Poetry: Kingston Symphony, MAYBE THE ANTS GOT NETFLIX

Maybe
its me
but it seems
the ants
in
this
post-modern
urban
paradise
have become somewhat
anti-social
Oh they still
venture out
from their mound
Marvels
but the excursions seem
half-hearted
a begrudging run
to the
corner shop
to stock up on
snacks
or maybe
its another duly
ignored
climate change clarion call
The deniers
are in full ascendancy
for now
But
maybe
we might do well
to
canvas the reclining
ants

Their
new found reticence just
may be
offering us
some
vital
tips
at the crest
of our own
Complacency

Poetry: Kingston Symphony [YOU KNOW TOWN?]

You know Town?
Where every
street is an
instrument
where the
Caribbean
is
counterpoint
where one-time
juke joiunts
now serve jerk
from old drum pans
You know Town?
where Ghetto Gaudi proudly
lines up
alongside
Art Deco
where mansions cling preposterously
to marly hillsides
Town
where
handcarts
pose a danger to
Range Rovers
in the market square

You know Town?
where
pedestrians play
hopscotch
with
vending Autocrats
and
suicide
with ruthless
Automobile
Dissidents

where
outlaws are
Heroes
where inescapable
dub
beats
are carried on cannabis
clouds
from burly mountain ridge
to blanket
the
Creative City
elegant
Aggressive
GrittyUncouth
wistful

Town
where taxi drivers
clutch
fistfuls of
Vital fares

Town
the sum
of all
fears
Nigh on 150
years
and still
Becoming

Politicians preach
its 2nd Coming
But are they really
just
trying
to stave off the
Apocalypse

In the Coke vacuum
long-held
enmities
unleashed

You know town?
its really many little
cities
21st Century
fiefdoms
old time battle and border lines
merely
blurred
partisan words
of
hatred slurred
by intoxicating
Luchre
spent
in myriad bars
drawing wretched and
wealthy alike
in retreat from the ochre
glow of another setting
Sun
And even
now
along the Pelican-fleeced
pier
are gathered
Lovers
and would-be philosophers
seeking meaning
amid the murky
industrial
sludge
silently asserting its
right to be
like
Negro Aroused

Entertainment: "Inspirator" Re-Ignites

Roots Dub Poetry Reggae Revival for Schools across Jamaica..

Spearheaded by Charlie Bobus, the Dub poets are seeking your listening ears to travel across Jamaica to spread the positive message to the youths through Dub Poetry in Schools. To make this possible Charlie Bobus is staging a Dub poetry school tour fundraiser at Red Bones Blues Cafe titled Roots Dub Poetry Reggae Revival on April 7, 2017 at 9pm.

Charlie Bobus is a motivational dub poet that was based in Toronto Canada. He was facilitating a Youth Leadership program for the Hariett Tubman Community organization and Art Starts for youths in high risk communities and doing workshops and performances at festivals across Canada.

"Due to the frustration and distress the schoolers across Jamaica are facing they crave motivation through positive messages of hope and inspiration," Bobus points out. "One aim of the school tour is identifying youth leaders to create their visions and influence their peers positively. The tour will identify talented poetic youths for Inspirator Upcoming Youth islandwide Dub Poetry Slam."


Born and raised in the often volatile community of Grants Pen in Kingston where he lived through and struggled with many of the issues facing youths across Jamaica today. He started Inspirator International in 2005 with a mission of "Empowering minds and uplifting youths".

He is particularly concerned about the gang banging in schools. Especially also about the state of mind many school children are left in. Worst now after the wave of bombardment of tragic incidents and serious safety concerns. Poetry can release mental stress plus anxiety
and allow positive thoughts to permeate their minds.

Already confirmed for the school tour are Dub poets Charlie Bobus, Ras Takura, Cherry Natural, Mojiba Ase, Sage and Akuna Matata.

Bobus says school officials are excited about it and anxious to see this tour in their schools. "The response has been overwhelming so please contact if you want your school included".


The Fundraiser will take place at Red Bones Blues Cafe on April 7 and International recording artist Chelsea Stewart and Saxophonist Isax Ins Jah from Canada are fully on board in helping the youths here in Jamaica and are concerned about their state of mind.

The show will also feature Veteran Reggae artists Tinga Stewart who has a new hit single with Fantom Mojah promoting and Reggie Steppa know for his monster hits Little Miss and Modeling and Anju Kat out of the Sly & Robbie Gang. The Dub poets will be representing through Ras Takura organizer of Disword wordz & Agro Fest, Sage, Mojiba Ase and two other Grantspen Dub Poets Akuna Matata and Ras Shaddi. Backed by the Legend Bands. Admission is only $1000.

