WORLD POETRY Day did not do without a contribution of stanzas from Jamaica, as the day - or, rather, the night - was marked at the Flashes Nightclub in Baron's Plaza on Constant Spring Road in St. Andrew.
While there was a contribution of guitar and song from Kazzam and Ilah, as well as an extended deejay combination of Gender and Shade, the main focus was on poetry at the second staging of 'Gone Underground', which happens every Monday night at Flashes.
BACKING REGGAE TRACK
Sage was the host and he started the poetic ball rolling with a determination to escape "this poetic box", utilising a backing reggae track. He followed by expressing his "world view/point of view".
The audience grew to a double handful as the night wore on, one poet who doubles as an interior decorator delivering the observation 'A So It Set Up' to a backing reggae track.
Payne strung together flashes of images in a strong performance, his often lengthy pieces striking home with the audience, which erupted into spontaneous cheers during his performance. Moving back and forth on the small performance area, Payne hailed Negus and settled quickly into his first piece, which covered the topic of work, advising all to "get yu limbs dem limber". "Nuff waan fish/no waan fishin' line/say line too long/no want long line," Payne said.
There were cheers as he took a verbal stroll into the dancehall with talk of "bus a slow wine", before he ended with "take it easy no man", to cheers.
The connection between labour and reward was underscored in his second poem, in which Payne stated "work is worship/by my duties I get my dues". And he had strong words for the idle talker, who is "speaking without meaning", requesting that he "make me wash off yu face wid antiseptic verbs".
Religion got powerful hammering in Payne's next poem, in which he continued to find and use the hidden meanings in words. "Dem building bridges/dem a no mason/dem Masonic", Payne said to applause.
A JUDGEMENT
Lynch, a white towel wrapped around his head, delivered the poems "as dem come to me". "When a man call himself poet, is like a judgement him call pon himself," Lynch said, easing into "I talk Rasta poetry/not for the rich/but for the poor". There was appreciative applause as Lynch said, "dem tek de just and sell yu de ice."
An election day poem, related to the massacre of seven persons in Rock Hall in the last general election, commented on the voters "dipping fingers into blood?. I mean ink"; on 'Ivan' he spelt out the name of the tempest in poetic fashion.
Lynch then moved into new material, some of it unfinished, feeling it in the One Drop then demanding "you call this poetry?" in the context of weighty events.
Nabby Natural settled into a chair to give the mature poet's seal to the World Poetry Day celebration. He recalled Mikey Smith with a heartfelt 'lawwwwwd', gave an extensive explanation of the theory of the nine and collected poets verbally from Jamaica (Cherry Natural, Blacka Ellis, Osakwe), the United States (Malachi Smith), Canada (Lillian Allen, Michael St. George) and England (Benjamin Zephaniah).
He delivered his own demand of "how long it a go last, how long", saying that it was on the Heartbeat Records various artistes album from 1981, hailing Mutabaruka as the number one producer of dub poetry in the world, to strong applause.
