Issue 9, July 2017
Mervyn Morris: On Observation, Craft and Mining Memory An interview by Yashika Graham
Works by: Nova Gordon-Bell, Richard ‘Dingo’ Dingwall, Tara Downs, A-dZiko Simba Gegele, Raymond Mair, William Abbott, Samuel Gordon, Kirk Budhooram, Sheldon Morgan
Susumba’s Book Bag is a quarterly digital magazine dedicated to showcasing writing of the highest grade from new, emerging and established Caribbean writers at home and in the Diaspora. The magazine is an offshoot of the Caribbean arts and entertainment online magazine Susumba.com We will publish poetry, fiction, flash fiction, interviews as well as reviews of Caribbean books. Occasionally, we will also publish one-act plays and monologues. Currently, we do not offer remuneration for the writings we publish, but we believe that writers should be paid for their work, and so we working on a way to do that in the near future.
Submission Guidelines We accept a maximum of 5 poems and 2 short stories at a time and we have no problem with simultaneous submissions but ask that you notify us immediately if the work is accepted elsewhere. We have no bias of genre or style. Our only requirement is that it be good, so send us your best stuff. Short stories should range from 2,500 to 3,500 words while flash fiction is from 10 600 words. We prefer our poetry to err on the side of Mervyn Morris, the shorter the better. We do accept longer work but if your poem is at the 33 to 64 line tipping point (longer than a page), please only submit two poems at a time. We try to keep our response time to a month, but alas we are human and so it may go beyond that. If you have not heard from us in 90 days, please feel free to send us a query. Though we publish quarterly, we currently accept submissions throughout the year, except in December. There is no reading fee, and submissions are only accepted via email. Send submissions to info@susumba.com Subject: Lastname-Firstname-Submission. Send your work as an attachment (.doc, .txt or .rtf), not in the body of the email. Works sent in the body of the email will not be accepted. Send submissions to info@susumba.com Subject: Lastname-Firstname-Submission
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Editor’s Note The distance between this edition and the last, seemed to yawn interminable, with each new deadline set for completion of the issue sailing by with works still unread. Finding the time to dedicate to putting out this magazine grows increasingly difficult. However, I continue to push through to do this because I believe that it is important to the development of Caribbean arts and letters that we have multiple spaces for expression. It is therefore fantastic that there are other magazines blooming throughout the region. This issue for the first time we allow our selves to delve a little deeper into the visual arts (usually it remains on the cover) through the photography of William Abbott. We hope to do more of this. In the mean time - read, write, live and love. Tanya
Tanya Batson-Savage Editor in Chief
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Contents 6
The Little Children
Nova Gordon-Bell
10
Ms Edith (Rock of Gibraltar) A Nanny fi a cup a coffee (paper money)
Richard ‘Dingo’ Dingwall
12
A Disapproval of Skimpy Things Feelings From the Sky Juice Lady with the God
Tara Downs
14
Another Cock and Bull Story
A-dZiko Simba Gegele
25
Festival of Words - ‘Calabash’ Poem for Calabash Carnival Ennui
Raymond Mair
28
3.3
William Abbott
37
Mirror Mirror Trap Music
Samuel Gordon
40
A Kiss
Sheldon Morgan
41
My ZigZag Journey on the Road to Political Wonders
Kirk Budhooram
47
On Observation, Craft and Mining Memory: An Interview with Mervyn Morris
Yashika Graham
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
A publication by Blue Banyan Books
Cover Image: by William Abbott Editor: Tanya Batson-Savage tanya@susumba.com
PO Box 5464, Liguanea PO, Kingston, Jamaica W.I. www.susumba.com
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The Little Children by Nova Gordon-Bell
God come to our church every Sunday. Him come for the early service where the big people choir sing and Mr. Watson the blind man play the big organ. God come for the late service too where the children come. Children come to the late service because we have to brush teeth and pee-pee and comb our hair. We come to the late service after we have our cocoa tea, boiled egg and orange. You can’t see God when Him come to service because the rector say God is a God who hide Himself. You can’t see God but you know God is there because when God is there the rector wear the white frock and gold sash and the choir sing and the man with the silver hair carry the gold cross from the back of the church to the front where God sit among the red flowers. God don’t stay for Sunday School in the afternoon so He send Miss Abrahams our Sunday School teacher in her white straw hat and her white stockings. He send Miss Abrahams with pictures of Him in the big white Bible she always carry to Sunday School. In Miss Abrahams’ Bible, God don’t hide. We see Him and some men who always follow Him everywhere in the Bible. They were disciples because they were discipline. Little children who were discipline would grow up to become God’s disciples. The disciples follow God everywhere in the Bible even to the foot of the big brown cross where they kneel down and cry for God was nail up on the cross and He was dying for us. I like Sunday School. I like Sunday School because we can talk to Miss Abrahams about God. This afternoon I have to talk to Miss Abrahams. I have to ask Miss Abrahams to take a message to God for me. There is water in the cracks in the sidewalk. They will dirty up my white shoes. I jump. I jump again. Mama will cuss if I dirty up my white shoes. I have to run fast-fast. I have to run, past the barb wire fence where the mangy, bad dogs bark and growl and them mouth flash water after children in white shoes and white socks and pink and yellow church dress. I have questions to ask Miss Abrahams about God. I really want to ask Miss Abrahams what God put in his hair to make it so shine and yellow. My Mama use Dixie Peach in my hair and when she wash my hair on Saturday morning. She use castor oil and my hair don’t look as shine and pretty as God’s hair. This Sunday afternoon, though, I have a more important question to ask God. Gran-gran and Mama cuss this morning and Gran-gran beat her belly and say Mama is hell bound. Gran-gran say God going sin Mama.
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The Little Children Nova Gordon-Bell
When Mama was tidying me for Sunday School, I wanted to ask her what happen when God sin somebody but Mama would not talk to me. She powder my neck and chest with baby powder and scrape my eyebrows with her tail comb and she was breathing heavy and her eye full up with water and she wouldn’t talk to me. Mama spray her perfume on my pink kerchief and put it in my pink patent leather handbag with the bunny rabbit clasp and silver buckle. She smile at me but her eyes still full of water and she didn’t talk to me. Mama let me walk to Sunday School alone because she had some dress to finish sewing for the lady who was coming to pick them up in the evening. I could walk to Sunday School alone because I don’t have to cross any road and Sunday School let out at five o clock before night come down. Mama say, “Marie don’t run. Walk.” Mama don’t want me drop on the road. I run. I have to ask Miss Abrahams what happen when God sin somebody. I can smell the bad smell from the factory like something on fire. You can smell the factory everywhere: at home, at church, at school. Some days the factory make noise like metal licking on metal and metal scraping metal. I run fast past the smell bad factory big, tall, green, metal gates. I can see the roof of our church. I run fast-fast. I run past the police car outside the police station. I don’t look at the men in the blue clothes with the long gun and the black helmet. I don’t like to see their yellow eyes and big, yellow teeth. I run fast. I run past the post office. Gran-gran go to the post office to get money to buy medication for her pressure. Gran-gran have pressure. God going sin Mama because Mama send up Gran-gran pressure. The church doors are closed. The children are singing, “Tell me the stories of Jesus…” in the hall behind the church. Story-time. I am late, very late. I need to ask Miss Abrahams to send God my message. “Marie, you are late again.” Miss Abraham get up from her chair. The other children turn round in the little blue chairs to look at me. I want to say, “Good afternoon Miss Abrahams,” but my lips trembling and my eyes fill up with eye water. Miss Abrahams’ hands soft-soft and she smell of sweet soap. She say, “Everybody say, welcome Marie. God loves you.” The children say, “Welcome Marie, God love you,” and Terrence Johnson make a monkey face at me. Terrence Johnson always being put in the corner at school. He teased the girls. “Don’t cry, Marie,” Miss Abrahams talking soft. “Are you ok? Are you feeling sick, dear?” “Please tell God don’t sin Mama,” I beg her, and I feel my chest swelling and I can’t breathe. Miss Abrahams look frighten. She lean over and hug me and she say, “Oh no, Marie. God loves us despite our sins.”
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The Little Children Nova Gordon-Bell
I feel my throat closing up and my knees shaking. “Gran-gran seh hell fire fi she. Hell fire fi she. God going sin Mama.” I was crying loud-loud and I couldn’t breathe and I could hardly see the big picture of God holding little children on his lap and children sitting around his feet. I love that picture - the picture on the wall behind the piano. I love that picture. God was telling the children about heaven, the place they would go to if they went to bed and died in their sleep like my baby sister Cheryl. Mama put Cheryl to sleep one night and in the morning Mama scream a loud scream. Gran-gran said while we were sleeping God came and took Cheryl to be with Him in heaven, to be a flower in his garden with the other children Herod killed when he was searching for Baby Jesus to kill him. Cheryl gone to heaven with the little children Jesus love and Mama going to hell. God sin Mama and Mama going to hell. Mama wouldn’t see Cheryl again. “God going sin Mama and send her to hell,” I scream. “No sweetheart. God is a loving and patient God. Mama comes to church every Sunday, doesn’t she and she takes communion? God will remember her.” “Miss Abraham, you can make sure God remember Mama? You can beg Him please remember Mama?” “God forgets our sins and remembers His good mercy towards us,” Miss Abrahams said putting her hand on my head. “Come Marie. Take a seat with the other children. It’s story time. Don’t you want to hear a story?” Miss Abrahams turned to the other children and said again, loudly, “Do we want to hear a story?” The children say, “Yes Miss.” Some of them clap and Terrence Johnson pull Millicent Brown’s ribbon and call her “picky-picky head.” Millicent hit him and Miss Abrahams said, “None of that now, Terrence. Behave yourself. Millicent, no hitting.” “Miss Abrahams,” I said, pulling her hand. I could not let her go until she knew exactly what to tell God. I had to tell her it was about the bank book. “Mama hide the bank book in her panty draw, Miss. Mama wrap up the bank book in the panty she wear go to wedding and funeral and Mama tell Gran-gran she don’t have no money to take her go specialist for her heart.” “Marie!” Miss Abrahams put her finger on her lips. “Be quiet, please. Please.” Miss Abrahams look frighten again but I can’t stop talking. She need to know everything to tell God. My Mama was in danger of hell fire because Gran-gran prayers strong. Gran-gran say God listen to old people.
