Poets from Jamaica

"When I was in hospital I found I could hardly read or writ. In these circumstances I began to write poems. I found that poetry was the only kind of writing in which I could express my thoughts. One night I dreamed I was lying on the bank of a canal, under machine gun fire. The next morning I wrote it out , Carentan O Caretan, and as I wrote I realized it was not a dream, but the memory of my first time under fire"

"Where is the Mississippi panorama And the girl who played the piano? Where are you, Walt? The Open Road goes to the used-car lot."

"All that grave weight of America Cancelled! Like Greece and Rome. The future in ruins! JH Honesty seems to me to be the best legacy I can leave the world."

"It's complicated, being an American, Having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time. Perhaps, after all, this is not the right subject for a poem."

"For people may not know what they think about politics in the Balkans, or the vexed question of men and women, but everyone has a definite opinion about the flavour of shredded coconut."

"I did not wish to protest against war. My object was to remember. I wanted people to find in my poems the truth of what it had been like to be an American infantry soldier. Now I see I was writing a memorial of those years, for the me I had known, who were silent."

"The shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night."

"The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet, A chafing savage, down the decent street; And passion rends my vitals as I pass, Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass."

"Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate Against the potent poison of your hate."

"If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!"

"Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!"

"The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze; But looking at her falsely-smiling face, I knew her self was not in that strange place."

"Deep in the secret chambers of my heart I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch I bear it nobly as I live my part."

"I have forgotten much, but still remember The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December."

"Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days, Even the sacred moments when we played, All innocent of passion, uncorrupt, At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade."

"Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!"

"And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept."

"I know the dark delight of being strange, The penalty of difference in the crowd, The loneliness of wisdom among fools"

"Lily on liquid roses floating— So floats yon foam o’er pink champagne— Fain would I join such pleasant boating, And prove that ruby main, And float away on wine!Those seas are dangerous, greybeards swear— Whose sea-beach is the goblet’s brim; And true it is—they drown old Care, But what care we for him, So we but float on wine! And true it is—they cross in pain, Who sober cross the Stygian ferry; But only make our —champagne, And we shall cross right merry, Floating away on wine!Old ’s self shall make him mellow, Then gaily row his boat from shore; While we, and every jovial fellow, Hear—unconcerned—the oar, That dips itself in wine!"

"She let herself out by the back door and carefully shut it behind her, and ran through the short cut that led to the main road, hoping that no one would see. (beginning of "Discerner of Hearts")"

"...Swimming? In the Ba'ma grass? Who ever heard of such a thing and a big man at that? (beginning of "Swimming in the Ba'ma Grass")"

"I am not a scrupulous plotter of fiction or poetry – I write intuitively, thinking for a long time about my subject and also allowing my unconscious to work on it until the day comes when it seems ready to be written. (2014)"

"(Q: advice for struggling writers?) OS: Keep at it. Writing is a craft like any other and you get better with practice. Have faith in yourself but dampen unrealistic expectations. Remember that words are your raw material – love them, acquire them, use then, lose them when necessary. Read widely. Question what you are reading. What works? What doesn’t? How does the author achieve certain effects? This is a good way to learn. (2014)"

"I was always going to be an artist or a writer, because I was talented in those areas, but also, I now think, because they held out the seductive whiff of freedom. I was always in silent rebellion against the conformity and authoritarianism of the world I was born in. (format 2006)"

"Somebody, I forget who it was, said that I was like a literary archeologist, which pleased me because that is how I look at it myself."

"OS: There is a certain imperative about what I write and how I write, and I'm going to follow that imperative regardless. (KD: And that imperative is prompted by...) OS: the desire to explain. It's the why, the who and the why. I am driven by those issues."

"I suppose the main thing about me is that I don't feel or see any disjunction between life and land or between living and landscape; I don't make those separations at all. I imagine that I'm like that because I grew up in deep rural Jamaica and I was conscious from earliest childhood about the power of plants."