"The Dub Poet Charlie Bobus set up fundraiser for school tour, Good spirit haffi rise, Care share and Help" said Asher Selecta one of the sponsors from Raspect Wear out of Switzerland. The event is also powered by Island Stage, Rebel Vibes, Cru Clothing, Noble Works, ATAP Production and Carib Newsroom.

Contact: Inspirator International Events Graphics & Publishing
Nicardo "Charlie Bobus" Murray
18764516572 {watsapp}
Email: charliebobus@gmail.com
Facebook.com/charliebobus

Poetry: Freedom, Even to Fall(for Haiti)

The ancestral winds seem
no ally
The capricious Earth seems
to shudder
Continually
prompting cries of
"Why?"
The night seems
24 hours long and the
River
Seems so wide
yet there still is
Another side
Even if
by force flatten
your brow in
 Cheer
A new day draws near
Even as
You swing from sad to
mad with no
difference in feeling
That urge that drive that demand for
Freedom
Even to fall
is the solid yet pulsing
Core
of your
Power
Forever appealing

Literature: Bocas entries Open for 2017

The 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the latest round of the region’s most prestigious literary award, is now open for entries. Sponsored by One Caribbean Media, the prize, now in its seventh year, includes a cash award of US$10,000 for the overall winner and US$3,000 each for two genre category winners.

With past winners including both eminent established authors and talented newcomers, the OCM Bocas Prize is coveted by Caribbean writers all over the world, who qualify by being of Caribbean birth or citizenship.

The cross-genre prize is judged in three categories: poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction. The 2017 Prize is open to books published in the calendar year 2016. The overall winner is selected from the three category winners.

Chairing the distinguished panel of Caribbean and international judges is the celebrated Jamaican literary scholar and poet Professor Edward Baugh, who is joined by ten other internationally based writers, academics, and publishing professionals.

There are two deadlines for submissions: 10 November, 2016, and 11 January, 2017, depending on the publication date of an eligible title.

In the 2016 round, the short fiction collection The Pain Tree by Olive Senior was the overall winner of the OCM Bocas Prize. Other winners in past years have included St. Lucian Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott and Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace.

“This cross-genre prize lines up the best talents, old and new, allowing them to rub shoulders as no other prize does. We are pleased that each year we can signal to the reading public the very finest of what’s on offer from Caribbean writers and help in promoting the work of our wordsmiths, wherever they may live,” says Marina Salandy-Brown, founder and director of the Bocas Lit Fest, the NGO behind the Prize and three annual literary festivals in Trinidad and Tobago.

The 2017 NGC Bocas Lit Fest runs from 26 to 30 April, 2017, at the National Library and the adjacent Old Fire Station, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Title sponsor is the National Gas Company, lead sponsor is First Citizens, OCM is a main sponsor.

Culture: Our Writers Can....

....be as "big" as in well known and influential internationally as our singers.

There was, in the wake of Marlon James' massive Booker Prize win in 2015-16 (shown above), an expected wave of support for Jamaican writers, whether or not they were /are domiciled in Jamaica. James' win dovetailed neatly into similar triumphs for Claudia Rankine (whose book-length poem, Citizen: An American Lyric copped several major awards and nominations both in the US and UK and Kei Miller (immediately below, right), whose similar book-length epic "The Cartographer Tries To Map a WayTo Zion, earned him the UK's Forward Poetry Prize.

Of course, there are many more victories worth savouring from Roaland Watson Grant (immediately below left) whose sly swap trilogy that began with "Sketcher" and continued with "Skid" will soon reach its conclusion with the impending publication of "Nearly Near But Fairly Far"

and poet Tanya Shirley (left) whose two published volumes of poetry to date, "She Who Sleeps With Bones" and "The Merchant of Feathers" continue to be well received her and abroad.

And new names are continually coming to the fore (or re-emerging) form Nicole Dennis-Benn whose less-than-sunny expose of the underbelly of Jamaican life and tourist culture, "Here Comes The Sun"  has been enjoying raves from diverse international presses.

And yet, even with the preceding (and a whole host more that I admittedly haven't mentioned in this missive) there is the sense that the spark is yet to become a fire; there is the concern that Jamaican literature may yet end up like Jamaican film (with apologies to all the great filmmakers now out there: a little too long in the wind and the rain to build the critical mass so needed and even desired. Calabash, the annual* south coast celebration of Jamaican and global writers in tandem is certainly a worthy element (and undoubtedly a catalyst) in this phenomenon, but its not nearly enough in itself. The singers and players had their Trench Town, and even the dramatists had a visible nucleus in the now decaying Ward Theatre and - further "uptown" the Little Theatre and the now defunct Barn. Even the celebrated athletes, always achievers, went to to another level after the establishment of the MVP facility at the UWI (though MVP is obviously not the only worthy athletics centre)