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The Little Children Nova Gordon-Bell
“Mama saving her money for when the embassy call her. When the embassy call her, Mama need to have money.” “Darling,” Miss Abrahams said, “Darling, be quiet, please.” “We going to America, Miss. Mama father filing for her and we going to America to live in New York.” I start crying again and my chest hurts. We couldn’t go to Mama’s father in New York if Mama was going to hell. Miss Abrahams pat my lips with her fingers and I stop talking. Miss Abrahams said, “Marie, we are going to pray for you and your Gran-gran and your Mama.” I clasp my hands and close my eyes. I close my eyes tight so that God won’t sin me for peeping when we are praying. Children must close their eyes when they are praying because the Bible say nobody can see God and live. Miss Abrahams clasp my hands between hers and I can smell her sweet soap strong, strong, and the toothpaste on her breath. She say, “God please take care of Marie’s mother, and grand-mother and take care of Marie. Help them all to know you more clearly and love you more dearly and keep them safe in Jesus name.” All the children said Amen. I open my eyes. Terrence Johnson is making monkey face at me again. “Now everything is going to be all right, Marie,” Miss Abrahams smile. “Now we’re going to have story time and you can come sit by me and help me turn the pages.”
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Richard ‘Dingo’ Dingwall Ms Edith (Rock of Gibaltar) It could fill books, the things that fear can learn from desperation. But wha kina sorcery is this? How yu did manage sell orange and bag juice a roadside an send pickney go school? and these learned ones can't balance budget. Yu did do it widout thinking. like birthing hips, like how cane and pine mek sweetness from dirt. skin, long vex to man touch, clinging to dignity. Combing fatherless heads and trekking pleated innocence to bus stop. Couldn't mek dem know sometime yu lay dung whe u neva whah lay dung but September looming. how often money dun, and is tomorrow feed dem. You, proud, but nuh "big Gill a oil" and "halfa bread" proud. Stoic, even while life a grate hard gainst the soft parts that yu try hide. And in the darkness of the one room, when it swell, beyond the dam of eyelids, more than breathing can handle, an yu let it guh, Is not weakness. Is because energy potent in all directions. Still rock in a hourglass strong, patience learnt from stubborn fevers, back firm and wide enough, to bridge a colonial history of losing men. You,
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Richard ‘Dingo’ Dingwall
stirring cornmeal while counting silver, pain shelved somewhere between bible and Bay Rum, you smile wid handles. Their youthful eyes, unsullied and wide, gaze stars, ambitious like mountains, and you slowly losing sight of your reflection as you shine their shoes into purpose.
A nanny fi a cup a coffee (paper money) We made our way down from the hills The taste lost somewhere amid dense undergrowth and loose stones. Distant drumming gradually ceding to the mutterings of unreasonable mirrors, No discernible grace in the brutish nap, the firm arch of the nostrils. The void: Expunging precious pigment to fashion new camouflage, now shades of ourselves. Rootless, indigenous to the day. The meek: Sold on the scriptures of joy on layaway, blindly await their inheritance, but sequels are usually contrived. The jaded: unceremoniously peel and dash weh the bump yet to receive word of their own passing. The tongues and the fight swaddled in the pining silence of the abeng. And lost in this desecration of visceral treaties is you, my queen. Yu mountains now famous, but only fi di brew, yet yu children sleep, content to fail history, strings weakened like untuned djembe. Fireless, like your mythical cauldrons; Unable to conceive you. But heng on in deh queen, di magic still strong, cah you still deh pon 500 strong, when black heroes these days, slowly turning into small change.
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Tara Downs A Disapproval of Skimpy Things My brother doesn't look at me anymore. He looks past me, over me. I think he's afraid of the chaos that's growing on my face. I'm way too much colour to hold in his salvation strapped gut. He cannot look me in the eyes. So he stares past my shoulder when he asked what I'd had to eat. He digs the scalp aggressively at the top of his head and asked the edge of my shoulder "So, how life? how school?" I sucked the spit betwixt my teeth and twirled in his office, grabbed my knapsack and said "It's all too much for you to take in one breath". My brother doesn't look at me anymore because he thinks I'm lost. He doesn't recognize the stretched out energies floating around in this host of a body. He said it breaks him that I've lost the church. Hmph. My brother doesn't look at me anymore because I've started carrying too much rebellion, too much expression, too much renaissance woman in all the places too hot for him to hold.
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Tara Downs
Feelings from the Sky Juice Lady with the God I am an omen. A million evening Haiku’s Iron-skinned woman with dragon blood brewing in all my silk washed, lilied up places I am Her. The It The Only I am called Woman Some supreme thing Wash your mouth before you say my name Woman. Some god. Some blasted everlasting thing. Tie yourself Hold your breath, now call my name Woman
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Another Cock and Bull Story by A-dZiko Simba Gegele
The first glimpse she had was a fleeting vision as she crossed the room, her hands coated in grated coconut. Before arriving at the sink, she had reversed two steps and peered through the little tear in the curtain. Not only was Pastor Linval climbing over the back fence into her yard, but he was doing so, her eyes continued to confirm, wearing only the skin the good Lord had given him. As he shimmied down the wall his buttocks glistened in the late afternoon sun like polished balloons. ‘Everton, come … come quick, a no Pastor dat?’ she cried. They both inched closer to the window and she gently lifted a corner of the curtain. Thrilled by the drama unfolding before their eyes, they stood there giggling like two juveniles sheathed in a haze of ganja behind a church bathroom. The pastor landed silently on the soft earth and taking care to avoid the spirit weed that had recently taken over the entire bed, made a furtive survey of the area, then turned around causing Wilma Stewart’s hands to fly to her mouth muffling her involuntary scream. Not only was Pastor Linval in her yard, not only was he extremely and utterly without attire, but Pastor Linval, had an erection as upright as the village clock tower and not only was it so vertically inclined, but, as Wilma was to recall later that evening lying alone in her bed, the damn thing was enormous. Her mouth fallen open and coated with shreds of coconut, Wilma could neither peel her body away from the window nor her eyes from Pastor’s maleness, as he minced across the gravel walkway, circled the crotons and then slid like a ninja up to the kitchen door. In all her 53 years, she had never beheld such a vision, never encountered such a thing so enormous that it was only after Pastor Linval’s third pounding on the door that she was able to awaken from her stupor. ‘Miss Wilma, Miss Wilma!’ Her hands hesitated at the lock. ‘Well then, Mrs. Stewart,’ Everton asked, ‘don’t you think now would be a good time to stop and think?’ ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘stop and think.’
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Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
She stepped back from the door and tried to formulate some thoughts. This, she reminded herself, was Pastor Linval from the First Ebenezer Baptist Church, the same Pastor Linval who every Sunday for fifteen years had, from the sanctity of his pulpit, pelted her and Everton and all of ‘their kind’ with the fire and brimstone of irredeemable condemnation, denouncing their rituals as Satan’s sorcery and predicting an afterlife in hell’s inferno. Pastor Linval, who had blocked their every move to obtain clearance from the Council to conduct an ancestral Table at the Two Rivers crossroads by filling the member’s heads with lies and warnings of God’s retribution should they even consider ‘supporting such iniquitous works’. It wasn’t from her own desire, an unexplained whim, this yearning for the table. It had come as a beseechment from Them, The Ancestors, and now that Everton had joined them, stirring things up the way he did, it came to her mind constantly. Every day she found a new person to harass, a new member of the local parish council to persuade with promises of support from her people, of which there were many, she would assure them, both living and dead. The latter, she was quick to inform them, infinitely better placed to ensure their success. When whisperings in the ears of these officials proved useless, she wrote letters and when these remained unanswered she went to tea with the wives of these men. The wives nodded graciously over their cups of red rose and nibbled their freshly baked grated cakes daintily, as was required at the recently opened English Tea Room of the Regal Hotel on Broad Street. They raised their eyebrows at the suggestion that one day, one day soon they may become the parish’s first lady, a position they all vied for, dueling on the altar of fashion with their parade of outrageous hats, their enormous smiles and their kissing of babies. But the gallons of tea consumed on the verandah of the English Tea Room of the Regal Hotel on Broad Street took her no closer to the table than the arched brows and the perfectly cocked little fingers of the ladies and Wilma had had to resort, much against her principles, to the lovers of the officials and then, when that too failed, to the lovers of the official’s wives who, much to Wilma’s amazement, were as plentiful as the official consorts. But she reached nowhere in any quarter. Pastor Linval Thorton’s net spread to every corner of the parish. Sunday mornings they came from every cranny - the Parish’s Most Honorables - politely battling for space in the church yard’s pint-sized parking lot. Inside, the overhead fans of the hot little church rotated dangerously over the heads of the squashed congregation and were augmented, if not surpassed, by the fervent fanning of the wives turned out in their splendid hats who sat fastened to their husbands’ sides. Perhaps if Wilma had ever stepped foot in Linval’s domain on any such Sunday, she may have abandoned her quest and humbly asked the Ancestors if there was anything, any other thing that could satisfy them as equally as the Table for she would have witnessed firsthand how ardently he turned them all against her with his damning speeches, his carefully chosen words of ridicule and his beating of the furniture to underscore God’s wrath. None of the permits would be permitted, no license issued, no public land made available for that sort of activity for Linval had them convinced, it was the work of the devil and she, Wilma Stewart, as a willing servant of Satan, was, along with all of her followers (poor misguided souls), destined for an audience with the Prince of Darkness himself.
