By Mel Cooke, Freelance WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
COMING AFTER its 15th anniversary celebration last month, the Poetry Society of Jamaica's regular Tuesday night meeting saw Ishion Hutchinson of as guest poet.
The member of The Workshop, a writer's group based at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, capped off a meeting which saw the society's president, Tommy Ricketts, in a no-nonsense mood.
MUSICAL POETRY
In between poets, Ricketts forcefully expressed his desire for freshness of language from those who came to read in the open microphone section at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts amphitheatre.
Samuel Gordon's two poems were diffe-rent thematically, the first dealing with love and the second with death, but the use of imagery and deftness of pen was similar. The first saw the poet in parts as Sir Lancelot, with all the phallic connotations of the title, with the other resulting from a recent shoot-out in Half-Way Tree. Gordon employed a bit of singing at the start of the second poem.
Before him, Rass Rod started off the evening's poetic fare on the musical side, tracing the career of Clement Dodd, concluding the music lives on/raise the praise. He continued with a road safety poem, half-finishing with 'Hill and Gully Slide', which he did not complete, but which started I see you like Fern Gully/slippery when wet.
A young poet contributed 'A Black Pearl', 'Rejection' and 'I Died Last Night', before Nesta Andrews delivered 'Global Village', covering ground with references to Sudan, Iraq and south St. Andrew.
POETIC BOX
Cedric Johnson used AEIOU to protest IMF policies, before Gordon's two poems. Sage had had enough of 'this poetic box' and escaped late one night and Abebe expressed honourable intentions with I desire not to use the daughter/but to discover your hues.
Then it was time for the guest. Hutchinson moved through a range of moods, beginning with 'Island Lovers', delivering an ode 'For Hope', then taking the audience on a trip back to the 'country' of birth for a 'Homecoming', ripe with the smell of cane in the field and in another form in the rum bar.
There was a poignant trip back to early childhood and his mother walking through the house in the pre-dawn darkness, always touching my nose/hoping it never gets as big as my father's. When he is finally up and in the kitchen I feel ashamed/like I missed all of creation.
"I never cried for mother," Hutchinson concluded.
He ended with somewhat of a connection between 'country' and town, with Ma Ettie singing amazing grace how sweet the... as the old bus swerves around corners and cars, on the way into the big city.
The Poetry Society of Jamaica meets on the last Tuesday of each month at the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts amphitheatre.
