Lorna Goodison, one of the Caribbeans foremost poets, has just published her third Carcanet book, Oracabessa, whose poems tell of risky journeys, history and the imagination. She has been an important influence on many writers and today, fellow Jamaican poet Kei Miller shares his perspective on her invaluable work. Goodreads Book Giveaway Oracabessa by Lorna Goodison Oracabessa by Lorna Goodison Giveaway ends December 15, 2013. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win Most young people from the Caribbean will encounter Lorna Goodison’s work in high school. Her poem, For My Mother, May I Inherit Half Her Strength is a popular choice on the CXC syllabus. Perhaps this is because it makes eloquent a theme which is often cliché and maudlin in the West Indies – the celebration of a strong, black mother-figure. I had to wait until university before I came across her work. It was another one of her ‘mother’ poems which convinced me of her incredible talent, so much so that it completely rewired me as poet. Mother, the Great Stones Got To Move takes its title from a popular Revival chorus. The poem enters into dialogue with a church mother or maybe a female God-figure, and pleads with her for these stones to be moved. It begins: Both named poems are taken from Guinea Woman Mother, one stone is wedged across the hole in our history and sealed with blood wax. In this hole is our side of the story... And the stanza concludes: It is the half that has never been told, some of us must tell it. The mantle had effectively been passed, for I was convinced immediately that I was one of the ‘some of us’ whose job it was to tell the other half. Goodison thus emerged as a kind of ‘mother’ over my craft. It became my job over the next few years to first become her, and then, having received influences from many other sources, to try and hide this one which was most profound and foundational. Caribbean writers have often produced more than just novels or poems, but also essays and criticism. In so doing they have helped to create the space and the language in which their works have been assessed and celebrated. George Lamming’s ‘An Occasion for Speaking’, Derek Walcott’s ‘The Muse of History’, Kamau Brathwaite’s ‘History of the Voice’, Dionne Brand’s ‘Bread out of Stone’ (and the list goes on) have become almost as seminal as the creative output of their authors. Amongst this top tier of Caribbean writers, Lorna Goodison stands alone in her practice of letting the work speak for itself. Primarily a poet, Goodison hasn’t been afraid of crossing the fence into other genres: she has written short stories and a much-celebrated memoir. Criticism, however, hasn’t ever seemed to beckon her. In some ways this is unfortunate for though she has emerged as a major force in World Literature, I suspect she still isn’t as celebrated as she really ought to be because there simply doesn’t exist the perfect critical language to talk about what she is doing, the risks she is taking, and why exactly they succeed. Oracabessa I myself have often championed a poetics that might seem counter to Goodison’s craft. When teaching creative writing I tell my younger students to take words like love, heart, soul, spirit and light – and to bury them. I further encourage them to practice self-flagellation if ever tempted to retrieve these words. And yet this is exactly Goodison’s poetics – a poetics of love, heart, soul, spirit and light. Echoing Bukowski, she once stated in an interview ‘everybody must bring their own portion of light in this particular time.’ This portion of light is what she beings to poetry, and it is a risky business especially in an increasingly secular world. Her preoccupations are those which once fired the imaginations of Donne, of Herbert, of Wordsworth (her eternal muses). Goodison is an odd creature at times – a poet who is Metaphysical, Romantic and Postcolonial all at once. In Goodison’s own words, she is still journeying towards the spiritual home of ‘Heartease’. She is still speaking for and to the soul. And it seems more true than it ever has been, that she is still telling a half that has hardly ever been told. Kei Miller is a critically acclaimed poet, short fiction writer and novelist: his latest poetry collection, Kei Miller The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, will be published by Carcanet in 2014. Kei Miller was born in Jamaica in 1978, read English at the University of the West Indies and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. His first collection of short fiction, The Fear of Stones, was short-listed in 2007 for the Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize. His first poetry collection, Kingdom of Empty Bellies, was published in March 2006 by Heaventree Press; his second, There Is an Anger That Moves, was published by Carcanet in October 2007, followed by A Light Song of Light in July 2010. He is also the editor of Carcanets New Caribbean Poetry: An Anthology. He has been a visiting writer at York University in Canada, the Department of Library Services in the British Virgin Islands and a Vera Ruben Fellow at Yaddo, and currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 18:51:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015