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Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
She, of course, heard of his vitriolic retributions second hand but no amount of pulpit pounding could deter her from her mission. If 53 years of living had taught her one thing, it was how to bide her time. They wanted a table; they would get a table. No matter what was said within the walls of the First Ebenezer Baptist Church, Pastor Linval Thornton and she were both well aware of the fact that every last one of them was a damn hypocrite. Every last one of them with their patent leather shoes and silver crucifixes adorning their necks and their women with their hats, every man–jack of them, were the same ones who came through her side door when their partners were away. They were the same ones with requests for oils and potions and recipes to ‘tie Winston’, to ‘keep that harlot’s eyes from off of my man’, to conceal from Norbert’s knowledge the virile young man kept in suits and cars who made them feel so alive (according to their own confessions). The only fool to be fooled by a hypocrite is the hypocrite themselves - one of Everton’s sayings, one that she had taken to heart, that kept her going as she bided her time. And so here he was, Pastor Linval, outside her door, as naked as daylight with an erection the size of a fully grown cotton tree. Of course, she was accustomed to visitors. They came from all over with as many requests as stars in the heavens: always something they needed to get – the man, the woman, the contract, the big house, the visa, the ring - always something. What then, thought Miss Wilma, could Pastor Linval, with his naked, erectile self, want from her? Before she could come up with an answer, he hammered again. ‘Miss Wilma, please, I beseech you, open the door.’ It was her calling; she could not turn him away. She spun around three times, uncorked the stopper from the miniature vial of Karanga water hanging around her neck, gave the entrance a thorough sprinkling, then flung the door open, fully intending to give refuge to the man. Instead, the moment she opened the door, her eyes, instantly invoking self-rule, latched onto the gigantic organ that stood, as ridged as ever, between them. ‘What?’ exclaimed Wilma, planning to ask, as she recalled later that evening, ‘What can I do for you Pastor?’ But unbeknown to her, she had also lost control of her mouth and instead she blurted out, ‘What, in the name of The Ancestors, is that?’ Pastor Linval’s head fell in shame and for a moment the great monolith appeared to topple to one side but in a split second it managed, like a ships’ mast, to right itself reaching once more for the skies. Pastor Linval met her gaze, his eyes full of water, ‘May I?’ he pleaded. ‘Oh gosh, Pastor, sorry, of course, come in … come in.’
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Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
Wilma led Pastor Linval into the living room and thinking she would have to give the cushions a good scrubbing after he had gone, she gestured towards the single upright chair - the wooden one – standing next to the whatnot; the one with the removable covers. But the Pastor remained on his feet, his nose weeping a steady stream of mucus and his eyes swimming around the room like two fish lost in a sea of tears. From her seat, Wilma’s entire field of vision was filled with Pastor’s endowment. Desperate to minimise her exposure, Wilma, gestured towards the empty chair, ‘Please Pastor, make yourself comfortable.’ ‘Comfortable?’ he spat, ‘You have no idea Miss Wilma, no idea.’ And then, in between the deluge of salt water and the asthmatic heaving of his chest, the story came sobbing out while Wilma sat as impassively as possible with her hands folded neatly over themselves in her lap but the People’s Republic of her eyes still firmly locked in obsession on the Pastor’s enormous anatomy. He remained standing, he explained, because to do otherwise would bring such incredible pain, his cries would rival the anguished howling from hell’s deepest pit. ‘Mi pon faiya, Miss Wilma! The whole of mi body - every cell, every organ, every bone, a bun op bun op, Miss Wilma. Mi skin, mi nose-hole even di hair pon mi head, down to even that Miss Wilma, faiya, bier faiya!’ And then, as if his words were not proof enough, the pastor suddenly grabbed hold of his penis and, with his face grimacing, peeled back the foreskin to reveal the head, smooth and bald and practically glowing florescent red in the muted light of the room. ‘Faiya!’ the pastor screamed at the top of his lungs, the terrified organ leaping from his hands as if attempting to save itself from the blaze. Miss Wilma resisted running to the kitchen for a bucket of water with which to douse the man and opted instead to offer him a glass of water which he soaked up like a dry sponge and then requested an immediate refill. ‘My wife,’ he continued, his fat little body jerking in spasms as he tried to control the sobbing, ‘My wife is a … demanding woman.’ Wilma conjured an image of Pastor Linval’s wife. It was the only image she had for it was the one and only time she had seen the woman. Her limbs were long and fine, bearing a mere dusting of muscle, but the rest of her was surprisingly fat and had a quality of constant undulation as if whatever lay beneath her attire was in a permanent state of disagreement. Apparently unaware of this, the young woman, who couldn’t have been a day over twenty three, had clothed her rebellious body in what Wilma could only describe as Wanton Wiggle Wear – the leggings, the snippet of skirt, the sleeveless, strapless, stringy- stringy top all so perfectly suctioned onto her flesh the only answer to the conundrum of how she could have
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Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
possibly got them on was that she had, in fact, been birthed fully clothed in them. And with such a marriage of flesh and fabric, the merest sigh set off a rippling wiggle that echoed throughout her body attracting to it the attention of every male within reach, drawn to the spectacle like hummingbirds inexorably drawn to the divine scent of honeysuckle. That one time, after Nadine had pointed her out with a telling nod in Cheong’s Supermarket Emporium, Wilma had read her with one sweep – ‘torment’. They had told her, ‘Pure torment.’ Despite their ideological differences and the nastiness over the setting up of The Ancestors’ Table, Wilma had felt compelled, right there in Cheong’s Emporium, to spin around three times, douse the surrounding area with her freshly purchased Florida Water and ask The Ancestors – the very same ones he had refused the honour of a Table - for a cloak of protection to cover Pastor Linval and for his head to be cleaved open that wisdom may pour in and keep him from marrying this woman who, Nadine swore, had already been presented as his bride-to-be. ‘Vanquish the madness!’ Wilma had hollered out in the middle of aisle 9 as she spun her body for the final time. ‘Vanquish the madness from his mind and the harlot from his heart and anoint his head with piety and righteous thinking.’ It could never have been her earnestness or the aptitude of The Ancestors which were to be found lacking, only the efficacy of the Florida Water could be called into question prompting Miss Wilma, the day after the marriage of the Pastor to the said harlot, to return the bottle of impotent Florida Water to Cheong’s and demand a full refund. The girl had been attracted to him on account of the nickname he had earned the first day of secondary school when Mason had burst from the boys urinal with the news of his size, ‘Eh, da yuut have a piis di saiz a wan elifant – wi a wan ton, but im? Im a ten ton!’ And with Tenton, this beautiful corruption of his surname - Thornton, had come stories – the best one being that at night he slept face down for had he slept on his back he was in real danger of being crushed to death by the weight of his own encumbrance. And he had enjoyed this celebrity. From aged 13 to well into his thirties he had the pick of practically any woman he chose to bed. But then came Miriam Paterson, a meek little thing from Glad Tidings he had begun conversing with at the library front desk one afternoon. She had a quiet charm he found alluring for he sensed within it a touch of daring. It was something about her habit of every so often moistening her lips and letting her tongue linger between them for a moment or two longer than necessary. Charming. Was she, he enquired, interested in birds? Yes, to his delight, she was and yes, she’d love to see his collection of photographs and books with full colour plates of birds of the region and yes, this Saturday at 5? His place? Oh yes, she could make it, certainly. He dreamt of her every night, each dream more deliciously explicit than the previous. As the day and hour approached, he could barely contain himself and neither, it seemed, could the demure, dry-
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Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
lipped Miriam, for she had arrived early - 15 minutes to 4. Racing through the preliminaries of how each other was and the hurried tour of the apartment – this way to the bathroom, down there to the kitchen - they had eventually stood face to face, exhausted from the pretense. The books and photographs he had carefully displayed on the bed were shoveled to the floor but, in the heat of the moment, Linval made a fatal mistake. Tenton forgot the need to introduce his weaponry in its subdued state. By the time she had unfastened his buckle and hauled his pants below his buttocks, it was too late. Tenton had exploded into his full blown glory and, poor, unsuspecting Miriam Paterson barely had a chance to gasp before collapsing onto Linval’s bed, her eyes rolled up behind their sockets, her tongue lolling limply from her mouth. Linval retrieved a 10 by 8 photo of a Big Tom Fool from the floor and began to fan Miriam with all his might. Looking across the room to the dresser in search of a bottle of something with reviving qualities, he caught his reflection in the mirror. It was then he saw himself as others did - as women did - and saw that the trajectory of his life so far had collided with its own limitation and could almost hear it crash diving towards its demise. Yes, he had a list of conquests as long as the road to Wilton but not one of them had he bedded more than once because, as the talk went, none were inclined to expand their anatomy beyond the point at which any normal male would find pleasing. He had no other attributes. He didn’t have the good looks women went for, his pudgy physique clung to his frame in unattractive lumps and though reasonably intelligent he could not be more lacking in coordination. All he had was his pride and joy which, at that moment of realisation, he understood, could well be a curse, a terrible, terrible curse. A month and a half after the disappointment of Miriam (during which time she refused to answer his calls), she wrote to him … in a way. The plain white envelope contained a printed invitation to a crusade. ‘The Folly of Fornication’ would be held for a week at the old cricket field in Waterford. Visiting Reverend Dyke Washington from Jefferson, Alabama, would be giving ‘a series of uplifting talks on all aspects of sex, revealing God’s sacred word and bringing salvation to all transgressors ready to give their souls to the Lord and renew their lives.’ At the bottom of the card, hovering between the dotted line and ‘This invitation was sent to you by:’ was the frightened slanting signature of Miriam Adele Paterson. He had gone, not to be saved, but to see Miriam Paterson, to apologise, to ask if, perhaps, he could be given another chance to … well … another chance. Although Linval had never heard of Reverend Dyke Washington, evidently, many had, for they were there in their droves, the buzz of their excited chatter filling the area below the huge white tent with anticipation. A 50 strong choir began the proceedings with a gentle hum that teased each row slowly to its feet. Suddenly, at the signal of a high pitched moan, the sweet melody shattered into a half-dozen tones, each one rocking the audience in and out of a maze of sounds.
