Poetry Society celebrates with offspring

Standing ovation for D'bi Young at 23rd anniversary fellowship

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Large pictures of five founding members, Tomlin Elis, Tommy Ricketts, Shaka Bantuta, Calvin Mitchell and Malachi Smith were mounted at the amphitheatre, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, on Tuesday night. Four of them were there, in the flesh to celebrate the outfits 23rd anniversary, but it was the poetic offspring which took centre stage for the large audience at 1 Arthur Wint Drive, St Andrew.

Crediting host and poet Yashika Graham as part of the next generation, and Professor Mervyn Morris as being among those who gave support at the beginning, Ricketts introduced the night's guest, D'bi Young, as the continuation of the poetic trajectory started 23 years ago. Her mother was part of the early gatherings of Poets in Unity, which led to the Poetry Society of Jamaica.

23 years later

"This is beyond our wildest dreams. I think this is our first-born, 23 years later," Ricketts said.

Young started a fluid presentation, as much theatre as poetry, with a cry of "ashe" from the second lowest step of the amphitheatre, rising to walk barefooted along the lowest step as she started interaction with the audience from the outset. Her first piece was about the origins, desires and movement of the original inhabitants ("soon the people grew restless for change"), then the encounter with those who arrived in hostility ("then came the time of the warring ones, they built great birds of the sea").

That set the stage for Young to put on a seamless presentation of poetry and theatre, utilising a chair in which she cringed, wailed and repeated denial as a young student of the Cultural Learning Centre being beaten and interrogated by 'Officer Brown', as he questioned her involvement in election-day activities. She soon knocked over the chair as the brutal Officer Brown, delivering an expletive-laden tirade at the student, accused of being part of the nefarious Poets in Solidarity, planning activities against "the upstanding Jamaican government".

"Likkle gal dis is not Cuba! This is Jamaica, my Jamaica!" Young thundered, as Officer Brown.

The chair became a platform for Young to become a politician whipping up nationalistic fervour in vote-seeking frenzy, demanding that the people stand for the national anthem. When they did not understand that she actually meant they were to stand, Young tugged people to their feet. "This is live theatre!" she said. "Tink mi nah come fi you?" she asked someone in one of the upper tiers of the amphitheatre, to laughter. When someone resisted, Young said "we a try illustrate a concept".

At the end of her performance there was no need to tug anyone to their feet, as there was a standing ovation.

She was soon back on the chair to deal with matters "not so long ago", the audience joining on the first verse of the National Anthem, which Young sang with a hand over her chest. The politician promised employment - and in one of the many excellent transitions Young employed the word employment to become Peaches, a down to earth, hip-flinging woman demanding "employment fi who?"

Young utilised poet Ganja at one point, before she was joined on stage by poets Cherry Natural, Sage, Lynch and Ganja again, all taking turns at delivering poetry.

'Begging is a Ting'

Young came back with 'Begging is a Ting', a drummer and flautist providing accompaniment from the audience. Young pointed to the irony of the beggar being rejected in church, where collection is taken up.

She closed an excellent show, standing in the performance area, all characters and various voices gone and simply herself, saying, "I can't promise to love you fearlessly, Jamaica/But I can love you courageously".

Young ended with the encouragement "stand firm in love Jamaica/One love Jamaica/One love".

eight principles

In a brief question and answer session, Young spoke about attending poetry gatherings with her mother, so "by the time I left Jamaica I was 16 and I had soaked up all those reasoning sessions". Asked what constitutes a poem, she said "there are eight principles that have been passed down to me through dub poetry". They are self-knowledge, orality, rhythm, political content and context, language of communication, urgency, sacredness and integrity. "If you have all a dem eight suppen you have a poem," Young said.

Before Young's performance, in recalling the early days of Poets in Unity, Ricketts said "it was a great time to be a poet. Mandela was still in jail, apartheid - we had a whole heap of things to talk about, I can't find anything now to equate with apartheid".