By Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
Trevor Rhone
WESTERN BUREAU:
FOUR 'OLD fire sticks', as they were billed, created a merry bonfire in the Saturday evening sun at the 2002 Calabash International Literary Festival.
However, as the original dub poet Oku Onoura pointed out, they had never gone out in the first place.
"We eva a burn. Me a de original fire - Earlier we a talk bout de struggle. More time yu haffi go underground. Cause we naa change. An we will never change. De struggle no get stagnant. All when it look like nutten naa happen, tings a happen," he said.
The quartet proved to be four different kinds of 'fire' as well. Where Oku Onoura was a searing blaze, Earl Lovelace was the cool-looking flame at the tip of a welding torch and Earl McKenzie was akin to a brush fire that crept up and seared when no one was looking.
Trevor Rhone, reading from his memoirs, was a merry, crackling blaze in a brick fireplace that warmed from the inside out.
The first man up, Earl Lovelace, set the tone with his first words: "I think that the Caribbean seems to belong to politicians, but it know it does not."
He read segments from the novel Salt, which included a humourous look at colonialism and race relations, then moved into an equally mind and rib-tickling love story. "Four hundred years it take them to find out you can't keep people in captivity. But it neva happen jus' so - then they had another problem. It was not how to keep people in captivity, but how to set them at liberty," Mr. Lovelace read.
Miss Myrtle's Story mixed calypso, carnival, cricket and male-female relationships into a uniquely Caribbean tale which one could see unfolding in front of them. It ended with a woman visiting the home of a handsome but shiftless man she had fallen in love with practically at first sight. After she examines the dwelling and sees very little that is encouraging, she tells him how little her family thinks of him. Then he asks her what she thinks. "Me? You don't see me here with you?" she said, a world of resignation and promise in Earl Lovelace's voice.
Earl McKenzie read from the collection Against Linearity, again keeping to the Caribbean theme. "Jamaicans don't like straightness," Mr. McKenzie said, before reading:
Motorists break the unbroken line and overtake the undertaker
We fear the straight line, for it is as rigid as death
We want to bend it into trees and rivers, into the coolness of life
References to the beauty of Jamaica, including the fruit, littered The Blue Stones of My River, a childrens poem entitled Starapple, A Basket of Mangoes and Mango Drop. That beauty could not be complete without the women, like A Girl In The Bank, or without including their independent spirit, as exemplified in The Higgler of Books.
"I am no poet, I am just a voice," Oku Onoura said, 'livicating' his presentation to "Miss Ruby Myers, also known as mother". His pieces were filled with themes of liberation and love:
Love for the destruction of oppression.
I A Tell preceded a note of gratitude. "Throughout life there are some people who help and I give thanks. When you are down, just the thought of somebody who is there helps. Throughout my life there have been many people who have helped and I give thanks," Oku Onoura said before reading Just The Thought for Barbara Gloudon. Mervyn Morris also came in for his share of gratitude. "Mervyn Morris in de house? Bless. Yu a one a de people whe help. Mi know yu sorta modes' but- yeah."
Pressure Drop, Times Dread, I Have Been Thinking About You and Last Night were well received, as was an ironic note. "I am not a prolific writer. Some poems I wrote 20 years ago are still relevant today. So me no badda wid de long drawn out ting," Oku said, to laughter from the audience.
He spoke about his upcoming album, A Movement, before ending with Still, with the closing lines:
Still some have kept their eyes on the prize.
Trevor Rhone told a hilarious tale of his entry into the arts, his journey to England in pursuit of his dreams, coming last in a class of 55, then a reduced class of 51, coming down to 'crunch time' and being bedevilled by his inability to sing, and being rescued by the voice of Muhammed Ali saying that he, a black man, was the greatest.
He had the audience transfixed with voice, body language and words - and, in addition to the lessons in perseverance and courage which permeated his early years, he left a specific instruction. It was a lesson he learnt after being knocked off his high horse by a Mrs. Stevens, who pointed out mistakes in a piece he thought he had delivered perfectly. "Mr. Rhone, you set your own standards. I expect you to live up to them. I shut up and thanked her," Trevor Rhone said.
"And that lesson I pass on to you. It has served me well all my life," Mr. Rhone said.
