Brilliant Baugh, humorous Thompson, musing Morris

WESTERN BUREAU:

THREE 'OLD firesticks' caught and blazed on Saturday last, the second day of the Calabash International Literary Festival.

The large tent at Jakes in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth, was hard pressed to hold the large audience which turned out for the session featuring Ralph Thompson, Edward Baugh and Mervyn Morris.

Ralph Thompson touched on the colonial experience with Early Encounter With The British Raj and spoke to mortality and the Jamaican society with Death of A Honda Rider. A poem about a dog humping a leg can really turn up the heat on an already warm afternoon, while misunderstood 'lyrics' are a humourous twist when a pastor gets amorous:

(Man): Thy hair is like a flock of goats-

(Woman): Waapen, a goat yu tek mi fa?

Edward Baugh started with a poem he had not yet finished, likely to be named Amadou's Mother. He read the first part of the two-part piece, likely to be named Mother Liberty Speaks:

Bring me your hungry and your poor

And I will have them gunned down in the doorways of Bronx and Brooklyn-

I beckoned and he came He followed the dream

A series of poems set in his home town, Port Antonio, Portland, followed, among them the sometimes funny but wistful The Town That Had Known Better Days, which chronicled the hopes that surrounded Errol Flynn - hopes that were dashed:

Star bway dead-

And the place slipped back to its proper identity

The town that had known better days

Even True Love had its side-splitting but profound lines:

Hear me break wind

Belch and snore

And after that

Love me still

Baugh went close to the earth with some poems set in his garden and hit a six with View From The George Headley Stand:

I don't care what you call it,

That's what I call an indigenous stroke

Sometimes in the Middle of the Story, for the drowned Africans of the Middle Passage spoke of Haiti and Toussain't L'Overture, Nigger Sweat showed that US Embassy visit tension is nothing new.

Mervyn Morris also started on an unusual note, reading 'the only long poem I have ever written'. A Woman named Mary, Centurion, Thomas, Interview, Short Stories and The Day My Father Died followed, while Checking Out spoke about moving out of a flat:

I stood at the door

Dear, are you positive there is nothing left?-

We always have to go

The three 'old firesticks' left something which the people won't forget. As Ralph Thompson ended with Espousals, dedicated to John Figueroa: After the embers of desire there is love-

After the dogma of religion there is conscience-

After the echo of poetry there is poetry

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