"I also think that one of the things that has shaped my sensibilities as a writer is the intense beauty of the country in which I grew up. I have internalized this landscape; the mountains, in particular, the valleys... Those are the profound elements that have shaped me: the fact that we lived with trees as a part of the social fabric of our lives-with plants-and the fact that we lived in this intensely beautiful landscape. Not lost on me as a child was the fact that it masked a lot of hardship and pain and so on."

"I haven't done research for any specific poem, but my writing is not separate from my life; and I have spent my entire life doing research (if you want to put it that way) in order to answer all the fundamental questions we ask about ourselves in the first place, starting with the existential questions like "who am I?" But that, of course, inevitably leads into "who are we?" And that, in turn, leads into "where are we coming from?" And it seems to me that this is my engagement, which is an engagement with history-both a personal and an ancestral history, but also with a wider notion of history: the history of the Caribbean, and indeed of the so-called New World."

"I am very conscious as a writer of removing myself and my personal concerns from what is going on in the text. I try to become these people that I am writing about; I assume various personas. The other question is whether or not I see myself a griot. I see myself as making things possible for my characters, like setting the stage and giving these unknown people from history the chance to speak to the other world. But I, personally, do not assume any roles for myself; that is not what I want to be. I want to be the archeologist, to dig and to bring up these things and say to the world, "Here they are." And let people draw whatever conclusion they want from it. But I don't see myself taking an activist role or playing or assuming a role that is mystical or ordained or anything like that."

"I think that there are three major influences on my work. One is that I had what would have been called a classical English education, which it was at the time I went to school. So, of course, I grew up on this diet of Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley and, you know, the great English classics. So I think that has influenced my work. I also grew up on the bible, and I regard the oral tradition as having played a very important part in shaping my work. And when I talk about the oral tradition I'm talking about not just the content but the rhythms, because a lot of our games in school, for instance, were based on rhythm and physical dexterity-you know, clapping and all this kind of thing. Everything was performed to rhythm: the floor was cleaned to rhythm, the clothes were washed to rhythm - you just couldn't escape this. Therefore, I feel that all of these things are coming together in my writing, because I am very conscious of rhythm in my prose as well. I think I have a good ear. It's all there in my head, all these sounds. And of course, I've read, and read, and read, and read, all my life."

"I think I'm an odd kind of Caribbean writer in the sense that I don't come out of the rich, middle-class elite who are the traditional writers. It's almost like cloning themselves, you know. So what they write is very much their image of the world. There's never been a voice that's been a poor voice, and I've never, ever seen myself reflected in Jamaican fiction. To some extent in Olanda Paterson, but very little. All of them, including Olive Senior, can't get into the psyche [of poor people] because they don't know it and it's an alien place, something they are afraid of. And so what happens is that they create a distorted image of people like me and my family."

"The baby was plump and pretty as a ripe ox-heart tomato. Her mother, Margaret Wilson Harvey, gently squeezed the soft cheeks to open the tiny mouth and rubbed her little finger, which had been dipped in sugar, back and forth, over and under the small tongue to anoint the child with the gift of sweet speech. "Her name is Doris," she said to her husband, David."

"my own memoir is a history of Jamaica; it’s my attempt to show that history happens to real people; how history affects ordinary people. (2013)"

"My particular role, as I see it, is to accurately represent my people. I have this real concern about how sometimes Jamaicans, and Caribbean people, are represented. And in my own writing, I want to tell their stories, but I want to do it in such a way that I think accurately portrays them. That’s the only ambition I really have. And if I do that, then I’ve fulfilled my job as a writer. (2013)"

"once I started reading, I was taken with the idea of what could happen to you once you read something. I don’t actually remember thinking that I wanted to be a writer, but I remember thinking I wanted to be a part of this world where people put down thoughts on paper, and when you read it back you could feel all of the emotions: you could be sad, you could be happy, you could be repulsed—all of those things. And I knew I wanted to be a part of that world. (2013)"