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Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
Linval, raised in the pious Anglican religion of his parents, was so unaccustomed to such passion, that even as he found himself on his feet, his hands waving wildly in the air, rivulets of sweat pouring down his back, he could neither fathom it nor extricate himself from its grip. Long after the choir had sat and the reverend been welcomed by adoring applause, Linval remained on his feet swaying like a stunted palm tree at the mercy of a storm. He never did find Miriam Paterson that night or any other but (this being the climax to one of his favorite tales), after that first night he stopped looking for he found someone else – Jesus. After 7 days of rapture, Linval Thornton accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour and so filled was he with the Glory of God that he gave his entire life over to the spreading of His Holy Word. ‘My first wife, Jeanine, seventeen years we were married.’ Outside the crickets tuned up to accompany his sankey. Miss Wilma quietly sighed and forced her eyelids closed; he was in the retrospective phase – consumed by regret and self-pity. She hadn’t eaten since morning and, it being close to six now, her mouth was full of saliva. The peas were cooked but she had barely finished squeezing the milk from the coconut and the rice had not even been washed. Behind the darkness of her eyelids, Miss Wilma earnestly requested of The Ancestors that They encourage brevity. ‘She was a good woman, Miss Wilma, the only woman, to be honest, who could, how mi can put it? … bear with mi … if you get mi drift.’ Miss Wilma nodded vigorously as much to encourage him to continue as to assure him that yes, unquestionably, she got it … his drift. ‘And I could not have been more satisfied … if you get…’ Miss Wilma nodded again, ‘Yes, yes, Pastor,’ she reassured. ‘But then, after she passed, Miss Wilma … we men … we have needs … and … given my history…. At the time mi did believe The Lord had sent her as an answer to mi prayers… Petrona – a little younger than mi - well, let’s face it, much younger but … oh boy … Satan is a demon, Miss Wilma … him is a demon.’ Lust, thought Miss Wilma behind those quarantined eyes, lust is a demon and no sooner had she thought it, she regretted her judgment. ‘Just flesh,’ Everton reminded her time and time again, ‘All a wi afflicted with fleshly desire.’ And in truth, the young Miss Petrona was as much to blame, if not more, assuming Nadine’s story held any water. She had a reputation in her community of having a ‘hungry pussy’, a condition that Petrona did not deny, claiming, without shame, that she had yet to meet the man who could satisfy her. She had, according to Nadine, heard about the legendary Tenton from a conversation between her Aunts Miriam and Beatrice as they sat on their verandah one Sunday, sipping iced-lemonade and munching over old times and Excelsior Water Crackers and cheese.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
More than a little tipsy from the rum-laced lemonade, Miriam and her sister had, sip by sip, titillated each other with secrets they had kept for years – sex secrets – the first time Byron Knight got his tongue in my mouth, what me and Winston really did in the short cut on the way home from Bible school, Kevin Riley and his sex creams. Secure in, not only their middle age, but also that their authoritarian father had long since gone to meet his maker, they delighted each other with their bawdiness raising the stacks higher and higher, until the verandah was peppered with the snorts and shrieks of the old dears who fanned their private parts madly with the hems of their church frocks and gulped down glass after glass of the truth serum. It was when Beatrice confronted Miriam about a certain Linval Tenton Thornton, that Petrona, who, unbeknown to the sisters, was curled up in the easy chair beneath the window which opened out onto the verandah, pricked up her ears. Tenton was a name she had heard before – a story the adult women in her district used to keep their wayward girl children in some sort of line. But rather than cause Petrona to seek the safety of her father’s house after hours, the myth of Tenton, exaggerated to epic proportions by the passage of time, made the insatiable appetite of Petrona’s womanhood pulsate with yearning for the myth to not only be true, but for she, Petrona, to encounter its hero in the flesh. Delighted by the discovery that the suspicions she had harboured for years were confirmed, Beatrice goaded her younger sibling on. ‘Ok, so you a lie down pon di bed and him a fan yu up and down and den what?’ ‘Well,’ Miriam said, ‘mi no tink mi was out fi long but when mi open mi eye him did have a towel round him waist and from wha mi could tell him was more…’ and here she giggled into her glass, ‘… more relaxed. So den, him ask if mi need water. Remember now, di kitchen was down one little hallway, so mi say yes an as soon as him go fi it, mi haul on mi dress, stuff mi panty inna mi bag and run outa deh.’ ‘An yu never go back?’ ‘Mi? Go back to dat?!’ Petrona rocked back and forth in the big armchair, hugging her whole body with her wire thin arms and doing her best to stifle her jubilation while her inebriated aunts cackled loudly like a pair of lewd hens with no mother, no father and no family name to defend. ‘Nine days dis deh pon mi. Nine days. Mi try every prayer mi know, but nothing, Miss Wilma, not a thing help mi. Miss Wilma, mi know mi say some things bout you but fram di bottom of mi heart, mi a beg yu fi forgiveness. God a punish mi, mi know, and is Him send mi to you fi relief from dis great affliction. ‘Truth is Miss Wilma, mi nah perform as mi used to and Petrona … dissatisfied. She want hours and hours of sex, Miss Wilma, and not just that but positions too. I am an old man, Miss Wilma, what mi want with positions? Is like the damn woman out to kill mi, Miss Wilma, kill me with sex and positions.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
‘A no like mi no try, Miss Wilma, nine days aback, a wi wedding anniversary and mi seh to mi self, ‘Linval, make di effort’. So mi buy this thing –– Viagra - you know it? It help with … elevation … if you get mi drift… Well, mi tek her out fi a nice meal and she bake mi a lovely anniversary cake – a little on the sweet side but, you know, the thought was there. Mi tek one of di Viagra and wi start, you know, fool around but…nothing. After one hour, she get frustrated and so mi tek a next one. Miss Wilma! Mek mi tell you. Mi se, mi ready, mi ready, mi ready like Freddy! Sex she want? Position she want? Heh! Miss Wilma?! Four hours, Miss Wilma, mi surprise mi owna self. She happy and even though mi no reach no conclusion, if you get mi, mi go to bed smiling. Next morning, mi still upstanding and Petrona ready to go again, to tell you di truth Miss Wilma, mi tired from the night before but mi glad to oblige even though it seem kinda funny to mi dat Johnny still at attention. ‘Petrona now, she ina she ackee - that afternoon, that evening, the next morning wi jusa gwaan, jusa gwaan. Four days pass and di same thing. Mi start get worried – something wrong but pride is a thing, Miss Wilma, mi did feel shame to go to Dr. Lewis because, him did warn me at the wedding not fi tek on more than mi can manage. Satan, Miss Wilma, Satan works. ‘Mi beg God fi relief, mi drink dis tea and dat tea – nutting. And the worse thing, Miss Wilma, no matter how mi try explain to Petrona that it no normal, she just not taking mi on. Petrona believe is the best thing ina di world. Mi hafi hide from she for every minute she a jump out pon mi an want sex. Miss Wilma, mi get so much sex it coming like mi fraid of it. ‘Mi sleep ina di spare room, but she no give me no peace, no peace at all. After 6 days heat start spread all over mi body til mi can’t stand up, can’t sit down, can’t sleep - all di time dis burning, burning and would you believe, the damn woman (excuse mi language), but the damn woman still a hound mi fi sex? So mi put down mi foot– mi tell her no more sex until mi get some relief. ‘She take it fi a while but then this afternoon she start pon mi again. Mi tell her sey mi a go bathe. Next ting she start blam! blam! blam! pon di bathroom door. ‘Let mi lone,’ mi tell her, ‘you know have no conscience, let mi lone!’ ‘Well,’ she say, she a go bruk down di door because she want what she want and one way or another, she hafi get it. Miss Wilma … mi just jump outa di window and run – run like a madman - honestly, mi no know which part mi a go but den mi realize dis a di one place nobody woulda look fi mi.’ Miss Wilma opened her eyes and took a long slow breath observing him as, with trepidation, he now took in his surroundings – the heavy African drapes at the window, Everton’s collection of drums in the alcove opposite the door, the photographs of their Ancestors peering down from every corner and the wall of masks. ‘The woman …’ he wept, ‘she is a torment, Miss Wilma … nothing but a torment.’
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZilko Simba Gegele
The moment he uttered the word, Wilma began to rock from side to side. When They came it no longer alarmed her as it did in the early days – the days before she learned to work with the spirits instead of resisting them. They took her back to that day on the boat. She was screaming for him to come and help her but instead Everton had stood at the bow laughing. Terrified she looked out into the water trying to discern what lay beneath the surface. She gripped the rod as tightly as she could and felt the thing – diving deeper then arching up and twisting first this way then suddenly that way, all of its energy pulling back on the line. Something was there –– mysterious, invisible, alive. The vision began to melt away but she heard Everton’s voice as though he were speaking directly inside her head – ‘Connection,’ he said and then he was gone and with him everything except that sense of something tugging at her – some mystery that she couldn’t make out… ‘Tormented?’ she asked the Pastor. ‘Yes,’ said the weary pastor, ‘tormented.’ Needing to consult with Them alone, Miss Wilma excused herself leaving the pastor to wander cautiously through the foreign room. She quickly rinsed off the rice, strained the coconut milk into the pot and lit the burner. ‘Fire,’ they said, ‘burning, heat and with it, torment.’ That word, torment, she thought, and then there was Everton whispering ‘connection’ and the mystery that needed to be reeled in. Deciding it was too late to prepare ackee, Miss Wilma opened the freezer and hunted for something she could heat up quickly. A promising white dish with a blue lid caught her eye – she pried it open – parrot fish. When did she cook parrot fish? Ah … the girl in the red wig and sunglasses – connection. Her request, on the surface, was no stranger than any other. They kept cattle, she had said, she and her father … or was it her brother? Anyway, the story was they had only one bull who was not performing and they wanted something to ‘sex him up’, as she put it. As she spoke, Wilma had scanned her but all she had encountered was a swirling aura of salt and the guts of dead fish that so deranged the colours she could only sense a faint grey. First timers invariably came camouflaged but she could always figure them out, but this girl – she had come fortified with science, good science. Ignoring the story, Miss Wilma had searched for clues as to her real mission. Her nails were neatly manicured and she wore the wig like a second skin. The closest this young lady had come to agriculture, she concluded, was buying farm fresh eggs from Cheong’s. Tempted to direct the young miss back through the front door, Wilma frowned and crossed her arms over her chest the moment he intervened. ‘Come on Willy,’ Everton chided, ‘don’t be like that, she’s just a hot gal looking for some fun, what’s wrong with that? Just give her the ting,’ he urged.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Another Cock and Bull Story A-dZiko Simba Gegele
She had sworn to The Ancestors never to cause harm; her responsibilities were sacred. Yes, he had a point, but what was she up to? She didn’t like not knowing. It was true, the remedy was so foulsmelling no human being would drink it and, if indeed there was some truth to her story, she and her brother would be knee-deep in calves in no time at all…but still… In the end she threw the coins and They sent back all heads. She had no choice. Claiming to have only the fare home, the girl had offered two parrot fish in payment for the half bottle of dark green liquid. Connection. Wilma shook her head as she closed the microwave door and pressed the defrost button. She hoped she wasn’t losing her touch – connection - she should have made it instantly. And of course Everton, that scamp, of course he had orchestrated the whole thing from the other side, always determined she should have what she wants. Anniversary cake, Miss Wilma chuckled, sweet, sweet anniversary cake, indeed. Wilma unlocked the cupboard and searched its shelves reading each label carefully before making her choice. Pastor Linval, sensing his imminent salvation, leapt towards her the instant she returned but before he could grasp hold of the bottle of clear liquid, Wilma snatched it out of reach. ‘But Miss Wilma…’ ‘Payment, Pastor,’ Miss Wilma demanded, her voice full of business now. ‘Of course,’ said the pastor, his hand automatically going to his right hip to rummage his pants’ pocket before catching himself. ‘As you can see’ he said, opening his hands widely and laughing for the first time, ‘I am a little embarrassed.’ Miss Wilma laughed too and then put the bottle on the table between them. ‘I don’t want your money,’ she said, serious once more. ‘Well … what?’ ‘I want my table.’ ‘Oh Lord,’ said the pastor, his eye darting from the bottle to her unequivocal expression. ‘Your … your table?’ ‘Yes pastor.’ ‘But I…’ ‘You see,’ Miss Wilma interrupted as she curled her fingers around the bottle’s neck, ‘as you yourself always say, Pastor, iniquity has a stiff price … a very stiff price … if you… get my drift …’
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Raymond Mair Festival of Words - ‘Calabash’ Going west, words spewed, soughed through stony sands, the South was bright with hard words, dub chanted through the drums. Everywhere the power, the intonations, cries and whispers of verse; literature in spring. There is a red, a flower, an overbirth, a cascading of letters scrambling into words, barraging the mind, searching for meaning, the mot juste – and at the end, there will be poems.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Raymond Mair
Poem for Calabash It is the trip, I think, the outing, the days of tranquility, walking, eating, love by the sea, embracing the ambiance of word-power among friends, among devotees; it is shoulder rubbing with Laureates, and awardees, too numerous to mention, legends; words pulsing, in cadences, whispers of sound, immersion and the empathy. The book shop beckons, collect signatures, trophies for posterity, tomes for bookshelves, evidence of belonging. .After the hanging out ,the applause, the meandering, when you have finished with all that; take the Open Mike; let the waves break over your voice.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Raymond Mair
Carnival An iridescent peacock flaunts her sway-hipped way through the band, a ruby for a navel, glittering feathers for a tail, playing male. The Emperor, crumpled, rests within bedazzling wings and hips, outlandish breasts and smiles of butterflies. Come Ash Wednesday, the detritus of make belief will be swept clear; the drunken reveler will stagger from the curb, some hearts, souls, minds, will burn with the angst of regret, some photographer will record it all.
