Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

Miller - Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

Tuesday's fellowship of the Poetry Society of Jamaica was a quiet affair, in the sense that there were no speakers and microphone, the readers standing before the gathering in one section of the amphitheatre at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

It was not quiet, though, in terms of the lively back and forth after each poem, as the merits and demerits were discussed.

Before the night's guest poet, Rhonda Harrison, wrapped up the January 2007 Poetry Society gathering, Racquel, accompanied by Conroy on guitar, said they were there to learn before delivering a long poem which included the lines "No time to be calm and humble/man have need, 10 pickney to feed."

Cherry Natural strode to and fro across the lower level of the amphitheatre which the readers used to deliver their work as she did A Prayer to Mi Lover. She started with "tired fi deh pon de battlefield a fight/mi a go tek off de army fatigue an' put on some lingerie," telling the lover "I love your mind and the body you occupy."

Dutty Wine with a clean heart

Dance and spirituality were on Kei Miller's mind, his poem coming from last year's incident where a young woman died while doing the 'Dutty Wine' dance. He connected her hair and elevation, as with "the hallelujah swing of red braids you were being lifted high" and the scorn of the older women who were convinced "that no Tanisha could enter the Kingdom of God". Yet, in the end, there she was "dancing Dutty Wine with a clean heart".

There were a few droplets of rain before Harrison delivered Pieces of Me,Hypolita and Tilting Forward, the second and third poems addressing cancer. She explained that last year a friend died from cancer and this year another has been affected.

The first poem ended with her saying "right where you break me I have come back to break up pieces of you." Hypolita asked "how can a girl be free to chase the wind with a sunken chest" and, when the person with breast cancer was under the scalpel she was "dreaming I hear the soft squish of knife against flesh."

The rain, which had held up, came heavier as Harrison ended on cancerous matters of the intestinal kind with Tilting Forward.