www.jamaicaobserver.com twitter.com/jamaicaobserver The Sunday Observer March 4, 2018 #InConVerSation: The Muse of Memory Is The Muse of Poetry: Bookends presents the first of a series Mandeville. Because I love how we talk, of conversations #InConVerSation I try to write in a mixture of Standard between the writer Jacqueline Bishop An Interview With Poet English and Jamaican speech so that it and phenomenal women writers who call resonates perfectly to Jamaican ears but Jamaica home. Today’s featured writer is it is still accessible to non-Jamaicans. Poet Laureate of Jamaica Lorna Goodison. Somebody once wrote that I seem to be Laureate Lorna Goodison trying to inscribe Jamaican culture onto the and Poetry Summer Workshop. This was business for quite some time. My first consciousness of the world. I think that is a ORNA, I start by saying thank you so a workshop designed to teach young girls collection of poetry was published in good thing! much for granting this interview. I basic self-defence and poetry writing. It 1980, by the Institute of Jamaica Press, must say I was moved to tears when was taught by the well-known Jamaican and individual poems of mine had been One of your initiatives as the new poet it was announced that you would be poet and martial arts expert Cherry appearing in various magazines and in laureate of Jamaica is the Helen Zell prize L Natural, and the poet Yashika Graham. Jamaican Sunday newspapers for at for young poets. Can you expand on this and the new Poet Laureate of Jamaica. Is there any significance for you, personally, in The logo was designed by the British least 12 years before that. From the very why you thought it important to initiate this being the first female Poet Laureate of y/our Jamaican artist Ruel Hudson, and it went beginning, I was always writing poems prize in Jamaica? beloved homeland? What do you hope to so well that the current director of the NLJ inspired by aspects of Jamaican culture; I was fortunate enough to have taught initiate or achieve with this new platform? Beverly Lashley is working with Abigail even some of my most intimate for many years at the University of Henry, who does a wonderful job and personal poems somehow Michigan in their Helen Zell MFA writing Thank you so much. I am honoured to be of running the Poet Laureate manage to reference programme that is consistently rated the subject of one of your interviews. programme, and me to expand Jamaica. One of my in the top two such programmes in the I too was very moved when Justine it this year. poems, which appears on world. As part of the job I had to read Henzell, Professor Edward Baugh and As I see it, poets laureate the London Underground, and evaluate countless applications from Winsome Hudson, former director of the are national praise singers is called “Bam Chi Chi La highly gifted young writers who are very National Library of Jamaica (NLJ), and and advocates of poetry, and La”, and it is about a serious about developing their craft. As the Minister Olivia “Babsy” Grange asked me I believe I have been doing Jamaican teacher current Poet Laureate of Jamaica, I thought on behalf of the Government of Jamaica something like that in my working as a that I would like to encourage our young to become the Poet Laureate of Jamaica. own work, in an unofficial char woman writers to perform at the highest level, and Being made poet laureate at the same capacity, for many years. so that she I am grateful to Douglas Trevor and Linda time that my Collected Poems — which is I am particularly grateful can build her Gregerson, at the University of Michigan over 600 pages long — was published by that I’ve had the great retirement for agreeing to establish this prize. The Carcanet Press (UK) seems like a double good fortune to have home in details can be read online, but basically it blessing. As you yourself said to me, “If been able to read is open to Jamaican poets between the anybody asks you what you have done with my praise poems ages of 17 and 25. Applicants are asked to your life, you can point to that book.” to Jamaica to wide submit a portfolio of between three to six As the first woman to be given this audiences here at pieces of original work to be appraised by honour, I am of course well pleased, and home and in many University of Michigan MFA students and I have hopes, dreams and plans for what different parts of Lorna Goodison (Photo: The faculty, and the winner will receive a prize I’ll do while I am Poet Laureate, and one of the world. of US$1,000. the first initiatives I’ve been involved with I have also Scottish is the “All Flowers are Roses” Self-Defence been at this National Library) Turn to LORNA on Page 2 3 2 #InConVerSation #InConVerSation Bookends events is another way to teach others An Interview With Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison about our history. You know, Lorna, one question that I have LORNA from Page 1 haul. Personally, I resisted the idea of world. So, for as long as we are thinking, opportunities for writers to remain at home always wanted to ask you is, where for you Since becoming Poet Laureate I have being a writer for a number of reasons, feeling human beings we will need poets and to thrive. Look at what happened when is Heartease? Is Heartease an actual place given a number of talks and readings in but no matter how hard I tried, I could not a visionary like Glen Mills decided that we Bookends to express people’s innermost thoughts, to God A Me in Jamaica? Similarly, what can you tell me schools and libraries and I’ve met young avoid writing poems and stories. I used to help speak for people who have no voice. should coach our athletes at home. Now about search-mi-heart flowers? Are those for people who are really serious about poetry. destroy them, but they kept coming. There Writing on behalf of people who have no BY LORNA GOODISON the whole world is coming to him! This you real flowers? How did you come up with By establishing this prize, I am doing my were years when I was putting my energy voice is something that poets must do, Tide wash me out of the river could happen with our writers. Why am I that name? To me, those two things, along best to encourage the development of a into other things, years when I assumed especially in times and places in crisis. sweep me up onto the bank. using so many sports analogies? Maybe your guinea woman great grandmother, are new generation of young Jamaican poets. writing had gone away and left me to my Real poets have to have a sympathetic because I have an old-girl crush on Usain indelibly linked to your work. The winner will be announced at a special own ill-advised devices. As it turns out, Bolt?! imagination, they have to have the negative I was swimming in sync I was a trainee bookmobile librarian at function on World Poetry Day, March 21. what was happening was that my voice capability that John Keats spoke of, they so with the live currents the Jamaica Library Service — my first was just being cultured in a new and have to be able to imagine themselves As our writing tradition matures, one real job after I left school — when I was I had the chance to read recently of different way, and that culturing process of the questions that I am faced with as into other people’s lives and into situations of the big rivers, one hundred sent to work in Manchester, St Elizabeth your going to South Africa to deliver the takes time. When it was good and ready, a reader of Caribbean literature is how to that they themselves have not actually rivers of this green island. and Westmoreland and I saw the signpost Nadine Gordimer Memorial Lecture to the poetry came out in that new way in the experienced. To aspiring poets I’ll just quote draw the line between being influenced for “Heartease” through the window of the 5th African Women International Writers’ form of my “Heartease” poems. by a writer, and just making off with an what Miss Lou used to say to me at various Now here I am beached big bookmobile as we were driving through Symposium. Huge congratulations on that. All I’m saying is that sometimes this author’s imagery and style and techniques. stages of my life when my career was not but still breathing. Manchester. I was so moved by the sight Can you take a moment here to talk about writing business writes you more than always moving forward: “Lorna, tek wey yu When does influence become plagiarism in of this place with such a blessed name, what that experience was like for you? you write it, and if that is so, what you creative works? What words of wisdom do get, so till yu get wey yu want”. They say I am the only one that years later I began to write about it As well, you seemed to be saying, in the produce is not going to be dictated by any you have to offer on this issue? About publishing, there are more who can live so, as this mythical place of goodness and lecture that I read, that women’s stories marketplace.