Ennui I gather myself again, I gather what I can hold; tenuous tendons straining against lassitude. I slide my mass unto the page and look around. There are no words here. A stammering start; will an epigram appear? The evening spreads its minutes drolly towards sleep. The faucet drips in the kitchen sink. It is time for the late late news.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
3.3 by William Abbott I migrated from St. Vincent and the Grenadines to Barbados seven years ago. This is not unique or unusual. I feel connected to the ocean. Again, as a Caribbean person, from a “small island”, this is neither unique, nor unusual. Home for me is two places. This is another one of those things that is not exclusive to me. We who call another people’s country “home”, while simultaneously using that word to refer to the land of our birth, are continually looking for connections, despite relentless reminders of difference. Many other people have talked about this, so I won’t delve any deeper (have I sufficiently belaboured the point of how unremarkable all of this is?). Suffice to say that I link my two existences through the obvious: the ocean. The waters that surround St. Vincent and the Grenadines are the same that buttress Barbados’s western coast. They are both connector and divider. When I first started thinking of Barbados as home, I began to regularly visit the beach at Freshwater Bay (also variously called Paradise Beach or Batts Rock), by myself, to walk and see and swim and think and connect. Whenever I return to St. Vincent, I visit the beach at Indian Bay, where I similarly spend time with myself, reconnecting (sometimes reckoning) with who I have been, and engaging in a continuous merging of this with who I am becoming. These two beaches are on almost the same line of latitude: 13.13. Freshwater Bay is slightly below, Indian Bay slightly above. I didn’t realise this before deciding to collate the images below. A friend suggested, on a whim, that I check. If I were a spiritual man, I would look for something metaphysical there, but I’m not, so I won’t. it’s just an interesting little fact that gave me a tingle down my spine because of its narrative potential.
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3.3 William Abbott
When I visit Indian-Bay I look out and see other islands, both close to shore and much further away, both inhabited and uninhabited. I see fishing boats: vessels of quiet industry. I am very aware that, despite my immediate solitude, I am not alone; there is an “elsewhere”. At Freshwater Bay, I am more likely to turn my gaze inland, towards the abandoned, derelict Four Seasons development project, because there is nothing beyond the shore apart from the horizon and the odd pleasure craft. There is an ominous seclusion here. This is compounded by the coral-stone figures that have been constructed by someone who I do not know, and about whom I have heard only snippets of information. I cannot decide if these figures are returning to the ocean, having given up on life on land, or if they are emerging onto the land, where they assimilate into the landscape and lose themselves. I have not named the images, nor have I indicated which are from Indian Bay, and which from Freshwater Bay. For me, they represent differences and linkages between where I was and where I am.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017 3.3 William Abbott
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017 3.3 William Abbott
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017 3.3 William Abbott
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017 3.3 William Abbott
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017 3.3 William Abbott
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Samuel Gordon Mirror Mirror If all the mirrors disappeared No specie would care Not your prancing puppy Frightened at his ghost Not even the long legged chickens of the farm Or the preening peacock who has never seen its own face. But mankind The undrinking donkeys… Might still try taking selfies of their reflections On stagnant water.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Samuel Gordon
Trap Music J. Edgar Hoovers boot stepping on Malcolm’s face by any means necessary cia listened nonviolent moniker Martin murdered panther membership growing power to the people is a choir from hell on the cia porch – pumped the black veins with hype men and heroin tried to neutralize the black race - it worked… packs of wolves, the world over , lick a bloody sword called the American dream... cut all their tongues drank themselves dry and dead. aint nothing the desensitized descendants of africans have, that they did not die for-get raped burnt castrated forced into fuckry for for 400 hundred years for. You have absolutely no land as an even courtesy from the destroyer to the destroyed, from the uprooter to the family tree, no land for a nation to be free. they are left to power tourism.. the blackest people with the bitterest aftertaste of sugar... are dreadlocked entertainment coordinators and dream to get married to vampiric conquerors for visas... you know no way but the western way you lost african wading through dashiki pants for jobs and opportunity you say. to pay tax for life you say. who owns the land? ask original man who owns the land? ask indigenous man who owns the land the trees the seeds who owns the plants like monsanto believe-who owns ownership? when the world finds out who owns the world the world will war and war no more. it is a bloody sword they left for us. it has been our own ambush.
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Samuel Gordon
tricksters figured out how to get you to buy everything trees provide jungle drug store people power populating every inner city predicament get over it? get under cracked dna under whips kunta kinte ripped out you flesh split black personalities split ends... warriors on ego trips fighting for trinkets you good consumer never rewearing clothing while people dying yawking rasping sandpaper throats for clean water or the crumbs from your table or the value of your closet could save lives murderer man its been toby time for too long even the chickens in the coop been plotting freedom and soil woulda beg you do.. ..plant a forest and not a farm... but it knows by fire or flood you will learn or burn earth worm. so its time to make America white again... BET high on molly and percocet and afropunk. still not africa. so every time you dab you dab to the panthers takedown. – and to whitepower. and you dab to being homeless. ...without land or dynasty...
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
Sheldon Morgan A Kiss I see a kiss. Where lips brush then press and embrace is tight; and shadows sway and roll to dance with light! I feel a kiss. Where emotions lurk and peek, and fires blaze, and miasma whispers and creeps! I recognize a kiss. Where instinct illuminates thought, and crystal reflections show; and mind and spirit previously, presently, know. I've had a kiss. Where indelible impressions remain, invisible on cheek; and shining luminously, by volumes speak. Jesus said unto him, “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
My Zigzag Journey on a Road of Political Wonders by Kirk Budhooram When the rising sun was worshipped, my wife told me our marriage would be an example for everyone to emulate in Trinidad. I had started a new account in the bank for our retirement. It was an account we would never use until twenty years into the future after we retire from the working world. However, when the rising sun became the setting sun and crowds of people wanted to worship the pale moonlight, the amount of money in our account was low. Since we never used that account, I enquired about it. The banker just smiled as she explained that it was normal for the bank to deduct monthly charges from all accounts as services rendered to safeguard the money. If we were using the account, we probably would have been bankrupt as they charged exorbitant fees for withdrawal, deposit and payment services. My home was in a state of disrepair. Every day, a new problem arose- or an offshoot of a worse problem grew out from a main branch. It was just like in my country. Every day was a new problem and neither the setting sun nor the pale moonlight knew how to solve it. Yet, people from all walks of life remained on bended knees begging these symbols to help them. One set of people even worshipped a red flower but to me, it was only a flower, a beautiful flower with nothing nutritional to feed its worshippers. I pondered on what to do with the bank. A man should not have to work so hard just to have an institution “steal” from him. Needing to clear my head, I sat in the corner of my meditation room and closed my eyes. I faced east toward my altar, with my eyes turned upward. I quickly became relaxed and all body movements halted. As miniature workers of myself crawled out of each cell to retire from their work day, I saw myself drive down to the next village and stopped at a curious sight. Crowds of people were looking down into a pond and screaming with such vehemence. Some women were spitting into it. I climbed out of my car and went to check out the scene. It took my eyes some time to adjust to the dark shape of our beloved Prime Minister, sinking under the water. Being pushed off the pedestal by his own supporters and now sinking in a pond of their displeasure, I watched him with sadness as he disappeared into the shadows, far beyond their myopic wonders. The scene left me more broken and as I went back to my car a stranger greeted me there. It seemed to me that he had seen when I had arrived but I did not see him. The stubble on his face, his
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My ZigZag Journey on a Road of Political Wonders Kirk Budhooram
ruffled hair, his unkempt appearance and fresh smell gave me pause. I stood an arm’s length from him for he leaned back on the driver’s door. I wondered if he thought he owned my car. “Good evening, sir, sorry to bother you but can I get a drop with you?” he asked. His voice croaked as if finally rising above a grave of cigarette ash. “Where are you going?” I had no intention of letting him drive with me. Wherever he was going, I would head in the opposite direction. “Wherever you going.” His answer surprised me. “I don’t understand. Where would you like me to drop you?” “Wherever you going, I will go.” “But don’t you have a place to go? A mission? A purpose?” “My mission is to go wherever you want to go.” “I’m sorry but I can’t give you a drop.” He stepped away but not too far. I turned around to see if anyone in the crowd would help me but they were all on their knees, wailing and crying into the pond, begging for their beloved to come back to them because they remembered, despite their anger and quick judgment that they depended on him to live. I approached my car and opened the door. I did not want to stay for the remainder of the night. I just prayed that the beggar would not attack me and steal my car. He was bigger than me. Stronger, I can see. He had a toughness that I did not have. “I will be the next Prime Minister,” he said. “You had your chance of getting to know me. I could have done many things for you.” I climbed into my car and before I closed and locked the door, I told him, “I want nothing from any government. I work for what I keep.” I drove away and as the last house disappeared from my rear-view mirror, I swerved to avoid hitting a manicou, running across the road. I drove into some trees and banged my head on the steering wheel. I remained there, semi-conscious and bleeding. I was weak and tired. My breathing was laboured. I do not know how much time had passed before a group of people broke my driver’s window and opened the door. I deduced they were a family. Man, woman and a few children. “Is he alright?” the woman asked. “I look like a doctor?” the man answered. “He looking like he go dead,” she said, ignoring him. “Then let him dead. We have too much worries to see about he.” With that, he took off my seat belt and went through my pockets. He took out my wallet and fished out my money while the woman went through my bag of clothes in the back seat and the children emptied the glove compartment.