"Jamaicans are very comical people, and laughter is a way of coping with life’s displeasures. Also, when you make something of it [a hard situation], it says that you are in control. There are incidences when we have no control; all we can do is make some sort of a gesture. Sometimes, the world can throw things at you that are so cruel and so devastating that you are in no position to have any kind of real response but to make a gesture. And I think that sometimes laughter is a gesture saying that you have not completely annihilated me; you have not robbed me of my ability to respond as a human being. (2013)"

"I think a lot of my poems have been trying to make these gestures, you know, to say 'I'm a human being, and I have some control ... very limited, but some control over myself as a human being.' (2007)"

"When all of this is over, I want to have done something that I really think means something to people: something that feeds them in some way, and I'm trying to feed the work in the hope that it can nourish people. (2007)"

"You know, the Emily Dickinson litmus test: if I read a poem and I feel so cold as if no fire will ever warm me, or if I feel physically as if I'm losing the top of my head? Most poems can't pass that test, but you read something like 'Ode to a Nightingale', and you do lose the top of your head! Nowadays people seem to want this absolute control over poetry, a kind of domination. I'm not interested in that kind of poetry. I appreciate artistry and virtuosity, but I love it when you just back away from a poem, and think, 'Jesus! Where did that come from?' When you have to admit you have no idea how it got in there. (2007)"

"I see myself in a tradition of praise singers. (2004, in Writing across worlds)"

"I love words, I really love the pleasure and consolation you get from words. Words can be nourishing or medicinal or at their worst, poisonous."

"It's terrific that there are these women writers, Caribbean writers, emerging. They're emerging the same way that the men emerged. It's just their time, nobody can stop it. They are the ones that have to tell the half that has never been told, and they will tell it."

"I believe I started to write because I wanted to read what I was writing. When I was growing up there were no images of me in the literature I read. I didn't see myself or people like me in any of the literature of my youth."

"People should realize that there is not a finite amount of opportunities for writers or for artists, you know. I think if you're good, you're good. I myself have always had the attitude that I just do my work, and I do what I'm doing, and if I am recognized, good. But I'm perfectly willing to just go about my life and if some big things happen, that's wonderful, and if they don't, I am still going to be Lorna Goodison. I will continue to just be myself."

"I just love what's happening now; it's like there's a big tapestry and everybody has a corner because everybody has a story to tell."

"...I never anywhere saw my own point of view. Although it wasn't a conscious effort, I think in the end I needed to read those poems; that's why I wrote them. So, Tamarind Season was just a need to cry out about a lot of things about myself, about other women, about Jamaica, about the world in my own small way."

"...I didn't think you should approach what your vocation is in any faint-hearted way... or as Rasta would say 'with a weak heart'. So, I wanted to write strong poems as good as the men, but about women's business."

"I think that's what real poetry is...there are all these levels...you can write about what you really feel...You get borrowed and it doesn't have very much to do with you. That's why I think real poetry or the inspiration to write real poetry is a divine thing; it is completely out of your hands. You just happen to be standing there and it passes through you."

"She is solidly located in the trinity of Caribbean writing. It is now, officially, Walcott, Braithwaite and Goodison."

"Lorna Goodison is an artist as well as a poet. The keeps of her observation, her certain demarcation of shapes, her canny sense of physical and sociological textures are undoubtedly related to that.... The sensibility in Tamarind Season is a woman's...this is the important other half, the perspicacity missing from the current record of the Caribbean."

"Few writers are as attuned as Goodison to the heartache and triumphs of Jamaicans, especially Jamaican women. . . . Fewer writers still tell us so much about what it means to be human."

"Lorna Goodison's new collection is a triumph of fusions: of the naive wide-eyed delight of her younger poems with their claiming pride of naming everything that is melodiously Jamaican, to a tougher nostalgia that now looks at those things with a benign, unboastful authority. This is what the young Goodison fought for - the confidence of claiming the familiar, of trans-figuring it by the fury of her humility. And what is the rare quality that has gone out of poetry that these marvelous poems restore? Joy."