Imagine a group of 15 writers who have come from three Caribbean islands to the North Coast of Trinidad in order to get a good start on the year 2016– to relax, converse, read and work intensively on their craft with the guidance of mentors.
Of those who gather in the wooden lounge chairs of a breezy, rustic, open-air hotel veranda a few steps away from the sea surf, some are experienced writers with published books. Others are at earlier stages in the process of learning techniques and first beginning to publish. From Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Trinidad, these writers have journeyed to Grande Riviere for the North Coast Writing Retreat.
I co-hosted this intensive four-day writer's workshop, which took place from January 7-10, with UK-Trinidadian Monique Roffey. We both have been recognised with an OCM Bocas Literary Award for Caribbean Literature. The location–the beachfront eco-lodge Mt Plaisir Estate–one of the largest nesting sites for leatherback turtles, provided a peaceful, restorative and supportive setting far removed from the daily routines of the participants.
Monique offered master classes in life writing, while I hosted sessions on poetry writing. Both classes required reading of theory and literary examples. The evenings were occupied by lively readings and performances. Nonetheless, the writers did find time to write some new poems while at the retreat.
The T&T Guardian is pleased to publish a small selection here. Some poems explore the relationship between history and the present time in our Caribbean context. Some attempt to create a haiku-like scene through sound imagery rather than a poem's most common tool: visual imagery.
With some written in free verse and some in traditional form and meter, the poems range in setting from Grande Riviere to life in the Trinidad suburbs, a river in Guyana, the Panama Canal, and a sugarcane field in the parish of St Thomas, Jamaica.
Enjoy these poems delivered fresh from Grande Riviere by Andre Bagoo, Gillian Moore, Gaiven Clairmont, Nalini Natarajan, Motilal Boodoosingh and Millicent AA Graham.
Loretta Collins Klobah is a professor of creative writing and Caribbean literature at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan. For her first book of poems, The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman, she was awarded the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature (Poetry).
BOAT ON THEKAMUNI RIVER
It's quiet on the Kamuni–
surface of water like glass.
On either side, a curtain of trees,
every leaf, every trunk, every twig,
olive, moss, grass, pine
fully reflected below.
We are on our way to an Arawak village.
Our boatman is a Sikh, he tells me,
whose ancestors first came to Guyana
one hundred years ago.
A visitor from Puerto Rico,
India-born, I travel with my Sikh guide
to meet descendants of the Taino.
The sigh of loss, the thrill of discovery
is history's whisper.
Why have I never read
of encounters between
the Indo Guyanese
and the Arawak?
A meeting of the Kamuni
with those mangroves
and silent creeks of Malabar
in some poet's imagination?
A small canoe with two bare-chested,
blue-jeaned boys at the oars
belies any illusion of a past time.
We arrive to the village–
a Christian mission.
English Creole rings out in greeting,
calling us to the present.
Nalini Natarajan
writer and professor
MY RETREAT
My daughter, she wants to know,
Are you going to the writer's retreat?
I will pay, my daughter says,
Daddy, this is my treat.
Are you well enough to drive so far?
Or shall I take you there?
Listen to me, listen Papa,
You are getting older, my dear.
My wife, she says, you use my van,
For your car is getting old.
And I don't want you breaking down.
And take a sweater; it might be cold.
The journey is long, so carry some tea.
You might feel hungry on the way.
Two pieces of roti for you and Randy.
And have him drive today.
And call me when you do get there,
And take your medication.
I know they love me, I know they care,
But this is too much attention!
Daughter calls twice a day,
To ask me how I am.
I will leave the phone in the room today.
She is becoming a damn nuisance!
Am I loved?
I sit and stare at the empty page.
I cannot write any more.
I cannot find a word to rhyme
With the one I wrote before.
I think I will write about my son,
Who hugs me when I go
To visit him in London town.
He lives there, you know.
Motilal Boodoosingh
Trinidadian writer
IN THE SUBURBS
There is the night sound of the silence
of lush green lawns.
In my room,
the soft buzzing of blades rotating–
the muted conversation
of my sisters in another room.
I read, and after awhile
their conversation falls asleep.
My head plunges into the pillow.
As my eyes close, I hear it–
Ah, he's drunk again,
the next door neighbour.
The wife's voice, mindful of the time,
tries to calm her husband's anger.
I try to sleep.
My three-story concrete home
has a security system to keep out burglars,
high fences to deter fruit thieves,
but these sounds birthed from liquor–
enter.
I wonder why did she marry him?
What do her kids think?
But then comes the voice of an elder
brother,
guardian to his sober mother.
His threats echo.
The suburbs aren't a peaceful paradise.
One can keep evil out
with gates, alarms, and barbed wire.
The Devil walks in by the front door.
Gaiven Clairmont
Trinidaian fiction writer and poet
PANAMA TREASURE
Great Grandfather
Staring
Into
The camera
Is grey dust
A speck
Among
One hundred
Haunted-looking
Labourers
Hollow
In gritty relief.
Loss
Grief
But his eyes shine.
Days later, he is sailing home.
Folded, tucked
Inside his bag
The black, tassled shawl
Iridescent with embroidered flowers.
His love bloomed.
Years later
It came
To me
Worn, patina'd and faded.
It crumbled to black powder
In my hands.
Gillian Moore
Trinidadian poet, singer, songwriter, performer
GRANDE RIVIERE
David's house is
A giant conch-shell
At its lip, he hears
The hoarse sea
The engine of the plane that took them
His children playing in Germany
Dead almond leaves falling
Small, soft turtles
Crawling up from their nest
Paddling sand to their first surf
Andre Bagoo
Trinidadian author of the poetry collections Trick Vessels (2012) and Burn (2015)
THE REAPER WALKS FROM DUCKENSFIELD
No bicycle today– the naked wheel
hangs from a rusty nail on the cedar door
and cannot turn. The rubber's peel
from tie and soldered steel
is protracted dignity of a sugar-man,
charred too long from the bend and score
of the flailing soot-limbs that blacken him to
something indiscernible, a smear of coal
emerging out of Duckensfield.
Scrape-pluck, the gallon-boot's deserting
sole
picks up the bark and rock of the dray's dug
road.
Its dig at flesh; an ordinary ache
as steps veer through its crooked to cut
straight.
The arm that swung the cutlass on the necks
of the tall shoots is now pocketed away.
An evening shadow's faint molasses streak
is sketched upon fast fading Duckensfield.
Headlights. A bus dips deep, but screeching
on,
it does not stop. The souls that dally there
have overlooked the stranger walking near,
too used to seeing him rendered ash to dust.
What if that driver had blinked or fidgeted,
and silence broke upon a woman's song
"One day one day one day we shall be
lifted?"
The headlights cut to dark-dark
Duckensfield.
Millicent AA Graham
Jamaican author of the poetry collections The Damp in Things (2009) and The Way Home (2014), and co-organizer of the Drawing Room Project.