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My ZigZag Journey on a Road of Political Wonders Kirk Budhooram
“Help,” I tried to say. I did not know if I was clear and loud enough. Maybe, if I was, the word “help” would have travelled to the core of their being and moved their souls, chained like birds in tiny cages of ignorance. They left with most of my possessions. My head hurt. Another man came. He also went through my pockets, back seat and glove compartment. He found nothing so he opened the trunk and took out my tools. I slipped into darkness and sat opposite the Prime Minister under the pond. His smile was infectious and I wondered why he was smiling when fish were picking at and eating him. “All this fish that greedily depend on me for food get less than the fish that hunt on their own strength in open water,” he said. “The fish that depend on me never mature to their true greatness.” “But aren’t the fish that feed on you keeping you alive?” “Only as long as my fruits please their palates.” I thought of the beggar who wanted to be the next Prime Minister; who had no direction or purpose. Could anyone depend on him? I awoke, lying flat on the grass. Apparently, someone had dragged me out of my car and left me there. My car was behind me and a forest stood tall in front of me. I turned around by my waist but remained sitting on the grass. My car was stripped of its parts. I turned back around. My headache was gone and that had given me a chance to focus on the eyes of a creature gazing at me from within the forest. When I realized that they were really eyes because they blinked, I pushed myself back, crawling away until I hit the skeletal remains of my car. The creature remained calm. And only when it turned its body and feasted on the heliconia bihai that surrounded it, did I realize that it was a silver fox. How rare to see one. Many would say none existed but there it was. Small, slender, unassuming with silver hair neatly combed and it moved alone, trusting only itself. It only moved in a pack when the situation called for it. I slowly rose and staggered onto the road, walking on the centre white line. My body was in pain as if I had hurt more of it than just my head. I walked for what seemed like hours. Ghosts of a British army on horseback passed me on either side. I was not afraid. I had a light shadow and ghosts were nothing new to me. Then a soldier who was more decorated than the rest, probably belonging to a higher rank, rode next to me. With his gaze straight ahead, he told me, “A man becomes physically mature because of his age, mentally mature because of his education, and spiritually mature through his meditation. You independent people are lacking.” With that, he ordered his men to push on. They galloped away and disappeared into an unknown destination. I continued until I reached a harbour. A ship was offloading goods and a brood
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of headless chickens were directed onto the pier and left there. The chickens ran haywire into the country, unchecked by customs, guided by no leader. I boarded another ship, ready to leave. La Trinity was its name. It was carrying taxpayers’ gold across the ocean to buy a secret, which I later found out that only the Captain and politicians knew about and taxpayers speculated. It set sail. “Where are we going?” But the sailors ignored me. I explored the ship and went below deck. I entered the Captain’s office, hoping to introduce myself. In the corner was a man-size vault and I found a man sitting naked inside it in a pile of gold. “Welcome to the ship’s coffers,” he greeted me but by his tone I heard, “Keep out!” “Who are you?” “I am the Captain of this ship.” “Where are we headed?” “Wherever I take us.” “I want to go back?” “Only a fool goes back.” “Only a fool thinks he is going forward,” a parrot said. It was the first time I had seen it, perched on a dresser in the Captain’s office. “How can I go back?” I asked. “Jump off,” the Captain said. I ran back up on deck and found all the sailors drunk. They were drinking and throwing coins and cards at each other. However, my attention was caught by something beyond. I ran to the edge of the ship and focused more on what I thought I was seeing. A waterfall! At the edge of the Earth! I turned back to the crew who were unconcerned that the ship was heading full speed to its end. “Turn us away!” “Our Captain will save us. We follow him!” one sailor shouted, as he stumbled across the deck. “Call him then!” I shouted. “Never bother the Captain when he’s with his gold!” “His gold? It is not his gold!” “Get with the program or sit on the backbench!” another sailor shouted. “I will not! We are heading for that waterfall!” The ship entered into a fog and the white clouds turned black and lightning struck the sea as if trying to hit us. The sea became rough and waves that were taller than the ship drenched us.
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The Captain came up on deck, fully clothed, and with a gaping expression, realized for the first time how close we were to the waterfall. It was then I noticed his pockets filled with gold and he ran to the edge of the ship and jumped off. “We need to elect a new Captain!” a sailor shouted. “I put forward my name.” “You are not fit to be a Captain. No one here is fit to be Captain. Get someone who was Captain before!” another sailor shouted. “Another recycled Captain? Why are we doomed to forget their failures and re-elect them?” An old man walked up and accepted the position. We were quickly approaching the waterfall. I did not see how we were going to escape. “Sir, we have less than quarter of the gold in the coffers!” another sailor shouted as he came up on deck having come from the vault. “As usual, I blame my predecessor who has emptied the coffers and left nothing for me to save this ship,” the recycled Captain said. “Then bring them all here and offer it to the sea gods,” a member of the Captain’s cabal shouted. The Captain, bereft of ideas, agreed. Sailors rushed down below deck to get the gold. I turned and faced the waterfall. It was the end of us. I knew it. I fell on my knees and heard the sailors behind me. They had returned and were singing praises to the gods. I glanced back and saw them throwing the gold into the sea. I closed my eyes. I expected to feel a sudden drop into the abyss but too much time was passing and we were not falling. I felt as if we were moving backward. I opened my eyes. The ship was reversing. I stood up and looked at the wheel. Nobody was steering. The sailors were still singing praises. All the gold was thrown overboard. We had no more. I looked over the starboard side into the sea and saw a huge sea serpent, its body wrapped around the ship and it was pulling us away from the waterfall. When we were safely away from the currents that drove us to the waterfall and our ship was turned to face a new direction, out from the fog and away from the black clouds and lightning, the sea serpent swam alongside the ship to accompany us back to port but some of the sailors, falling back onto their superstitious proclivity embedded in them from their upbringing cried demon and prayed for a replacement saviour. An unnaturally huge white dove with an olive branch in its beak swept down from above the clouds and attacked it, slapping its wings against the serpent’s body. The sea serpent was no match for it and disappeared below the surface. The dove flew above us and accompanied the ship back to port. The ship docked and the sailors had to explain to the taxpayers what happened to the gold, while the dove with its branch settled on top of our Parliament building. “We had to spend it to maintain the ship,” the recycled Captain said. He did not lie.
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Disgusted, tired, bruised, and almost frightened to death on sea, I left them and decided to go back home. It took me a week and a half, with sleeping on the side of roads and on park benches, to get home. Problems persisted. The rising sun burnt holes in my home, allowing thieves to enter unbidden. The red heliconia plant grew like weeds around my house, drying up the fertile soil. Gradually, the plants became dependent on me to stay alive and I grew exhausted with them. Everywhere I turned, I saw problems and not solutions. One night, I saw a pack of young, yellow foxes ambush the rare silver fox and tried to kill it. The silver fox did not die but fought until it freed itself and crawled away. I never saw it again but sometimes, I would hear its screaming bark from the distance as if having a say on something important. It was ignored into oblivion. The bank that had “stolen” my money under legal channels boasted in the newspaper a net profit of hundreds of millions of dollars. I was disappointed by this. Everybody was taking advantage of somebody to get ahead. There was nothing alone I could do to protest against these bank charges but when other citizens cried out against their fees and banks had to close their doors because most of the population decided to withdraw their money and close all accounts, I joined in that fight. It was a banking revolution long overdue. First, we would tackle the banks. Then we would tackle the recycled ship captains. Then the symbols of power. Miniature workers of myself returned to my cells to start a new day. My body resumed movement. I walked out of my room. As I saw my wife, my heart became lighter with a blissful love that I instantly recognised to be the forerunner to the answer that I wanted. Together with her, we will get by. We will conquer our problems... even if the country decided to remain as it was.
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FEATUREDWRITER On Observation, Craft and Mining Memory: Mervyn Morris Interviewed by Yashika Graham
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On Observation, Craft and Mining Memory Mervyn Morris
Introduction Professor Mervyn Morris is perhaps one of the most recognizable names in Caribbean literature. His poetry as well as his dedicated work as educator, scholar and critic, have been vital in helping to shape the literary output and cultural study in the region. In his own writing, he is marked for his clarity of thought and what, in his own words the poet is always striving for, efficiency. Here, we meet with internal negotiations as well as wider societal concerns. According to Morris, who is Professor Emeritus of English, University of the West Indies, Poet Laureate of Jamaica (2014 – 2017), the work of each poem is ongoing and the poet benefits from an openness to the sometimes tedious work of bringing it into being. The following interview around craft and his journey as a poet was conducted at the University of the West Indies, Mona on April 11, 2017.
