Three greats celebrate International Literacy Day

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Three excellent poets, Earl McKenzie, Mervyn Morris and Edward Baugh reading in that order, presented poetry in three different modes at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, New Kingston, last Monday afternoon.

The ministry was celebrating International Literacy Day, which was observed on September 8, this year's theme being 'Literacy for Peace'.

Before the trio read to the lunchtime audience at the Ministry's New Kingston offices Justine Henzell, producer of the Calabash International Literary Festival which was discontinued last year after a decade of stagings, presented Ambassador Evandey Coye, permanent secretary in the ministry, with 20 copies of So Much Things to Say.

The collection of 100 poems from writers who have read at Calabash, held in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth, in late May, will be distributed to Jamaica's diplomatic missions worldwide for inclusion in their libraries.

McKenzie combined the visual with the word. "I am doing something I have never done before," he said, prefacing a presentation in which Ann-Margaret Lim, head of the public relations and media affairs unit at the ministry, was a mobile easel for McKenzie's paintings, with which he linked individual poems.

Philosophy of mathematics

So the opening Against Linearity, which McKenzie explained he had recently discovered was not only social commentary on Jamaicans' tendency to avoid the straight path but is also about the philosophy of mathematics, was illustrated by the painting We Fight the Straight Line. And Burglar Bars which "have become an art form" was connected with the painting Ornaments Against Evil.

In Noon and Midnight negatives about Jamaica ("a taxi driver laughs as he runs over a dog in Jamaica") and positives ("a smiling fruit seller who has no change tells me to pay when I pass again in Jamaica") were hinged on the refrain "Jamaica is midnight, Jamaica is noon". Music made its inevitable way into the rhythm of verse with To the Unknown Songstress: For Olive Lewin, McKenzie turning a beautiful line for the anonymous writers of folk songs who were "empty of the ego of authorship".

He closed on a poem which had no associated painting, Jamaican Requiem, written after McKenzie had seen a copy of The Gleaner with the names of all the Jamaicans murdered in the previous year. "The paper in my hand is a document of history," he read.

Mystery of the mind

Morris is known for the brevity of his poems and, true to succinct form, of the three he read the most pieces. He also did the least introductory preamble, getting straight into The Pond and Tutorial, the latter an observation of a young student and a "welcome to the mystery of the mind".

He changed voice, tone and timbre for Peelin' Orange, in which the act of peeling the fruit skilfully becomes a wry, self-deprecating assessment of maturity and perceived accomplishment. The audience duly laughed - then Morris changed tack with Having Eyes That See, about the difference between, yet the commonality of the visually impaired and those who have their eyesight, concluding "still, I think I see a shadowy connection".

The poems came in short measure - To The Unknown Combatant about the choices that tug at the uncommitted and sometimes eventually lead to their demise; A Voyage in which Morris voice sang without him actually singing; Cassanova looking at the cosmopolitan, womanising veneer over a young man's broken psyche.

Eve brought brevity to a new level of meaning, Morris reading:

"The garden seemed a proper paradise

Until she buck up on a serpent, talking nice"

Morris took on matters of the heart in Breaking Up and Love Is and a gasp of anticipation fulfilled came at the start of The Day My Father Died. Morris closed with Checking Out, which concludes "we never leave, we always have to go".

Affability and even tones

Baugh utilised his affability and even tones to engage the audience even before he read the first poem, describing himself as "very obedient" and therefore going to read poems by other people as well as his, with a focus on a theme of peace.

And, after explaining some of the references to his opening poem, Colour Scheme, including Shakespeare's MacBeth, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in Memphis, Tennessee, Baugh commented "this is too learned a poem. That is why I don't read it much".

"The poem is Colour Scheme and it is shorter than the introduction," Baugh said, reading "the rainbow is the shape of God's desire".

"So that was an upside down peace poem," Baugh said, going on to read some outright poems on the theme, starting with Wendell Berry's The Peace of Wild Things and Lorna Goodison's Blue Peace Incantation.

The audience of predominantly women agreed emphatically with the part of Out of Stock which is dialogue between two women about the non-availability of choice fittings on display at a store. But when the same observation was made of men in the final lines of the poem, the knowing laughter multiplied many times over.

Reading in one of the buildings that politicians frequent, Baugh said he had assumed "one or two" would have been present. Still, despite their absence, there was decidedly knowing enthusiasm from the audience as Baugh read about the end of the political meeting when the music starts to play and the Maximum Leader is "trying to dance but can't catch the beat".

He closed with Walcott's The Season of Phantasmal Peace, Ambassador Evadney Coye, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, saying thanks all around.