No Poet, No Cry
[Guyana]
In the same way Derek Walcott’s plays and poems gave breadth & depth of understanding to the way we lived in the Eastern Caribbean, but you had to add rhythms like pepper and sauce from Arrow (“Bills”) or Shorty (“Money eh no problem”) to determine what was really going on in the islands then. It was always so.
Curiously, Guyanahad no rooted music tradition to spice up the poems of, say, Martin Carter. Most of our homegrown kaisos sounded derivative. Most of the music played on radio or available in stores back then was imported anyway: from India or the UK, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar or Englebert Humperdinck. Somehow Guyana’s native soil, so fertile in brainy foods (and the mind-baffling prose of Wilson Harris), could not produce an indigenous reggae or kaiso. Even our homegrown Rastas still look and sound today like knotty imitations Made in Korea.
How this became so someone in academia will no doubt one day attempt to explain. In the meantime readers had to and have to make do with the poetic ruminations cerebrations, if you like of Wilson Harris, Ian Mc Donald, Martin Carter A.J. Seymour and Michael Gilkes.
Michael Gilkes is not first and foremost a poet. Born in 1933 he left Guyanain 1961. The back cover to this collection tells us he is an actor, literary critic, film-maker and playwright; he has lectured at four universities. (Some university students might recall his pioneering book, Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel (1975); and how back then its jargon-laden prose for the most part left readers who wanted elucidation as befuddled as the novels it examined.)
But perhaps his most splendid triumph was the production of his play Couvade in 1972. It was staged again in 1993 but that first outing, at a time of high regional Carifesta excitement, with its narrative of dreams & survival possibilities, will go down as a truly electrifying experience for many who saw it.
So what should we hope for in Joanstown his first and probably last collection of poems which won the Guyana Prize 2002 for best book of Poetry?
If the title of the collection makes you groan, take heart; there is not much more of that level of wordplay. Gilkes’ poems might not satisfy your soul, nor shake readers out of complacency with startling images. Sentiments and thoughts tend to surface through bland, often prosaic lines that employ a vocabulary left over you can’t help thinking from his academic and theatre writings:
“Everything he did came easily. “Walk softly.
Trees dropped their fruit Keep your voice down
For him to catch, Listen to the forest’s voice.
Fires lit for him Try not to think of ways
With one damp match. You could develop this place.”
Rain filled his bucket to the brim.” (from “Rainforest Guide“)
(from “Swimmer”)
There are several, fond “When I was young” portraits, a dialect solo and loving snapshots of Georgetown that elicit sweet memories (“Woodbine”, “The Lighthouse” “Water Street“). Some poems are dedicated to old friends and acquaintances (Wilson Harris, A.J. Seymour, Henry Muttoo). Gilkes seems to be speaking from a time and to a generation of vibrant, creative folk now deservedly at peace with the world.
At one point Joanstown throws up this intriguing thought: “Old men should write, not the young in their prime/their past’s too shallow to enfranchise them.”
His twilight time poems convey a sense of poet-retirees in wicker chairs flipping through a scrapbook of Caribbean sojourns and reveries. And what the twilight says in this collection might not always astound you with passion and insight:
“If you could free this poem from its page
you’d understand my futile ague then:
that old malarial ache, that ancient rage
that makes old men of poets, poets of old men.”
(from “1. Late Sonnet”)
Rebellious youth might find it worth their time and their poetry to turn away like not-for-me tigers; let imagination take them down solitary trails into opaque areas of inner life, those regions where fearless, self-probing souls have found the reinventive freedom that always eludes the tribe. The pleasant “Morne Fortunes” and “Littorals” of Joanstown provide warm-memoried rest stops; next morning the reader moves on.
Still, it bears repeating that, like Ian McDonald (whose memory-enhanced Between Silence to Silence was published in 2004) Michael Gilkes is a distinguished fortunate-traveler in Caribbean Arts and Letters. The publication of this slim volume so late in his day is a tribute to the man and his achievement. (It’s the kind of culture gap that, in the absence of a regional publishing house, Peepal Tree Press, England has been keen to step in and fill.)
So where, you wonder, have all the strong, insightful metaphor-wielding poets gone? where are poems with the memorable weight of Martin Carter’s “All Are Involved”? and how come we don’t hear much counterwailing music and world-trodding lyrics from someone with Bob Marley’s towering stature?
One seductive theory might be that the times have changed: from (a colonial) self-contempt to (a postcolonial) self-romancing. There are multiple undistinguished stars on/off the dancehall stage clamouring for a turn at the microphone to work the crowd, for their 15 minutes of hoarse, anarchic fame. And check those hungry hands in the air, that burst of gunfire in the stands!
In the new millennial spirit of egalitarianism no burgeoning talent in politics, business or Sport dares tower anymore. Towering talent risks attracting awe and envy, charges of selfishness, big wig elitism; then “Who he think he is?”
Too besides there are dueling cultural extravaganzas (fueled by the venting of inanities on media talk shows) being staged in Guyana and the Caribbean. Some writers and songsters can’t seem to resist the draft into their service: to preserve or showcase our separate heritage; to serenade the victims at ethnic Arrival gatherings where fading memories in this day and age still require from us a song.
What artist, then, will summon the imaginative steel to stand aside and watch?
When you think about it, though, even two century-scoring poets batting like heroes for the region’s team can’t assuage a family’s pain from kidnapping, or elevate coastal hopes from the threat of flood waters, or shore up eroding confidence as island economies stumble.
It’s the way of our new Caribbeanworld! Sound systems (spawned by the genius of Marley) overwhelming contrary voices, individual thought; blocko-blocking any new poet’s vision!
O tempores, O mores? No poet, no cry!
Be wary, though. Michael Gilkes’ Joanstown, like the grand-pèrejournalism of Ian Mc Donald, invites you to pull up a Berbice chair, share treasured moments, the “old men’s feverish love of faded things”; enjoy the splash of sunset years over the hills, the rivers and cane fields. Feel good about yourself.
Book Reviewed:
Joanstown: Michael Gilkes: Peepal Tree Press, England (2002)
- W.W. [N.D.Williams] [Books] [Poetry]