 It may seem excessively nostalgic to be suggesting a salon in this day and age of digital connection, but with social media itself now in some respects saturated and even stratified, the time has well come to "go back to the future" so to speak and develop some kind of physical centre, incubator, hotspot - who knows what to call it for Jamaican writers, not to gather in isolation, but to present themselves to the public in a frequent and meaningful way beyond an annual  festival or even a book launch at the excellent Bookophilia in Kingston or other venues. The nation deserves this, our writers certainly deserve it and the world can certainly stand to receive more great stuff from Jamaica

Arts: Caribbean soul, with verse

Anthony Joseph – Caribbean Roots, review: ‘Provokes and questions through words and music’ by lisaparavisini A review by Simon Broughton for The Evening Standard. British- Trinidadian Anthony Joseph has created a sort of Caribbean Allstars orchestra to accompany his spoken poetry on Caribbean Roots. It’s the saxes of Shabaka Hutchings and Jason Yarde and steel pans of Andy Narell that really ring out as the music absorbs influences from Trinidad, Jamaica, Haiti and the French Antilles. Slinger is a tribute to the great Calypsonian Mighty Sparrow, while Our History is about being tied to the land and revolution. The title track says “set yourself in the soil, put your head in the sky of these Caribbean Roots”. Joseph’s poetry is thoughtful and avoids slogans. He just provokes and questions through words and music.

Arts: Mourning Kay

Kay Anderson received a BA in History followed by a Post Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of the West Indies. She also received an MA in Education from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). The highlights in her career as an educator were her tenures as the acting Dean of the Cultural Training Centre(CTC) from 198-1990 (now the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts), Vice Principal of academic affairs and student matters of the Mico University College from 2001-2008 and then as the Charter Principal of the Hydel University in 2009. She more recently taught part-time at the Edna Manley College. She was also the President of the Jamaica Council for Adult Education (JACAE) and was elected Vice President of the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) in Kenya in 2007.

Kay Anderson was the author of several articles on Jamaican art with a focus on Jamaican intuitive artists and she also lectured on the presence of African retentions in Jamaican intuitive art in the United States of America and Cuba. Her research on this topic culminated in the 2011 publishing of Ancestral Whisperings: African Retentions in Jamaican Art, a book which, quoting the late Dr Nadine Scott, “covers the historical, spiritual, anthropological, cultural, and aesthetic contexts of our ancestral heritage.” As an artist, Kay Anderson exhibited work in several of the the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Annual National exhibitions and her work showed an innovative approach to using non-traditional materials.

Her involvement in the arts was not limited to teaching as she was instrumental in securing the meeting venue in the CTC complex for the Poetry Society of Jamaica, during her tenure at the CTC, from its inception in 1989. She was also instrumental in securing the land on which the Edna Manley College’s halls of residence stand, and contributed to the design of the student housing. Her commitment to the arts, students and culture were officially recognised when she was awarded the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican Government for outstanding Community Service and contribution in the field of Education in 2014.

The National Gallery of Jamaica's team extends its condolences to the family, friends, colleagues and many former students of Kay Anderson.

POETRY: Echosightings, Vol III, STANDOFF

When dissent from
within
grew louder than acclaim
without
When even the clotheslines
betrayed party loyalty
When the crisis of
identity
long simmering hit
critical mass
a nation in need
of a
pause
was instead
left
in suspense
Ink-dipped fingers
announcing hope and defiance in
equal measure
Perhaps just
long enough for the
revelation of the the real
Power

Poetry: Echosightings Vol III, ZERO

Confused Augustus and
Nero
They didn't know
The Way only
Galileo knew to
Look to
The East
For the
Nothing that is all
And had long been
The African's
domain
From Zimbabwe up
to the Nile Delta
In Europe
Cave-dwellers heltah-skeltah
Their minds can't grasp
Infinity
The roundness of
Divinity
The number of
Kings
The prime factor
Generator
of all
things
Idolized
Yet needing no
Worship
Seeking
no approval
An inner energy
Brought to the fore
But who can truly
Fathom the ancient
Lore
The knowledge of
the integral number
Lifted
From a long
Little  disturbed
Slumber

Poetry: Echosightings Vol III: BIRDMAN OF BUILDERS

metal Giants
Frozen in
Their mythical flights
Answering a
Call
To alight on
Rivers
Parks
And Metros
Metallic wings
Gleaming
Like our greatest
Dreams
Snatched
refashioned
And cast before our
Astounded eyes

Poetry: Echosightings Vol III, RAINY SEASON

At nights,
When the marshalling
Clouds
have
scattered or
spent themselves
The sky
throws up an embarrassment
of riches
Myriad stars performing
Over a ghetto
Almost unworthy in
It's indifference
Uncared drains
Uncaringly spew
Manifold 
refuse
Like a burden suddenly
Cast off
And whole
regiments of mosquitoes
prepare for their own
version of D-Day
Shifting from amphibious
Suspense to airborne
assault
Delivering a payload of
Alphabetical bombs

