By Mel Cooke, Freelance WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
THERE WERE heartfelt words from a quartet of poets at 6 Easton Avenue in St. Andrew on Saturday night.
Gaile Walters, Anna Brown, Nichole Burgher and Owen 'Blacka' Ellis showed the versatility of verse, performing at 'Alter Native An Evening of Poetry, Drumming, Music and Possibilities'.
Gaile Walters, introduced as being totally new to the stage, read poems that showed she was certainly not new to the page. "As virgins are wont to be I am somewhat shy," she said, her low cropped red hair topping off a grin.
HAIR
She started off with her crown, doing Hair. "As you can see, I do not have much hair. It took me a while to get to this," she said, getting into a poem about the trials, tribulations and temperatures of processing her hair and then the reactions after it was cut, dismissing the critics with:
You have written no cheques with me as payee
It is not the outside but the inside
Of my head that is free
Seven Strangers brought took a literary look at her 9-5, commenting that there is Another log thrown on the pyre/From which burns the flame of justice.
She then moved on to her favourite topic, all four letters of it. Love. Saucy looked at the agony of exes (Is it hard to see your past lover's future walking past you?); Old Love was a touching expression that I want nothing more than to have loved you/and on the day I die I will be satisfied. One Month Later was a mostly humorous look at the 'maybe pregnant' state, but the kick was in the tail as When today I saw red/Jesus may have laughed/But I wept.
Infidelity and an untitled poem completed Gaile Walters' love offerings and she closed with Nina for Nina Simone.
"Thank you! Deflowered!" she said, leaving the stage with a grin.
There had to be serious microphone adjustments (downward) for Anna Brown, coming after the tall Walters. There was no need to adjust expectations of good poems, though, Brown beginning with The Hair on The Black Woman's Head, which detailed the struggles and expense involved in taming it. There was laughter as the payment to processors was transformed to payment to natural hair stylists and, Though our cane rows would be so tight/Our cheeks would seem stretched to our hairlines/The bottom line is we looked pretty'.
Brown described History as a "wanton slut", among other such complimentary names, and moved on to Dead Traffic Light, written in the time between a red and green light as the poet observed a discard of technological progress.
The Reasonings of Ras Hamlet To Itself brought lots of laughter; Running looked at the relationship between poet and poem (Why running? Because poetry leaves you breathless.), concluding Dare I call myself a poet/ When all I do is make mad love to my words?
THE DOWN SIDE OF LOVE
Nicole Burgher opened on the down side of love with No Me, about a man taking his partner for granted Like the faulty faucet you notice only when it drips, concluding Maybe if I disappeared you would notice/No me.
The Wrong Question was an apt follow-up, looking at infidelity from the woman's point of view, who does the deed because He makes me laugh/He takes me dancing/And always face to face.
Burgher veered into race issues with a poem inspired by a headline in THE STAR about bleaching. Enter Stage Wrong was bare of theatrics, even as it commented That black is too sure/The director said with a frown/We need a more ambivalent brown.
Reading without dramatics from small pieces of paper, Burgher's poetry was wishful and wistful with More Than Words (I would trade them for a single word/Revolution perhaps/Maybe love). She read a poem to a man who possibly was a lover Once in a former life, before coming closer to the present in a "coming of age poem" in Leaving Cave Hill.
She ended with Mute, a silent scream of desire in which the poet's mind wandered during ordinary conversation to Other things/Like how would it be/If we ever got to your place/Or mine. I want to tell you everything/But I am mute with desire, Burgher concluded.
Owen 'Blacka' Ellis was not in a laughing mood with his poetry not until the very end, starting out with a look at the 'tough' men who "wet up sun, bun up rain" and succumb silently to their pain. Tick Tock was taken from a play of the same name; Play The Game reflected on freedom, asking "who free, who dumb?". An Anansi poem which won a silver medal from the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) (I come too far/I live too long/To bury my story/And sing your song) led up to a side-splitting end with Gateman.
