I hear you As I follow your page As a child you woke to light Splashed on walls/ceiling That drew you to lean out Your window to face a beveled, Mirror sea held up to the planed line
Of the horizon That line curls as your voice Joins a queue of waves Taking turns to stand tall, Charge the beach, crash, Tumble pebbles
Your voice for a sea I wade into Drawn out deeper By its tug and pull Until the tide of your voice Soaks every pore Makes a xylophone of my ribs Spine Nails Teeth
Taking me back to our drive in your jeep Up a rutted trail in Jamaica’s blue hills To your small coffee holding Back to your papered New York University flat And your return a stone’s throw from that blue-green
Lightning glass ruled by eyes Ears Nose Tongue of the sea
History poet You sing your way through time From Africa to this Caribbean Basin where some body treads the sea And hands beat a ribbed scrubbing board So your Barbados shines Back at Africa
Your way of skipping stones On wrinkled water for a walk Across the sea To sink thought Spirals sent deep Where all hearts meet Slip time
Kamau Brathwaite famously said, “the hurricane does not roar in pentameters.” His antidote to the sweet tyranny of English pentameter was the ‘tidalectics’ of island living (that upgrades Marx’s dialectics to include race and the specificity of place). His "History of the Voice," his trans-Atlantic slave trade as a limbo dancer’s bequest remade in air by the Sahara Harmattan and the Ghanaian talking drum of his works will endure.
“I'm thrilled by this recognition, and delighted to help celebrate the 10th year of the UNT Rilke Prize. I wrote White Blood for my family, to honor the legacies of my ancestors, and the fact that readers are holding this book close to their hearts means more to me than I can say. I'm filled with wonder and gratitude for this chance to connect."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"Paol taught me how close writing and translating could be, and how both could pull from the deep well of changing landscapes and languages. Part of what drives this work is the way the original physical and cultural landscapes that inhabit our writing are always betraying their translations into poetry. We write the world down, but it doesn’t stay put"
