Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
THE GREATEST value in CG Webb-Harris' Jewels In Jamaica ... Visions in Verse lies in the poet's description of the toils of hard-working Jamaicans.
And it is not the Jamaicans of now, as although the poems are not dated they certainly pre-date 1946, when Webb-Harris' poems were first published privately. The founder of Manchester College, he died in 1972 and this reissue of his work on the 100th anniversary of his birth is done by his son, Reggie L. Webb-Harris.
So, from Jewels In Jamaica we get a 'walk-foot' perspective on distance in The Fisherman:
"Are you not tired, Fisherman,
Running with a tray on your
head
For nineteen miles - a fearful
span -
Anxious that people be fed?
All'gator Pond's a long, long
way
Mandeville far up the hill
And yet you climb in every day
Mastering way with your will!"
Of course, there is no need to walk that distance again.
Webb-Harris had a passion for observations on such toils, as he also writes of Vendors ("On a lone and dusty road/Comes a donkey with a load;/On either side the hampers sway/As the donkey starts to bray/The boy and donkey trot together...") and The Stone-Breaker, which begins with "My hammer/I clamour/for you". In Coconuts describes "Little country brother/Climbing so high/reaching for coconuts/Right in the sky!" Like Water Carrier, it is an image that is still with us today. He writes:
"Oh Little Brown lady,
with pan on your head
Carrying water
From the deep river bed..."
A Tropic Hurricane also gives a sense of a time past, as Webb-Harris says, "But soon our people faced an awful plight/The wireless had named a storm at hand". Of course, these days there is television, both local and American, to do that job.
Webb-Harris wrote with clearly defined stanzas, sticking faithfully to his chosen rhyme scheme. However, his poetry gives the overall impression of narrative (there are exceptions) and what he chooses to write about is not often striking enough to make a deep impression without the additional element of deft use of language. In the sense of giving someone who does not know or who is new to 'the islands', in the days before said television, an impression of Jamaica it is all well and good, though.
In the opening poem, a sonnet on Jamaica, Webb-Harris describes:
"Thou sunny garden of a
tropic clime,
Where winter caps not thy blue
hills with snow,
But sunbeams steep thy fertile
plains all time,
And moon beams fain would
soothe away the woe:"
Nothing much has changed about that.
The poet goes over his own education footsteps in In Memoriam At Earlham College (USA) and Magdalen College Tower, Oxford, goes back to the Spanish and Jamaicans fighting over Jamaica with At Rio Bueno AD 1655 and takes the persona of a minute mutt in The Little Dog ("I'm just a little puppy/Trying to be good,/And watching very closely/For any piece of food").
Webb-Harris' main fare, though, is slices of Jamaican life and he draws pictures of The Water-Front,The Poinciana and Night In Jamaica. However, once again many times he is not particularly poetic and while the material may have been informative in the days of the wireless, we're all hooked up now.
As a son's tribute to his father, Jewels In Jamaica ... Visions in Verse is a commendable effort. A poetic gem it is not.