Poetry: Echosightings Vol III, BIER FOR OUZO

When bier is poured
down the throats of unwilling Greeks 
Then trail blazers become
Live-ins;
Wives become whores
Money is everything yet
meaningless
How can a trillion Euro be
anything but a mist to
The Everyman of
Athens
An abstract, like
democracy
around which to build
modern epics

Poetry: Echosightings Vol III, HATESEEKER

You stepped
Into my sanctuary
With your
Puny bullets
now My body
has become a
Velvet-lined
Steel-coated
Missile 
aimed right at
Your Statehouse
You pierced hearts
And spleens
I explode your lies
Smash to smithereens your myths
Of valiant warriors trapped
on the wrong side of
History
Did you not
wonder
Why we welcomed you in?
Did you not think we could
Feel
your cowardly hate?
A date with
destiny
is what you believed
You were on
But it is you
and your hooded
patrons
That were duped
Enjoy the spotlight
while you can
The glare
Of the crossed stars
In your 
Flag
For soon enough
It wiil sear your
Eyes
And while I return
Whole
To the welcoming
Earth
You and your
Flag
will be vagabond
ashes

Poetry: Echosightings Vol III, SPIRIT OF JAMAICA

Don who?
Forty years a 
Daughter of the soil
And yet she had
No clue
So what
Of Alphanso
Tommy
Brevett and
Sterling the last man
Standing
From the era when bands
ruled the musical roost
When spots like
Glass Bucket
Silver Slipper
And La Parisienne
pulsated
To the stratosphere
with that unique
Sound
Through a long-belled
Horn
The reluctant star
Wailed
The sigh of Trade Winds
melded with lapping
Waves
set to the beat of
Resistance
A mystery to the
Insulated
Such as she
Now the beat's
Reverberated
throughout the world
Reaching a new generation
Such as the one
she lays to sleep each night
with foreign lullabies
They're already inured to
canned food of
Overproduced sounds and
empty celebrities
For the parents
unpredictable Don
And his wanton eccentricities
Are a horror show
Worse than
The nightly news
The hidden majesty of
Drummond's blues
Is lost on them
But the little girl
inside the big exec
Knows better
She'd joyously move to
The ska
If only we'd
Let her

Poetry: Echosightings Vol IIISANTIAGO(excerpt )

Medieval drains
Addled by a 1000-proof
Cocktail of liquid shit
Chased with bus exhaust
Leavened by fruits
in a plastic bag
and 3-day old Chinese food
Fit only for 
Dogs and derelicts
Hell-drivers
Play shuffle and deal
with State goons on
Wheels
Wage slaves crammed
5-to a row
Churches like
Ships at anchor
The collared
Conquistadors
Delivering the believers
into varied stages
Of ecstasy
as they extract
their own gold


** full version published in 'Garvey's Ghost" from Emx Books

http://www.amazon.com/Garveys-Ghost-Michael-D-Edwards/dp/1505811236/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456938592&sr=1-2&keywords=Garvey%27s+ghost

Poetry: Echosightings Vol III, ORGANIC ROCKETS

The observed is
The intangible
That which we have
come to accept is deserving of
greater scrutiny
and best able to
sustain it
Just as a tiny seed can
in time unfurl
A thousand trees
And a thousand people
Can morph
into an oak of
Protest
Trunk and branches
scarred by neglect
Rejection
Disdain
Yet defiant
Forcing the architects of
Convention
to either build
around it or
Hack it down
The inner cosmos
spans light years
That can only be bridged by
Organic Rockets

Poetry: Echosightings Vol III,THE SHADOW

The shadow between
2 lights
hosting secret
Lovers
Making
Art of
conjoined hearts and
Lips
Their Arms a
Globe delineated
A world of stolen
Pleasures and hidden
Truths
Just 2 wayward
wayfarers allied
With the night
Exploiting the
shadow
Between the 
lights

Poetry: Echosightings, Vol II, OVUM

For the first was
Put in last
So that the
beauty in
Deprivation could
- like Elijah's cloud -
Overshadow the rot
of complacency

Poetry: Echosightings Vol II, ALIEN NATION

Ensconced behind the
gates
to their glass and concrete towers
From home to 
Porsche
to office
to new favourite
watering hole or
overpriced sky lounge
they go
Walled in
Walled off
A hermetic bubble that
shifts
to 
private beaches
Where they cheerily exploit
Holidays
to which they have no other
connection
They
are foreigners and tourists in
Their own country
An alien nation
oblivious to
the coming bonfire