkable in that (as I mentioned previously) it is the first time the poems from his four collections have been set in chronological order. So you get to experience the changing and the constant tone and content of his work from the 1950s through the 1980s and after.
Kei Miller's work tells of the Caribbean immigrant experience. His words grip and transport the reader from Caribbean Island to European Island with lots of rough mileage in between.
How we became the pirates In this country you have an accent; in the pub, a woman mocks it. You want to ignore her but wonder how many hearts is she being bold for? Hate in this place is restrained as the landscape, buried, usually, under a polite ‘cheers, mate’. And what a thing to mock – the way we shape words differently. But maybe it’s the old colonial hurt of how we became the pirates, dark people raiding English from the English, stealing poetry from the poets. So English poetry is no longer from England.
You swear – Lady, if I start a poem in this country it will not be yours. ________ After all you do not know In this country, having just arrived, you might be desperate enough to buy plantains online – after all, you do not know what is what or where to find things like ground provisions, or heat, or the sounds of your people. At nights you look through the hopeful window of a computer screen, waiting for Jamaica
to come falling through and fill your flat. It will happen, you think, if you stay awake, keep the channels open, Google the right word, like kumina, pocomania or Elverine, your mother’s name; if you find a place where you might click on a hand of plantain, remembering then, the yellow insistence of morning food, as if the sun rose from your small plate.
For a little over $50.00, you can have the words of these poets to read over and over again (and with safe keeping), from generation to generation of your family.
