Staceyann Chin
Jamaican-born. Spoken word poet. Activist. Writer. Performer. New Yorker. Sassy.
Expect to hear the latter quality infusing Ms. Chin’s performance at this year’s Calabash Literary Festival, where she will read from her memoir, The Other Side of Paradise.
In his review, Walter Mosley describes Ms. Chin’s memoir as
“…a heartbreaking feat of unflinching memory and language. Set in a Jamaica far from the tourist brochures, The Other Side of Paradise is Chin’s rich and nuanced story of family and abandonment, love and brutality, and a child’s struggle to survive and find a home that will accept her. A remarkable young woman emerges, whose gift for poetry has been forged by poverty, religiosity, and a circle of adults who found the child in their care. This is A Portrait of the Artist written for our age. I love this book – and I am completely hamstrung by the feelings it evokes.”
My Grandmother’s Tongue
I don’t know the names
of the grandchildren in Europe
the countries are unpronounceable there
the languages spoken with odd pauses
and awkward lilts
I have buried the umbilical cords
that connect me to their future
the past lies trapped beneath my tongue
my children have taken their children
out of my house and I can no longer hear them.
This is what I imagine she would say
if she had the painted words
prodigal that I am
the daughter of a different land
America has opened its hand
and I am no longer drawn to the place
that birthed me
Wood floors have hardened
to concrete structures stretching
high above my mothers, mothers aspirations
My grandmother has become a ritual of memory
and I am hard pressed to translate
Her dialect communicates necessity
Another woman warms my bed
My mother speaks French phrases in Cologne
her German-Canadian child has never heard Jamaicans
sliding their fiery tongues over the blunt patois
she only dreams of America home of the faded-blue jeans
pale skin and long fingers like mine
oxtails and boiled bananas are foreign to her
Grandma can hardly see
the night falls more quickly for her
familiar words in her mouth sweetens her
she mutters the old names over and over and over again
it is impossible to learn the new ones
trust in the Lord and be of Good courage
she knows all the words of her salvation
the foreign names are unnecessary
and how would she say Larah Frederica Hayle Mills-Moller
Diamonique and Sherrel are out of reach
Lisa might have been possible
but Munich is a lifetime away
and her tenure is close to being over.
© Staceyann Chin
Millicent Graham
A Calabash Writer’s Workshop Fellow, Ms. Graham’s first book of poems, The Damp in Things, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2009. Her works have also been published in City Lighthouse Poetry Anthology 2009; Calabash: A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters, Vol. 5 No. 1, 2008 and The Caribbean Writer Vol. 17.
An editorial review of The Damp in Things gives the following insight:
“Graham’s poems offer us a way to see her distinctly contemporary and urban Jamaica through the slant eye of a surrealist, one willing to see the absurdities and contradictions inherent in the society that preoccupies her. These are poems about family, about love, about spirituality, about fear and mostly about desire, where the dampness of things is as much about the humid sensuality of this woman’s island, as it is about her constant belief in fecundity, fertility and the unruliness of the imagination.” (Peepal Tree Press)
THAT LIFE
My grandmother taught me I was Black.
that unmistakable pitch in her voice told
that my sister’s cornmeal skin was sweeter
than mine. I measured beauty by the cup
of her crackling palm, and whether
it stroked a cheek to blush or bruises
She made us understand
that fairness was as simple as a shade
drawn in a public ward
to guard her from the prying dark
faces. We visited each day, hiding
the bags of cream crackers and confetti.
The closer it got to night was the more
she hid her milky teeth, and only
showed the starless line of her lips.
The stars, she kept for my sister;
the girl with pudding ways. If not
for her we would not know what fair was.
© Millicent Graham
The Damp of Things
7 Comments
May 10, 2009 at 7:38 am
My mind sings to have found this blog – and Staceyann and Millicent are two of my fave poets. If only I could fly, I’d be at Calabash in a heartbeat.
May 10, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Hi Maxine! Thanks for stopping by. Hope you’ll be able to make it to Calabash another time.