lise@ttol.co.tt

The power of the word

We Trini and ’Bagonian like to talk. We like words and debate and picong and old talk, any hour of any day. Imagine the Roman Catholic Church, where it does have a 15-minute sermon, getting leave out all over the place for Pentecostal and full-gospel church, where the short service does be two hours—and most of that is the pastor talking.

It have a fancy name for it: we is a oral society. That mean we does pass we history and we information on by mouth more than by paper.

That is one reason I glad that we finally coming into we own with the poetry thing.

I writing poetry since I small and performing what I write since I was 17. Remember Teen Talent? Well, when I was in secondary school I always regret that I never went on Twelve and Under and Aunty Kay, so I band my belly and went by Aunty Hazel to audition.

I remember I went there with a Rudder song to try and get on by singing. Halfway through the first verse Uncle Maurice stop playing and Aunty Hazel ask me, “What song is that again, dear?”

She ask me if I didn’t have nothing else I could of do. I say, well, I does write poems. She say, why you don’t go over there and practise one and come back and try with that instead. (She was so kind, she didn’t come right out and say I couldn’t sing to save my life.)

So I went and do my poem and the rest, as they say, is history. I doing my poetry all up and down T&T since then, even in Canada and in America when I went.

When I start performing my poems it was a strange thing for people to hear this one voice doing a poem that wasn’t funny or too long. Somehow people like them and I myself find it was a nice thing to do.

In time, I get to meet other people who used to write and read poems, like Paula Obe, who was doing she poems with a guitar in she hand, and Bro Resistance, who does do he poems in a rapso style, and Ozy Majic (however he spelling he name now), who was just writing poems in Infinity pub on campus when I first meet him.

I had plenty friends from school too who was in poetry, and we strive together and some of them drop it by the wayside and some come and get real boss, like Anu Lakhan, until I doesn’t really consider myself in their league anymore.

Some of we start a little movement to get people to come to see poetry performances and it now bearing fruit in a big way. Every time you turn around it having a open mic poetry show and it have some people who now real big in the dance in that scene. Woman like Dara Njeri, who does do conscious hip hop poetry to a wicked backbeat, or Ivory, who coming to be a real voice of resistance and rebellion in this growing poetry cafe society we have these days.

Word Sound and Power is a next name you bound to hear call when people talk about the “underground” poetry scene. They not easy, nah, talking about how it feel to be a young man in this place. When they perform in the 3Canal show last year Carnival if you hear the audience bawling!

I saying underground but watch nah, it ent going and be underground for long.

Tomorrow please God in Strand it having a poetry show name The Word, put on by Songshine and Relevant Theatre. Songshine is one of them open mic show that blowing up with these young people; it does be every first Sunday up in St Augustine. Relevant Theatre is a theatre company that produce a good couple shows in the past year or two, including I am Risen, a Easter play they put on last year.

Let me say it one time: Gillian Moor, the woman behind the Songshine shows, is my real horse, so you done know I backing she up. But is not no mamaguy thing. June go make two years since Gillian putting on Songshine and believe me when I say it not easy to bring out a show like that.

It does have nights when your main guest call you and say they fall down and they can’t get up and is salt for you; it does have nights when is you and the barman and your brother alone inside the place and only a set of chairs watching you in your face.

Sometimes you does feel like all you doing is folly—poetry? Poetry, boy? Why I bussing my tail to put on this show for? Like nobody don’t want this, not even the poets self.

Then sometimes you does get a magic night when everything fall in sweet sweet and the house pack, standing room only, and the lyrics flowing like rum in St James on a Friday night. Them nights does give you the belly and the heart to keep going.

I wishing Gillian, Songshine and Relevant Theatre have one of them nights, the magic ones, tomorrow, please God, at Strand.

The Word, a Celebration of Poetry and Rapso, in commemoration of World Poetry Day, takes place tomorrow, April 1, at the Strand Theatre, Tragarete Road, Port-of-Spain, from 6.30 pm. The cast includes Ozy Majic, Chike Pilgrim and Muhammad of Word Sound and Power, Gabrielle Hosein, Ivory, BC Pires and Ataklan. For ticket information call 623-5108, 760-4655 or 708-3793.

Another friend of mines, the Rev Clifford Rawlins, having the first of a series of fund-raising concerts of classical and religious singing, tomorrow, too. He show name King Ever Glorious. It taking place at St Jude’s Anglican Church, King Street, Arima, from 5 pm. Tickets is $100 and proceeds go to a worthy cause.