THE AUGUST edition of the Poetry Society of Jamaica's monthly fellowship was aptly dubbed 'Feminine Inquisitions'. Carla Moore, Teneile Warren and Monique Sloley were the three poets acting as the inquisitors on Tuesday night, but their words were far from torture.
Prior to the 'inquisitions' at in the amphitheatre at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Pefrorming Arts, the open mic segment had taken a new spin with the audience being asked to pick the most poetic line from a poem. The system, however, needs much reworking as with a combination of the inability to remember the lines and with the disappearance of the judges, the selection of the night's most poetic line was a little chaotic. Nonetheless, a line was selected from Troy's Screams to the World. However, the audience's near selection of the actual scream which punctuated the poem suggested that they may have been motivated by more than the poetic.
As a prize for his work, Troy was given a 'PPP', or Pears Picked by Poet. However, though the pears brought several jokes as one audience member urged him to succumb to the 'pear pressure' and read again. The words 'dread' and 'youth' were written on two of the pears. Troy was then mandated by M'bala, who gave out the prize and orchestrated the competition, to come back next month with poems using the words, but either avoided their tendency to be clichéd or twisted the cliché.
RATED X
The inquisitions were rated X and dealt with issues of race, class, and sexuality. They began with Sloley's piece It Deh Deh. Delivering a set featuring mainly short pieces, Sloley was easily the most 'raw' of the three. Her set included the raunchy P----y on Edge. The poem was short and to the point, delving in a sexual dearth and the cunning needed to alleviate the situation.
Carla Moore began her inquisitions with Lesson 3. The poems detailed the lessons learned between a mother's knees while hair is being combed. These lessons draw the line that weaves between hair and politics of race and class. It begins with the chiney bumps, or Nubian knots, that "resemble the threat of black acceptance" and so are publicly unacceptable and move through to the need for weaves and cremed hair. Lesson 3 boiled down to a simple edict: "If yuh want to eat/ Yuh betta get a weave."
The line, however, brought a quick response from the audience, as one member yelled "that means you're eating", pointing out that Moore was wearing a weave. Interestingly, the potent effects of a weave were not over for the night. Moore's second poem, she explained, came out of its effect on men on campus who, after seeing her in a knee-length weave, longed to turn her into a "virgin slut", making her a "prude with a reputation."
Warren, the third woman to take the microphone, began with the politics of ladyship, with the poem They Said She Wasn't a Lady. From there she turned to Butter Brown People, which explored the sexual slant of the work world to favour men. She then continued Sloley's talk of things vaginal with her piece Resurrection, a poem which echoed The Vagina Monologues.
When the three ended, the audience demanded more of them and the wish was granted. As such, the inquisition ended with each poet firing another round of poetry. Moore delivered This is not a Love Poem, Sloley produced Unedited Version and Warren delved into Mango Season.
- T.B-S.
