Group poetry takes hold

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Over the past 10 years, in the waxing and waning of various events which have built on the monthly Poetry Society of Jamaica gatherings at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA), poetry presentations in Kingston have been mainly a solo affair. Poets have performed one after the other, maintaining the solitude upon which the art, which does not require communion with musicians or even personal presentation to a reader when published, is built.

There have been exceptions to the solitary rule, with poetry trios LSX and Royal African soldiers as well as the quartet No-Maddz, which recently released The Trod. However, even with multiple members, the poets in each group, in fact form a single entity.

Two Sundays ago, however, there was group performance poetry of a different sort at the Village Blues Bar, Barbican, St Andrew. Manifesto Jamaica, taking charge of the regular Seh Sup'm production, presented Omega Vibration, an all female performer line-up (with male musicians) of poets Kai Falconer, Raquel Jones, Yashika Graham and Sabriya Simon, onstage simultaneously with singer Janine 'Jah9' Cunningham.

In mid-June, there had also been a multiple poet presentation at Village, M'Bala, Carolyn Allen and Fabian Thomas presenting a scaled-down version of the launch reading for Dennis Scott's posthumous collection, After-Image.

Several poets

At the launch, held earlier that month at EMCVPA, Rishile Pierce, Owen 'Blakka' Ellis and Carl Samuels had also participated in the group reading, directed by Eugene Williams.

Allen has been involved in multiple poet presentations as performer and director, engaging the work of Kamau Brathwaite, Olive Senior and Lileth Nelson in the latter role. She says for the After-Image reading the the poems were "staged, not too heavy on the movement and such, but 'actors' (theatre people) chosen rather than 'readers'".

Ellis has the distinction of writing Tick Tock, a theatre production interwoven with his poetry, staged earlier this year at the Theatre Place, New Kingston, in late April.

Graffiti: From the Walls to the Stage, the Jamaica Youth Theatre production currently on at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, presents poetry from the group's members, based on wall scribbling that have struck them.

From a director's standpoint, Allen said the work is read and re-read. The director then "imagines a through line and makes a selection that offers some movement, direction and progression and variation in mood and mode". As a performer, Allen says "there is greater interest for the audience in the dynamic of movement and some interaction, the vocal differences as well".

Vocal differences

There were definitely vocal differences among the performers at Omega Vibration. Cunningham, whose vocals were intertwined with the poetry and segued between the themes of each section, told The Sunday Gleaner "I always wanted to do a fusion of the arts".

The poets were asked to take four or five pieces each to rehearsal and five themes were worked out, Cunningham matching the mood in song.

At Village, the women moved through the creative process, war (social commentary), love, the stimulus (for creativity) and closed with the vent, which Cunningham laughingly calls "the angry woman section".

There was no anger among the women of Omega Vibration. Cunningham said "I thought there would have been issues, but it went very smoothly" - thus debunking stereotypes of a predisposed cattiness among women working together. "I was kind of concerned about who would go first and who would go second. But it did not work out like that," she said.

The Omega Vibration will be presented again on October 15, Canada-based D'bi Young among the expected performers. "I would like it to have the same organic vibe," Cunningham said.

"We had a diverse set of ladies and that is why it was good," Cunningham said, summing up the first Omega Vibration multiple woman performance.