Prof Mervyn Morris at the Poet Laureate investiture at King’s House in 2014
SBB: I wanted to ask you firstly, how did you come to writing? MM: Well, I suppose I discovered that I wanted to write some time when I was in school at Munro. Perhaps I was 13 or 14, but I was writing mainly short stories at that time. I suppose some of it will have come from an environment in which verse, particularly comic verse was read aloud, which was one of the things that my brothers and I did at home. We might read stuff from very English stuff like Hilaire Belloc as well as Louise Bennett. Some of that must've rubbed off, but at school I wrote lampoons of the masters and that kind of thing that we kept out of their sight. When I went to the University College of the West Indies, which was in 1954, I continued writing some satirical or comic stuff. I think the first poems that I took fairly seriously, would've been before I left UCWI, but I have hidden them from the general sight. They're not at all satisfactory. SBB: A necessary place to have been in the journey?
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MM: I guess. Maybe, but the earliest of any poems that are in any of my books, were written in 1960, about when I was away studying in England. SBB: You are wrapping up your tenure as Poet Laureate of Jamaica. Talk to me about how you are feeling at this stage, having gone through these three years and what that has meant. MM: I am ready to pass it on to someone else. I enjoyed doing it but it's been time-consuming and to some degree, even labour-intensive, some of the admin elements. I've had good support from the National Library of Jamaica, but three years is long enough. It's nice to have had the honour and it's good to pass it on to somebody else and I like the idea actually of three-year stints. Instead of having a poet laureate who stays poet laureate until he or she dies, it's good to move it along, because different people will have different notions of what they can usefully do. SBB: Lorna Goodison has just been appointed as your successor. Would you comment on the significance of her appointment? MM: I rejoice that she has been asked and has accepted. She's clearly a preeminently Jamaican poet of great international repute and also one who's more rooted, although she often doesn't live here, in the Jamaican culture than many of the other good poets. So I rejoice. SBB: You've been steeped in Caribbean culture and the arts for much of your life. Your post as Poet Laureate has asked that you curate and tap into that space. Specifically to that and your continued work, what changes, if any, have you noticed in the work that is created in the region? MM: I think there are two main things which others have noticed as well. It's that people who are now starting to write, and starting to write seriously, take it for granted that they are allowed to use the whole range of the language that they know. Earlier of course, the Standard English was very much the norm with Creole being something that you might use to illustrate a point or for comic effect, but that has long changed now. I suppose some of the major elements that helped to change it would've been Claude McKay's early dialect poems, which were not very good but they were important as sort of opening the way to recognizing the Creole. Louise Bennett, which was much better, and then the work which was more serious in the way it presented itself, like Vic Reid in New Day, Samuel Selvon and so on. So that the norm now, we've since then had major writers such as Earl Lovelace, Olive Senior, Lorna Goodison, especially in her poems, showing much more confidence than many previous writers did. That's one. The other one which is often talked about, is that a number of the good writers who are emerging seem to be women.
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SBB: In your work as Poet Laureate, have you noticed anything that you didn't notice before about the space in terms of the poet, the poetry as well as the atmosphere, how poetry is received? MM: No. I’ve noticed changes over the last 30 years or so. It's not something I've discovered while I was Poet Laureate, no, but then it's something I've certainly noticed the development of over many years. One of the things which I think I have done, is making sure that one recognizes how very different the various talents can be. The people who have contributed to the Sunday Gleaner feature, the people who've been on the Poet Laureate Presents have included a wide range of things. I didn't do it on purpose but I was thrilled when I realized that. Of course, one of the more notable innovations was Mbala, with so much of the music stuff introduced. I like his poetry and I've enjoyed the music support that he gives it, but when I asked him I wasn't really thinking that it might become a nice kind of demonstration of what that kind of thing can do. But of course one of the other ones, which I think would be worthy of note, is that I happen to think Michael Abrahams is an efficient poet. He is a very skillful satirist performer and a good comic now, but he takes trouble over the way the things are shaped, so I was very glad that before stopping I was able to introduce Dr. Michael Abrahams as a poet. SBB: In your own writing, is there anything you are particularly pleased to be able to do in the work that is not possible in other spaces perhaps? MM: I've never thought about that. I just try to get a poem finished or think I'm finished. SBB: What does that mean then, to finish the poem? MM: Well, you start out thinking that you're going to do one thing and when you're lucky something else emerges and then if you have enough of a draft, you linger over it, ponder over it, worry over it until it seems to be nearly finished. Sometimes that process can be reasonably quick, like in a matter of days, but sometimes it can be very, very long. I have a poem that I think may be nearing its end, but I'm not prepared to let it out yet. It started from just an anecdote that somebody told at lunch in Barbados a year ago. You just try and keep shaping, changing. Sometimes you think you're finished and then when you go back to it, you find you haven't finished or you want to make changes at any rate. Preparing the collected poems was quite interesting to me because there were some poems that anybody who reads the book carefully, they would think, "Haven't I seen this before?" But it's not the same, right? I've changed things because I was dissatisfied with something that was there. SBB: So the poem is constantly moving? MM: Yes. Well, I won't say the poem is constantly moving. There are many poems that I have in print that I haven't been changing for a long time, but I don’t regard it as the wrong thing to do to go and
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mark up something that is already in print. Sometimes, even with poems that are not particularly important poems, because you spot something, you're very pleased that you're able to at least remove that particular bump. SBB: So when is the poem ready? MM: When it doesn't seem to be annoying me. When I look at it, I think it's finished. You've led me onto something which is interesting. Sometimes the poem is finished, but you want to do something different with it. There have been poems like that for me. SBB: Which is more important, what the writer wants or what the poem wants to be? MM: No. It's always in the end. Well, it's a combination. Obviously the writer has some role in the matter, but when you're lucky you keep discovering things, which was not where you necessarily started. And also the whole process of tightening can often lead you into seeing new things, not really the old poem that you were doing, but something new that is emerging and that can be interesting. Also another factor that is in it, is it's not only what you think, it's what you think, having also received responses of others. Sometimes it may be actually a criticism, sometimes it may be a response at a reading. You might go off in a quite different direction. Actors find this when they first start acting, but they soon learn, something seems to work with a particular audience and suddenly you realize there's something there that you hadn't realized was interesting. It doesn't follow that the next time you do it, it will work. SBB: Is there a way that the poet can approach seeing the poem in a new way outside of the audience contribution to that? MM: Yes. Yes and it happens all the time because so many poems change before you even show them to anybody. So you think you're finished and you have it sitting there and suddenly you're far away from the poem and a line jumps up and kicks you because it's so wrong. Let me give you, it may seem a trivial instance but I'll give you an instance of something. You know On Holy Week, I don't remember when it was written, but it was first published as a book in 1976. It's been revised in many different ways. It's included in my collected poems, which is called Peelin’ Orange, and I'm aware of having made changes since '76, various stages for various reasons. But as late as when I was preparing the manuscript that's now become collected poems, I found one thing which, having found it, seemed to me fairly obvious and it just had to go. It's an interesting one I think. It's in ‘Simon of Cyrene’. It's not very long. I'll just run through it for you:
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Why me just my luck another great procession coming through some carpenter called Christ women weeping people jeering and the Roman soldiers hard and cold hey you not me hey you I didn't figure take this cross orders is orders from a Roman guard I am strong enough and this man Christ is weary bleeding scourged so deep. Wicked heavy plank of wood the cross I bore for Jesus king of Jews the sign said rubbish wonder what he'd done. Now at this late stage, 40 years later, right? I realized that plank is wrong. No plank of wood ever was contributed to a cross, because a plank is a flattened thing. It took me 40 years to spot it and I've changed that in a way which at the moment, I think works. It runs, Wicked heavy heavy load the cross I bore for Jesus. And that's much cleaner. SS: So what would you say of the poet? Is there a responsibility to at least be open to what the poem has to give? MM: Yes. This is a fundamental thing. Yes, responsibility, that may be the right word, but I'm not sure it is. I think the poet benefits from being open, not so much a responsibility. When I'm trying to help people, like in workshops and so on, there are a couple of lines from Walcott I'm always quoting. It's
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from an early poem in The Gulf. I think the poem is Guyana sequence, but the lines run, "He followed/ that was all/ his mind, one step behind/ pacing the poem, going where it was going.” I'm not sure I remember where line break comes, but I know that Walcott fiddled with the punctuation in different editions. It was quite interesting because you can read it as “He followed his mind/” or “He followed, that was all/ his mind one step behind/ pacing the poem, going where it was going.” So that you see, in those few words, you've got what is, I think one of the really central creative paradoxes of writing poems. It's of course you are contributing to it, but if you're not open to following what you don't fully understand, you won't strike it lucky. Yes. It's a technical thing, but yes, line breaks are kind of crucial and punctuation is crucial. One of the things that various poets have talked about is that they're trying to say more than one thing at the same time. In other words, you can be clean, but reality, life and experience are usually multifaceted, prismatic, and contradictory. In so far as the craft can suggest some of that, it's probably being more faithful to experience. That's only one part of it because of course it's possible to be clean and clear and crisp and precise and interesting and musical without doing the contradiction. I suppose what I'm doing is saying as well that irony has its place, but not everything is ironic. SBB: You spoke about being clean and clear. You are very well known for brevity in many of your poems. What do you think the poet can achieve or find useful in being brief? MM: It's not much point being brief if there isn't some tension in the brevity. That's one of the first things I would say, because it's possible to be both brief and ample and very few of the poems which end up being brief start as brief drafts. This is again a common experience of many other poets. They write at great length then suddenly realize that the poem really starts at line 25, and so the rest of it gets put away for a while. Mbala likes to mock me about maybe the poem is going to end at line 26. I don't really mean that, but what I'm saying is that part of the challenge is to recognize what might be working better than the rest of it, and you keep revising. That means removing, possibly adding things, but in the end you're likely to end up with something shorter and hopefully tighter than your original first draft. People who admire good poets often don't realize how bad the drafts can be, but it's a matter of spotting, of being dissatisfied. That helps. SS: You mentioned a particular poem that you've said you're not ready to release and it's starting point being inside of a conversation. Where do you find most of your poems coming from? Their starting points. MM: I suppose the answer is, I don't know, because there are many different starting points. Sometimes it's in confusion. Sometimes it's strong emotion. Sometimes it's, "Jee that's strange." Poems come in
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many, many different ways and sometimes even when you may be a poet more associated with print, sometimes it comes in the form of a rhythm. You're not quite sure why it arose. There's just too many ways. I guess the basic ways would be strong feeling, like love, particularly love lost, or love unavailable, the loss of a loved person, tragedy, wickedness, all of these. Anything that produces a certain level of excitement is likely to be available. It's a routine kind of question, but it's interesting. I've never thought about this in relation to the whole range of my work, to think about if I go through, can I sort out where they came from. Sometimes they come from feeling refreshed even. All sorts of things. Sorting out confusion or the multifaceted nature of experience or relationships is one of the key things. SBB: To exist certainly means to be haunted. MM: To be haunted? Speak for yourself (laughs). SBB: This is qualifying the haunting ... What roles would you say history and memory have played in your own work what roles do they have to play in writing in general? MM: Oh, they're major. History sure, but memory is the source of perhaps most writing. Not that you reproduce memory, but that you mine memory. Again if you're trying to teach a workshop or something, once you can get people to in some instances suddenly, realize that if you focus hard enough on what you can remember, you are in a space that is your own and individual and is likely to give energy to whatever you write. So I mean there are exercises that help to tease out some of that in people who hadn't given it a thought. You know where you'll come to a workshop where it's full of people who are talking about the wickedness of white people and how terrible it is that our African ancestors have ... poverty and distress or religion, salvation, whatever, and it's that kind of person, I don't mean to suggest that I don't respect them, it's that kind of person to whom it's often very useful and revealing to realize that they might write about something which doesn't come out like what other people have written many times. And one of the ways to do that is to tap into memory. Yes, that's one of the ways. Of course there are poets who are such wonderful observers that it has the same kind of effect. SBB: What are some other ways? MM: All sorts of things. Sometimes it may come from strong feeling if you're responding to a piece of music or a painting or something in the natural world. You suddenly realize that this is more meaningful than you'd ever thought before. I guess that's what epiphanies are. Wordsworth and Derek Walcott borrowing from Wordsworth in Another Life, where suddenly nature is new and different.
