Hello
Family!
Yesterday I
read a piece that Jamaican Dr. Honor Ford-Smith wrote about visiting the
birthplace of her countryman, author and poet Claude McKay (1889–1948), and I
was blown away by this portion:
“There
are so many places like this dotted around the region. So inspiring they take your breath away and
so lovely they drown out all the bickering and the bad mind and the fashionable
cynicism and there is much to be cynical about but when you go there you feel
as if you are rooted in the energy of the forces that speak through the voices
that call out the remaking of the world.”
I got to thinking about the power of place in our family’s history… evidenced compellingly by the return of two of Aunt Thelma Punnett Kirkwood’s children, Mickey and Maureen, who left St. Vincent as children for South Africa.
I’ve always
been taken aback when people claim to become so used to their surroundings as
to lose awareness of them. Growing up as the third generation of Punnetts to
live in our Valley, it seemed to me that we were always acutely conscious of,
and grateful for, the magnificent landscape that was the backdrop to our lives.
Whether it’s
- the thrill of
the mist descending from the mountains towards us at Twenty Hill
- the cool and
thrum of the water in the exterior pipes as I clambered up them barefoot into
my parents’ bathroom
- the verdant
magic of walking in the forest at Dallaway within earshot of the trickle or
rage of the river
- the first art
project of my life, looking for images in the cliffs and evening clouds of
Byahaut
- a moonlight
walk in the Valley
- the purely
glorious vista from Acres, or
- the stirring
of return as I hit the Rillan Hill church and saw the Valley open ahead…
the beauty of
the Buccament Valley is with me in the most visceral of ways, wherever I am,
and I believe that to be true of us all who grew up there.
Our family is experiencing the fourth century of an ever-changing island, and some of those changes have been hard to bear. I always have in mind what Daddy used to say about his own father, who he claimed was a man who embraced change and even believed we would one day get to the moon! Honor’s powerful words feel full of hope and vigour, and a reminder that our world has been remade before, and can again be remade for the greater good, and that failures and flaws are not the single story of our family, our Valley, or our Country. May we be “rooted in the energy of the forces that speak through the voices that call out the remaking of the world.”
Our family is experiencing the fourth century of an ever-changing island, and some of those changes have been hard to bear. I always have in mind what Daddy used to say about his own father, who he claimed was a man who embraced change and even believed we would one day get to the moon! Honor’s powerful words feel full of hope and vigour, and a reminder that our world has been remade before, and can again be remade for the greater good, and that failures and flaws are not the single story of our family, our Valley, or our Country. May we be “rooted in the energy of the forces that speak through the voices that call out the remaking of the world.”
The Melisizwe Brothers - Welcome to St. Vincent & the Grenadines
Skinny
Fabulous, with Rodney Small on pan - This Island is Mine
Just fuh so,
this poem by the politician and writer Phyllis Shand Allfrey, sister of
Dominican Celia Frost (wife of Bajan Frostie who came to work with Cable &
Wireless and later was editor of the Vincentian).
Love for an island
Love for an
island is the sternest passion;
pulsing beyond
the blood through roots and loam
it overflows
the boundary of bedrooms
and courses
past the fragile walls of home.
Those nourished
on the sap and the milk of beauty
(born in its
landsight) tremble like a tree
at the first
footfall of the dread usurper –
a
carpet-bagging mediocrity.
Theirs is no
mild attachment, but rapacious
craving for a
possession rude and whole;
lovers of
islands drive their stake, prospecting
to run the flag
of ego up the pole,
sink on the
tented ground, hot under azure,
plunge in the
heat of earth, and smell the stars
of the
incredible vales. At night, triumphant,
they lift their
eyes to Venus and to Mars.
Their passion
drives them to perpetuation:
they dig, they
plant, they build and they aspire
to the eternal
landmark; when they die
the forest
covers up their set desire,
Salesmen and
termites occupy their dwellings,
their legendary
politics decay.
yet they
achieve an ultimate memorial:
they blend
their flesh with the beloved clay.
Family, ah
begging yuh, leave us some comments about the Valley moments small or huge,
that live with you. I’d just love for us
to share those indelible moments with each other. Pretty please… with icing sugar…
Are there
places or experiences that “…take your breath away and … drown out all the
bickering and the bad mind and the fashionable cynicism…”? Tell us, please…
One
more piece of music by Vinci Skinny Fabulous with some regional cohorts, filmed
in the homeland.
Skinny
Fabulous, Machel Montano & Bunji Garlin - Famalay
One love,
Lisbie x
“Diversity may be the hardest thing for a
society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be
without.”
William Sloane Coffin Jr.
For a lagniappe, as Trinidad and Louisiana folk say, here's a poem of Claude McKay’s that might especially resonate with those of us in the diaspora…
The Tropics of New York
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger root
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,
Sat in the window, bringing memories
of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical skies
In benediction over nun-like hills.
My eyes grow dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
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