Free midweek celebration for Miss Lou

... Annual observance moved from Gordon Town to Hope Road

Mel Cooke, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Five years after her death on July 26, 2006, in Toronto, Canada, there is no diminishing of respect for the Hon Louise Bennett-Coverley within literary and theatre circles. The late Miss Lou's birthday was on Wednesday, September 7.

The inaugural Jamaica Poetry Festival, appropriately held at the Louise Bennett Garden Theatre on Hope Road, St Andrew, honoured her memory along with the late Mikey Smith in mid-August. And at the end of the month, the Dub Traffickers 'poemtry' unit handed over a Poetic Pioneers Award for the writer of Evening Time to the Nature Preservation Foundation's Robert Lalor.

The foundation is responsible for the management and development of Hope Gardens where, at Poets' Corner, trees for Miss Lou and Mikey Smith were planted in 2004. There was also a posthumous Poetic Pioneers Award for Smith this year.

However, the centrepiece of annual acknowledgement of Bennett-Coverley's work as a writer, broadcaster, and theatre practitioner is the late-September outdoor concert in Gordon Town, St Andrew, where she lived. This year, however, there is a change in date from the traditional final Saturday in September to Wednesday, September 28.

And, as was the case last year, it will be held at the Hope Road, St Andrew, theatre named in her honour. Nahemiah Lusan, cultural organiser, Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC), Kingston and St Andrew, told The Sunday Gleaner: "We have a theatre at our disposal that is named after her, and we really wanted to highlight the theatrical part of Miss Lou. We had renovated it last year and it was a part of promoting the venue for schools and organisations which wanted to use it."

Unlike the Gordon Town celebrations, the concert segment of which goes late into the night, on September 28, the programme begins at 10 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m. The JCDC hopes to capture a student audience, along with adults who can make it for a mid-week, daytime event.

Cultural celebration

"We want schools to see it as a field trip for the students. There are organisations that allow their representatives to come out as well," Lusan said.

And the objective is not primarily about Miss Lou's entertainment value, but her status as a repository of Jamaican culture. As such, Faith D'Aguilar and Amina Blackwood-Meeks' presence on stage will be complemented by a comprehensive information booth on Bennett-Coverley, with a multimedia component.

On stage, speech, music, traditional folk forms and especially storytelling are all part of the Miss Lou mix. Festival Queen Krystle Daley will also be delivering Miss Lou's as well as her own work.

In addition to the showpiece late-September celebration, throughout the month, the JCDC collaborates with interested schools to present Miss Lou observances in the institutions, and Lusan says some requests are coming in. However, as it was still in the first week of the 2011-2012 school year, it was expected that there would be more requests as institutions settle into the academic routine.

In 2012, as Jamaica celebrates 50 years of Independence, Lusan said the major September celebration for the Hon Louise Bennett-Coverley will be held in Gordon Town.

"We are hoping we can get Corporate Jamaica on board to make it a bigger celebration next year. Miss Lou deserves it. She has made an integral contribution. She has helped us celebrate what we have and recognise our uniqueness," Lusan said.

"We have received corporate support, but we wouldn't mind more," she said.