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SBB: How do you receive a poem? MM: Receive? You mean the poem that you are writing? SBB: No, the poem that you are reading. What space or environment exists for you in particular, in which you receive a poem and has that changed overtime? MM: I'm not sure. That sounds like a very interesting question, but I'm not sure I've pinned it down and also, what interests me more is what you didn't mean, because a far more interesting concept is the idea that yes you are involved in writing it but the poems come to you, so you receive them. One of the key things too, it's nice if you can persuade the person who's trying to write, to not be too anxious to make sense initially. In other words automatic writing might reveal things, where you're writing without trying to put things in sentences and so on. It may reveal things that are in your subconscious that you haven't thought enough about. So there are just so many ways of stimulating poems, but to answer the question that I now understand you're really asking. SBB: Yes, what are you seeing and has your vision changed overtime? MM: I think that I get different things from different poems, but I tend to be very attracted by signs of real skill. Obviously what the poem is saying matters a great deal, but very often in the end what I am drawn to is efficiency and that's a word I use critically very often. It's nice because it isn't too soft, cuddly and romantic. Efficiency. A poem which I often quote, I don’t know if I remember all of it, is ‘Not Waving but Drowning’. Yes. Yes: Nobody heard him the dead man but still he lay drowning I was much too far out/ all my life and not waving but drowning. But one of the things you see, I've often used it because it seems to me, to be such a fine metaphor for the distress that is often there in students usually. Not waving but drowning. Right? Because sometimes the people who seem most gregarious are really struggling with all sorts of things. SBB: I imagine this has been a really rich journey for you throughout the years, what would you say is a key thing that you have learned or some key things in your journey as a poet?
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MM: I suppose one of the things would be that each of us needs to try to respect what is possible for oneself. In other words, you don't have to write like everybody else. There's space to do something which is not quite the same as everyone else. I guess if I were challenged to choose poems which seem to be among the best that I have written, they would probably be the same poems other people might choose, but in addition to that, I do a lot of other things and I'm not ashamed of them. I think good comic verse for example, is worth writing and I also think that quite a range of things are possible. SBB: Do you think that's a hard lesson to learn, recognizing what has been done, as well as, that perhaps within each person there’s something special, stories, voices etc. that only they can bring across? MM: No. It's the most necessary lesson for anyone who's trying to write, that if you find that you're all the time sounding like somebody else, it's important to find your own ... This is something always difficult to define, the whole idea of finding your own voice. And it's not so much the voice I'm talking about, as territory, their niche, the area. SBB: Is that necessary, defining a territory? MM: No, the poet often doesn't define that territory himself or herself. By trying to be true to what you feel, to what you see, what you remember, you're more likely to be unique, I guess. Because in a sense, it's all well and good being talented, but being talented like everybody else is not necessarily what it's all about. SBB: What would you say then, that you are aiming to achieve when you approach a piece of writing? MM: I hardly ever know. I hardly ever know. And when it's going to go well, the ones that turn out to be more significant, are sometimes the ones where I did not feel that I knew where I was going. SBB: Is there a standard distance at which you sort of get a sense of what is happening? MM: In the poem? No, it's very different for different poems. As I tell you sometimes the whole preoccupation is to try and craft something that seems more or less satisfactory, but sometimes it's not like that at all. Sometimes it's just letting it go and then it takes you somewhere that you did not necessarily intend. But I write a lot of craft poems as well. I'm quite sure of that, where the main impulse is the shaping of something. But those are not necessarily the most important. SBB: How important is craft in creating poetry?
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MM: Craft I think is essential. Sometimes you find a poet who pretends not to care about craft. Usually it's the ones who are saying that, “What I care about is revealing to the world the wickedness of capitalism or the terrible experience of whatever.” I think craft matters a great deal and that if the poet doesn't respect craft, he or she probably is not a poet, a real poet. It's hard to say that. I think craft is just something that you need to pay attention to, but craft does not necessarily mean learning all the technical tricks and especially does not mean, necessarily learning all the technical terms. It's a matter of just paying closer and closer attention to see that the thing has a shape which is pleasing, has a sound which is pleasing and meaningful. This kind of rule of thumb definition is not very sophisticated, but it's a definition of art. Art pleases by its form as well as its content. In other words ... That's crucial. So the people who are pressing content all the time may not be aware of the elements of form that they necessarily have to deal with in order to get the content out, and yet they may be better than they recognize. SBB: Oh, crafting without defining it necessarily. Your new collection, Peelin’ Orange, what are we seeing in it? MM: You'll tell me. I know you haven't read it yet. Well, I am looking forward to seeing what the general response is and what the critical response is, because unlike I Been There, Sort Of, it has stuff from all the previous volumes, but it has arranged them in a completely new way, so that people who actually read the things from beginning to end, and who may have thought they knew the work, if what I have tried to do is working, they are likely to find that there is more conversation between poems, even poems of different periods, than they had previously recognized. It's divided into four. One section is called ‘Draw Near’, the next section is called ‘Love Is’, next section is ‘On Holy Week’ and the next section is ’ Time Come’. Many of the poems have been tinkered with. SBB: You spoke about that constant shaping. How many of these poems have been revisited? MM: I guess all, but I haven't necessarily changed them. I've changed some titles. I have revised. Sometimes you have to read the poem to realize that maybe you've seen it before. The publishers, and I'm delighted that they've done that, have given me an index, so it's an index of titles and an index of first lines. SBB: The From Our Poetry Books anthology, In This Breadfruit Kingdom is also coming out. What are we seeing in that? MM: Well, you're just seeing the range of short poems which were published in the series. SBB: I suppose what I'm asking is what is the quality or the sense of the poems?
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
On Observation, Craft and Mining Memory Mervyn Morris
MM: I can answer that. It's important to answer that. But the first thing is that they had to be short, because they only had a limited amount of space given us by The Gleaner. Second thing is that I tried to include poems by people who were well established as well as poems by people who were not so well known, but in each poem there's something. It's not a competition for who's the best, but to try and pull together people who are in their different ways saying something that is meaningful and reasonably efficient. SBB: What was the selection process for this feature? MM: I went through books and selected stuff and then asked, "Can I have this?" And also the way the things have been arranged in the anthology, the poems are speaking to each other in interesting ways. It begins for example with a Lorna Goodison poem, ‘Reporting Back to Queen Isabella’. It is reporting back on having come to the new world and how it looked and you know the famous things where he crushes up parchment and says the hills are like that. And Lorna has organized it so that it ends with, "And yes, your majesty, there were some people." And there's a wonderful poem by somebody nobody has heard of called Bob Stewart, who is a good poet, who lived here for a long time and married a Jamaican woman, about Christopher Columbus, which is put right near the Lorna poem. It's a poem [‘Christopher Columbus’] that's built on the image of the Taino or Arawak stretching out his hand and Christopher Columbus stretching out his sword. “A covenant had been made," is how I think it ends. It bleeds of course. So the covenant becomes one of the basic images etc. The poems keep saying things to each other and the last poem in the book is ‘Hope in the Morning’ by Jean Wilson, and she is not famous but she did a book some years ago, which I thought people should like more. She has talent. The book was called No More Smalling Up of Me. SBB: Finally, what advice would you offer to young writers? MM: Well, I don't offer generalized advice like that. I usually just say work and work and work, keep working, and keep reading. It helps. That's the main thing and some of the advice that I can give is not advice that I have myself followed, but I think it's a good thing if you can settle down to trying to write every day. I don't do that, never did. And some of the things which I've learned from reading books and things, it's another thing which I haven't done enough of. I think maybe I can still do it, is keep a notebook and when something really strikes you, scribble in it. I don't mean scribble a poem you know. Make a note of it, because a lot gets lost if you don't do that. And the scraps of paper are useful too. You see don't throw away bad drafts. Or don't throw away all the bad drafts, because you go back to it some years later and it might just trigger something in you. So
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SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG July 2017
On Observation, Craft and Mining Memory Mervyn Morris
the notebook thing and the keeping of versions thing is a way of giving yourself something to go back to, which might one day prove useful.
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