Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

The mother and daughter pair of Jesam McLaughlin (left) and Zandream Maye perform at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts on Tuesday night.

With two guest poets, Gail Walters and Princeton Ebanks, the October 2006 fellowship of the Poetry Society of Jamaica at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts ended with a double.

However, there was also a double of the mother and daughter kind in the lengthy open mic section which preceded the guest poets' relatively short presentations, the daughter half, Jesam McLaughlin, getting the night off to a good start with the Lament of a Five-Year-Old. Speaking fluently and with confidence, she said "I am running away/I have made up my mind/Don't even try to stop me/If you were my age and living my life/You would be running away too."

The members of the substantial audience around the college's amphitheatre started cheering even before she finished her lament about restrictions and reprimands and there were more cheers a bit later when Jesam's mother, Zandrean Maye, stooped beside her for the two to question of those amplifying the negative "yu cyaan fin' suppen fi big up?"

Trevor 'Mitchie' McKenzie with Backra Maasa I-May with Black and Proud were among those more on the dub side of poetry for the night, at the end of which host and Poetry Society president Tommy Ricketts asked "We no have no good dub poetry left? A pure ranting and screaming and shouting?"

Statement of personal choice

Tanoy made a statement of personal choice with Beat of My Drum, Melissa made an appeal to the Young Mother and Victory did Journey of Wait before Sage and Lynch of LSX, the former making reference to the recent dutty wine attributed death with a well received piece on 'clean wine', then Ganja wrapped up the open mic.

Gail Walters said that she always wondered if she was writing for the sake of writing or writing to be heard, concluding that on Tuesday night she crossed over into the latter. The three-year span between Voice 2003 and Voice 2006 changed the voice from one "forces me to wake up and shake off slumber" to "a soft voice urging you away from ordinary living to a life of danger."

Premeditated Blues took Walters into her love of things old, 'Saucy' examined the misery of the discarded lover with "isn't it hard to see your past lover's future walking past you?" and she concluded with Bloodlines, written for her great-grandmother, who puts her energy into "scrubbing at pots shiny and new - maybe it was only that surface that showed the true you."

Ebanks opened with Melancholy (with apologies to Ziggy Marley) and after Poem Without Words he went across the newest toll road for A Portmore Sunset, where "the hills of Helshire are sublime." In Claustrophobia the walls were within as well as without, as a man hugged a woman and "feels the impatient lurch of the life that keeps him lying there."

Favourite piece

Ebanks ended with his favourite, Dreamscape in Solitude, in which "the horizon, seemingly infinite, curves slightly." He ended to the live poetry with reference to "this strange, dreamy hour" to good applause.

It was not, however, the end of poetry for the night, as a clip of the October staging of 'Spoken', put on by Destiny Promotions, was shown, Duane 'Snyper' Francis and Abebe Payne among those featured.