Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
WITH POETS from Jamaica, Bermuda, Guyana and, of course, Canada, the launch of Klyde 'Durm-I' Broox's poetry collection, My Best Friend Is White, took on international proportions.
The event anchored the recently-concluded 2005 International Dub Poetry Festival Part Two, held in Toronto, Canada. The collection, published by McGilligan Books, was presented in an intimate atmosphere at the Victory Café on Markham Street, Toronto.
The function was hosted by poet and lecturer Lillian Allen, who said, "This is an event I have been looking forward to for 12 years."
There was a little wait for the meat of the matter, though, as before Broox read, there were contributions from Pamela Mordecai, who converted a story told by her brother into the poem 'The Man Monroe' and Liz Marianni, who read 'The September 7 Blood Poem' and 'Can't', among others. Rudyard Fearon, in his brief style, did several pieces, including 'Noise' and 'Blind Man', while Bermuda's Ras Mykkal delivered 'Controversial' in his melodious baritone.
Jamaica's Clayton Lynch dedicated 'Spanish Town' to Lillian Allen and Level to Broox, Guyana's Chet Singh being the only person to utilise music in delivering 'Dead Inna Babylon, Identities' and 'Transcending Dub'.
In My Best Friend Is White, Broox is introduced as "an internationally-seasoned dub poet with decades of performance experience in North America, Europe and the Caribbean". The experience showed as he stepped to the microphone, heralded by Allen as someone who brings "incisive, intellectual discourse to everything he touches".
And there was more than a healthy dose of humour as well throughout his randomly selected readings.
NATURAL RHYTHM OF THE WORDS
He began with Reloading the Can(n)on, in which he informed "you don't have to be Black/to go where Shakespeare meets Tupac", his voice and body movements reinforcing the natural rhythm of the words.
"I do not know really what is good poetry or bad poetry. What I do know is what I remember and what I don't remember," Broox said. "I am doing my stuff under the influence of dub," he continued, before reading 'Under The Influence of Dub', which ended "dub-in, dub-out" to applause from the audience.
"I give thanks that this book is a part of the International Dub Festival 2005 ... This book really proves that we need an organisation like the Dub Poets Collective," Broox said of the organisation which staged the festival and whose imprint appears on the back cover of My Best Friend Is White.
Broox gave a brief history of dub poetry, saying, "In the beginning, dub to me was the agony of the people. The literature of the time gave no voice to the people. The writers were middle class."
He spoke of Oku Onoura and Mikey Smith, saying that "this thing came out of blood and guts and tears". He said that the stoning to death of Mikey Smith in 1983 put paid to the 'agony stage' of dub poetry and read 'Getto Lingoz' from that phase of the art form.
Declaring his love of balance, Broox read the humorous 'Misery Rhyme', followed with 'Going Dot Com' and went way back in his life as a writer ("1978 vintage") with 'Dubmuzik On The Street'. 'Literary Coup' presented words as agents of change ("in my view, a military coup/could only empower a few") and Broox, who seemed to be just warming up, ended with the book's title poem.
SON INSPIRED TITLE
He named Theodore Brooks, his son, as the person who gave the title of the poem and, subsequently, book, who at 10 years old demanded, "How you are acting like some Black Power guy and your best friend is white?" The hard-hitting question sparked a train of thought which led to:
"My best friend, is white
But I am black
And racial realities bite
When my white best friend
Reacts typically white
To my coloured insights
About matters of equal rights
I wonder, is my best friend
More white than best friend?
Less best friend than white?"
He ended with that quiet poem, which concluded "in my best friend's face/I see what I know to be/features on one human race/on which I rest my case" to strong applause.
