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Thursday, July 3, 2025

Forces of nature bound in words

by

20160117

Hur­ri­canes and Wakes, the in­au­gur­al NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest event for 2016, fea­tured read­ings of pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished work from An­dre Ba­goo, Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan and win­ner of the 2012 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Po­et­ry, Puer­to Ri­can po­et Loret­ta Collins Klobah. The read­ing took place Jan­u­ary 11, at Al­ice Yard, an arts space on Roberts Street, Wood­brook.

First was Ram­lochan, who read Shep­herd Box­cut­ter 1, Shep­herd Box­cut­ter 2 and Caracara, which were pub­lished in a re­cent spe­cial edi­tion of Buc­coo Mag­a­zine fea­tur­ing emerg­ing writ­ers who had not yet pub­lished a full an­thol­o­gy. The Sun­day Arts Sec­tion books writer then con­tin­ued with Ma­ter­na from the re­cent­ly pub­lished an­thol­o­gy Com­ing Up Hot. Her fi­nal piece was Douen Lara, part of the Douen Is­lands Project start­ed by Ba­goo, who was the next to read.

His first po­em, al­so from the Douen Is­lands Project, was ti­tled In Forests, Wild Skies. Next was Ju­bilee, which was in­spired by cat­a­stroph­ic flood­ing in Diego Mar­tin short­ly af­ter T&T cel­e­brat­ed its ju­bilee an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence in 2012.

"I was struck by the fact that 50 years af­ter In­de­pen­dence, we still hadn't re­al­ly fig­ured out how to do some ba­sic things like deal with the rain." The piece was pub­lished in Burn, his 2015 col­lec­tion.

Ba­goo's next po­em, al­so from Burn, was Au­den in Ice­land, imag­in­ing An­glo-Amer­i­can po­et WH Au­den in weird lo­ca­tions. His last po­em, fol­low­ing on the na­ture theme of the evening, was Un­der­sea Vol­cano.

Klobah's first piece, Go­ing Up, Go­ing Down, was in­spired by her ex­pe­ri­ence with the young gay men she men­tored at the lit­er­ary mag­a­zine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Ri­co where she is pro­fes­sor of Caribbean lit­er­a­ture and cre­ative writ­ing.

Her sec­ond piece, Tis­sue Gallery, de­scribed her rec­ol­lec­tion of be­ing shown a col­lec­tion of pre­served foe­tus­es, do­nat­ed to sci­ence by women from the Vir­gin Is­lands who came to Puer­to Ri­co to have abor­tions or who suf­fered still­births while giv­ing birth there.

"At home, I whis­per to the mid­night page, women of the Vir­gin Is­lands, Sistren, I saw them and they are okay," Klobah read. "Your small ones are still on the Earth!" It de­liv­ered a body blow to the au­di­ence. The po­em was pub­lished in the New York­er in No­vem­ber 2015 and was high­light­ed as one of the mag­a­zine's best po­ems of the year.

Dur­ing the pan­el dis­cus­sion that fol­lowed, Ba­goo asked Klobah and Ram­lochan what their process was for writ­ing po­ems. Klobah said she pre­ferred to go out in­to her com­mu­ni­ty to look for in­spi­ra­tion, while Ram­lochan said her po­et­ry comes from her ex­pe­ri­ences and she can­not help but write it, as it is vis­cer­al and needs to be ex­pressed.

Ram­lochan asked Ba­goo, as a news­pa­per re­porter and a po­et, which world in­flu­ences his po­et­ry more. He said they both have an equal sort of im­pact, and a lot of his ex­pe­ri­ences as a jour­nal­ist have snuck in­to his po­ems in un­ex­pect­ed ways.

Ram­lochan al­so spoke about work­shop­ping one of her po­ems on rape, and that the ter­ri­fy­ing and lib­er­at­ing thing about writ­ing on these top­ics meant you could nev­er pre­dict how peo­ple were go­ing to feel about it, but it was not the po­et's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to make every­one feel com­fort­able.

"You sim­ply have to do work that you think is clean and clear and hon­est about im­por­tant things. You can hope they will read it right, while know­ing there isn't any one way to read any­thing right."

All three po­ets agreed that, in ad­di­tion to hav­ing to do read­ings, one ter­ri­fy­ing thing about be­ing pub­lished po­ets was main­tain­ing the bal­ance be­tween be­ing their au­then­tic selves and be­ing a pub­lic per­sona. They al­so agreed that while writ­ing po­et­ry wouldn't make them any mon­ey, it was tremen­dous­ly ful­fill­ing and re­gen­er­a­tive.

In re­sponse to the ques­tion of what they plan to write in 2016, Ba­goo said he would be ex­plor­ing non-fic­tion, while Ram­lochan said she would al­so be try­ing oth­er kinds of writ­ing and Klobah said she would be fo­cus­ing on her ex­pe­ri­ences liv­ing in the Caribbean as a big woman.

As a fi­nale, each po­et read a re­cent­ly writ­ten un­pub­lished work. Ram­lochan's po­em No Cu­ran­dera but Yo Mis­ma spoke of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween moth­er and daugh­ter. Ba­goo's Chang­ing Lanes: In Mem­o­ry of San­dra Bland wel­comed the late US woman who died in po­lice cus­tody in Texas and her ex­pe­ri­ence to T&T. Klobah's po­em Night Watch spoke of how fly­ing gar­goyles sight­ed in Puer­to Ri­co be­came a sym­bol of young mas­culin­i­ty.

At the end of the night, Al­ice Yard di­rec­tor Nicholas Laugh­lin an­nounced that this year's NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, of which he is pro­gramme di­rec­tor, would be held from April 27 to May 1.


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