Appraisal
of LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago
by
Pearl Eintou Springer, National Poet Laureate at LiTTribute to the Republic,
September
5, 2012.
In fevered rush
To share
I thrust
A flood of words
At closed unwilling minds
With joy
Watch those minds
Yield
Slowly,
Hesistantly
Then,
With warm rush
of response
sweetened
my unaccustomed pleasure
come back
for more and more
Awesome power
gives shape
to minds,
staunches thirst
with words
that walk
the perched words
of ignorance
These
words were written by me as a young poet/librarian, in my wish to express the
urgency and anxiety I felt about sharing my love of my national literary
patrimony; and, my feeling that a critical element of national development and
a sense of patriotism, was/is a national involvement with, and love for this
patrimony.
Let us
explore the functions of a people’s literature and why it should be celebrated.
I will look at them from the point of my own experiences.
From the
age of eight I was a prodigious reader of European fiction. I was steeped in the writings of Dickens,
Dostoevsky, Zola, Shute, Shakespeare, Baldwin, Hardy, the Lake poets. Consequently, in my dreams, my blackness
disappeared, and I was white with flaxen curls, flowing behind me as I ran
through fields of daises and buttercups – in full colour. On my first visit to England, I made sure to
make the mandatory literary pilgrimage of the anglophonic bibliopile by
visiting Holmes at Baker St, the Lake District; Stratford – Bronte House. I could almost hear Heathcliff turn in his
grave and steups at this little black girl calling his name as I walked the
Yorkshire moors. We all know the
wonderful – Wuthering Heights.
My love
affair with my literature began at St. George’s College, where Gloria Valere,
the daughter of the great Lord Constantine introduced me to Colour Bar, (one of
his books). This was my first
introduction to the notions of race and colour that I was living,
experiencing. It was to elucidate for
me, the alieness from self engendered both in what I was the reading and the
societal that I was living. Aubrey Garcia introduced me to Caribbean
History. I met, through their work,
Naipaul, C.L.R. James, Selvon, all of whom I was later privileged to know
personally. So, the experience of
Caribbean literature was an awakening of my self knowledge, and the erosion of
the invisibility and lack of recognition that the society had given me.
When I
first joined the library services as a young girl of 19 (clearly many years
many years ago) my color and grassroots derivatives made me unsuitable for desk
work. So, I was hidden away in the small
choky room that housed the West Indian collection. I read and read and deepened the process of
getting to know me begun at St. George’s. When I worked the late shift, my only
point of interaction with readers, I began to proselyte. I tried to introduce people to Selvon,
Mittelholzer, Hearn, Lamming, Carew, the poets Jagdip Maraj, Faustin
Charles…these amongst many others.
Many
times I got negative responses “but that is bad English” they would say of
Selvon’s beautiful Calypso prose when they allowed themselves to be seduced
into reading our Caribbean writers there was the inevitable recognition of
village, community, tanty, uncle…
My own
experiences clearly illustrate the importance of ones literature to sense of
self, to self worth, to cultural literacy; to analyzing, evaluating; to being
pregnant with ideas about the inherent possibilities of shaping, reshaping our
population. For me this is not only an
ideological or philosophical position, but a lived reality. And let me here make the point, that our
literature is not merely confined to pages in books, but to our kaiso, our
pichikaree, chutney, stick fight lavways, our Traditional Mas speeches, midnight
robber, pierrot, Black Indian, warao; our great variety of drum beats, folk
songs, chants…
I have
been using our literature, our poetry, our plays, storytelling, music, to
impact and refashion negative behaviours since the mid 80s in the UK, in the
USA, other Caribbean islands and at home.
I have seen positive improvements in grades, sense of self, values.
Our
curricula still entrench the notion of our invisibility in our own nation
space. Most of it and certainly the
manner of teaching bear doubtful relevance to the needs of our children and
youth. We are cursed with leadership in
many facets of this society which is dangerously culturally illiterate. As we celebrate our jubilee year we have not
properly celebrated our writers, our musicians, our artistes, the poetry of our
patriotic calypsos, our literature is what records, carries the wisdom of our
ancestors, the pains of the then and now and possibilities for the future. Our literatures reflect and can reshape the
soul of the nation. Surely, we have
produced more than Machel Montano, wonderful as he may be. How can we as a nation be satisfied with the
crast mediocrity of so much of our jubilee celebrations while our writers, our
poets, our playwrights, our storytellers go unsung. We have a nation to build; children to rescue
from the clutches of crime; children to turn into patriots, children to teach
self-love, children to teach to be discerning, contemplative, critical,
knowledgeable of the beauty of our nation language even as we master the
formality of the English. Children to teach
English language, children to teach to appreciate our flora, our fauna, our
forest, to treasure and protect and our environment; children to teach our
history; as told from our perspective in our literatures; children to teach the
greatness of civilizations from which we have come so that we can truly begin
to create a society where there is the elimination of the fear of difference
and not the anonymity of the blurring of rainbow colours.
We need
programmes in our schools that explore the fullness and richness of our society
through our literatures, through specially targeted programmes. More police; more jails. They have their
place no doubt but human beings young and impressionable need a collision with
self a flowering of patriotism that I know our literatures can give. We do not need anyone from the lynching
states of the southern USA to teach our children values when they are imbedded
in our stories, our sayings, in our festivals of meaning, our dramas…our
Ramleelas, our Ebos, our chants, our bhajans.
We need to learn from Anthony in ‘Green Days by the River’ to love again
to smell of fresh coconut oil in our hair, to learn from Lovelace the
indomitable courage of resistance and to appreciate the swing of our melodious
behinds.
As we
celebrate our fiftieth anniversary we are faced with the crassness and
vulgarity of the first custom built, library building in the region, the
Trinidad Public Library, built around the turn of the century, from whose
hallowed halls the voices of Eric Williams, Don Basil Matthews, Samuel Selvon,
George Lamming, Leroi Clarke, CLR James, voices have echoed, now standing
derelict. Built since 1901 it stands as
testimony to our cultural illiteracy.
The top floor of NALIS, our National Library, has been given over to government
offices. WHAT THEY DOING THERE???????????
Let it
be clear that I believe as trinbagonians our humanity entitles us to claim and
enjoy all literary, artistic, creative expressions of all peoples. Today is
another opportunity to begin again and recommit to our youth, as I give my
compliments to this project. It is an opportunity to commit to our own literary
tours, to celebrate our literatures in our schools, in our communities as a
necessary prerequisite to our development, to heal our self-schism, to
By centered heritage
Give
our people light
Ignite
Sparks
For
imaginings
New
beginnings
There is a word
Running through
my head
It does not let
me sleep
It drives me from
my bed
It is a word
Crying out
against
My Invisibility
Longing to testify
To my humanity
And that word
Now fills my
world
With Creativity
Possibility
No comments:
Post a Comment