I was so grateful (and surprised) to have been invited in July, to virtually attend and read a few of my poems with Trinidadian writer and artist Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, at the Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín 2022.
This was my first experience of having my poems translated into another language and that’s such a beautiful thing. The process involved a lot of letting go — not becoming too attached to the poems, trusting the translator and trusting that the vibrational, emotional heart of the poems would be retained, or if not, perhaps even that is OK in its own way too — accepting they are whole new poems and likely to be very different entities to their English relatives. That’s been part of the journey — accepting that the words can be read, interpreted, translated, felt, understood, in vastly different ways than I intended or could ever imagine — just like each one of us — and perhaps every new relationship of poem to person…person to person…creates something new in the union.
I’ve loved the few times I’ve ‘represented’ Dominica at events, through my poetry, but of course I only ‘represented’ the individual me as a tiny fragment of the whole spectrum mix, constellation, of being ‘Dominican’. It was also so good to be part of an event where the English language was not centred — it made me realise how much I expect everything to be in English — expect everything to be understandable to me and feel excluded or uncomfortable if it isn’t — it made me deeply consider those who do not speak English, in a way I hadn’t before, their lived reality in English centric arenas — the audacity of the English language — it also made me appreciate that I could sit comfortably in a space and listen to ‘foreign’ languages (again how even the word ‘foreign’ centres one thing over another), even if I don’t fully understand, there is still something — an energy — to connect with that can be felt and ‘understood’, connected with, on a level beyond language.
You can watch Danielle and myself on YouTube here or on Facebook here.
(My segment starts about 47 minutes in).
Spanish translations of some of my poems here.
Spanish translation of my essay on World Peace, Peace with Nature here.
(Spanish translations by Carlos Flórez)
And the English version below.
World Peace, Peace with Nature Essay
I have been struggling to write this essay. Every day I sit down and face the blank document. I am not an essay writer and so many wonderful wise words have already been shared on the Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín website. Poetry is my preferred literary form for times like this when I have no words; when I have many questions and no answers; when I need to work through my thoughts. For some time now the world has felt incredibly fractured and unstable—precarious and divisive. We appear to be divided in so many different ways and on so many different levels. I have been thinking a lot about whether there is indeed a fatal flaw running through humans. No sooner do we feel a certain amount of order or balance in our lives, or in the world, then things appear to fall apart all over again—normally due to something we have done to precipitate this imbalance. Is this how it has always been? Always will be? Is life, living, just a natural cyclical entropic process of constant chaos then order, over and over? Division and duality appear to be at the root of our very being: the word individual contains divi and dual, although its etymology means indivisible; and soon after conception, the fertilized egg only remains a single cell for a day or so before it begins to divide. I keep looking at the word peace and think, if I say it out loud, it would sound the same as piece. I don’t know how well this sound play on the English words peace and piece will translate in Spanish, but I guess this strange quality of language and words exists in all languages. The complexity of words: how they can be used to effectively communicate with others, but can so often confuse too; how words can bring us together or keep us divided. Perhaps this word sound observation is telling me that my essay about peace, has to start with piece. And perhaps the first pieces I need to start with are the fractures and divisions created and existing within myself—within ourselves. Who is not hurting and in need of healing? Who has not been at one, or both ends of heartbreak—wounded?
When I was 8 years old, in 1976, my family and I migrated from our Caribbean island home, Dominica, often called The Nature Island, to a small town in England. It was a huge culture, environment and climate shock, the impact of which I have only recently become fully aware of. A move from heat to cold on a few different levels; the comfort of community, familiarity and sun, to racism, unbelonging and snow, and naïve me back then, had no clue about so many things. But I was already an avid reader, and more than ever the world of books became a safe place to retreat. One of the books we studied at school was Howards End by English fiction writer E.M. Forster, and for some reason the following quote deeply resonated and has stuck with me as significant words of wisdom, to this day.
“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”
Not only do these words speak to the importance of human connection; connecting to others with compassion, understanding and empathy—with love, but perhaps before we can adequately achieve this we first need to courageously face, acknowledge and connect the opposing elements within ourselves; our internal beasts and monks; our prose and passion. More recently I have been reading some the writings of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. His views on the importance of ‘shadow integration’; bringing the hidden, repressed or denied parts of the Self into conscious awareness; seem to be saying something similar to those words by E.M. Forster. Also, the recent theories of quantum physics seem to be bringing science and spirituality closer together, and perhaps one day the teachings of spiritual leaders, gurus, shamans, indigenous elders, our wise men and women throughout history, that everything is connected, that we are all connected—all entangled—will be proven by science.
A few days ago, a friend sent me a YouTube video of a speech made by Native American Chief Oren Lyons in 2007. Chief Lyons spoke about the Great Peacemaker, an ancestor who had taught the principles for nation peace to the chiefs at that time hundreds of years ago; principles such as justice, equity, fairness, unity, humanity and responsibility. He also spoke about the law of nature; a law beyond us which had no mercy whatsoever; a law which had to be abided or we suffer the consequences. He said, it was ‘wake up time everybody’. I now live back home in Dominica and in 2017, 10 years after this speech, we experienced that uncompromising ‘law of nature’. Dominica, and other islands in the region, were hit by a devastating category 5 hurricane. Hurricane Maria was the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in Dominica and environmental experts regarded it as yet another climate change wakeup call; one that small developing island nations like ours are largely defenceless against. Life after the hurricane was incredibly difficult and complicated; a time of duality and polar opposite extremes of experience and emotions. We saw the best and worst sides of nature and human nature. My poetry collection, Guabancex, was birthed out of the debris of hurricane Maria. Named in tribute to the memory of the indigenous people of the Caribbean, (Dominica is proudly still home to our indigenous Kalinago people), Guabancex was the name the Taino people gave to their supreme female spiritual entity associated with all natural destructive forces and means “one whose fury destroys everything”. But as well as the destructive side of Guabancex, she was also regarded as the goddess of transformation, survival, renewal, and rebirth.
Writing poetry, after things had returned to some semblance of ‘normal’, helped me make some peace with the various aspects of ‘Nature’ that I observed in myself and others; the complex mix of shadow and light; the destructive and constructive; the Ying and Yang elements of human and non-human, internal and external environments. Poetry allowed for a deeper, although not complete, understanding and acceptance of the ‘wow’ still present within the ‘woe’ of what we had survived—what we are surviving still as individuals and collective ‘peoples’ throughout ancestral history.
Total World Peace seems an overwhelming and incredibly daunting challenge to tackle, and the concept of Peace with Nature could be interpreted that we see ourselves as separate from Nature in the first place. But maybe peace, balance, stillness—grace—are our original states of being; our frequency source; our original womb, heartland, home, that we were all ruptured or split from, and to which we are trying to trial and trail our way back to—and at which we may arrive at some turning point in time. And perhaps a starting point might be first and foremost to deal with the pieces of our selves, in order to make peace with ourselves. Just as the division of cells eventually leads to the miraculous formation of a unique human life, perhaps the gathering of our pieces, the healing of our trauma, our wounds, our holes and fractures, the balancing of our own internal opposites, can lead to a birthing into wholeness and peace for, and with, our divided selves. And who knows what a revolutionary act that might be towards World Peace and Peace within the Nature that we are already an intrinsic part of.
May the stillness of Peace and the action of Love be with you and you and you…Peace be with all of us beautiful, fractal, shadow and light, kaleidoscope pieces of being.
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” – Toni Morrison
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