Local poet, artist and author Nasaria Suckoo-Chollette has been selected to represent the Cayman Islands at Poetry Parnassus, one of the events in the Cultural Olympiad being held in London this summer.
Poetry Parnassus will be the largest poetry festival ever held in the United Kingdom and will bring together poets from each of the 205 Olympic nations to take part in readings, workshops and discussions during the course of a week, between 26 June and 2 July.
Earlier this year, members of the public around the world were invited to nominate up to three poets from any of the Olympic competing nations.
“I got any e-mail from Mr. Bounds, my former geography teacher at Cayman Islands High School and colleague while I was teaching at John Gray. He informed me that he had submitted my name for consideration and had me sent some of my works,” Nasaria says.
Several other Caymanian poets were also put forward and Nasaria was recently notified that she had been selected to represent the Cayman Islands at the poetry festival.
“I was blown away at being accepted,” she says. “I happen to know I was up against stiff competition. I am really excited, most of all to be a part of such a unifying event, with so many writers from so many countries – but also so proud to represent my country as well.”
Poetry Parnassus, which will be held at the Southbank Centre in London, is one of the events that makes up the London 2012 Festival – the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad, a large scale cultural celebration that includes music, dance, theatre, film, food and fashion events throughout the country.
Each of the invited poets will contribute a poem in their own language. The poems from each country will then be presented together in the World Record Anthology.
“I just love the idea of having a week to immerse myself in poetry, to read other people’s works, to learn about life from their perspective and to share mine,” she says.
Nasaria has long been actively involved in all things cultural and artistic in Cayman. Not only is she a talented poet and author, and has published two children’s books, she has also won prizes for her paintings. Writing, she says, is a way to share her heritage and to preserve the Caymanian culture.
The poem that she will be reading at Poetry Parnassus is titled Just Long Celia. Nasaria shared the poem with Weekender:
It was long Celia they called me
Not Ntozake
Or Mamma Zulu
Or even Nanny
Just Long Celia
Just Long Celia longing for freedom
Just Long Celia hoping for home
Just Long Celia free
Unna hear dem drums?
Naseberry sweet dem words was
Just like to bite in
And let dem run sticky down my chin
free free free
Unna hear dem drums?
Dis my Sunday offering
Dis my boxin day dinner
Dis my candle wood
It’s in the wind that’s fidlin through the wattle where the daub has worn away
It’s runnin mad like ants across the table where heavy cake has just been cut
It’s spillin out of hushed lips like drunken men pouring another cup of sea grape wine
Start a revolution…
Take a puff and pass it around
Unna hear dem drums?
You can’t kraal my spirit but for a little time
I feel the light you cannot see
And I will swim back home to lay my clutch
Where I began to be
And iron wood don’t sink
Unna hear dem drums?
Sarah, you gyapseedin duppy
You a blackgyardin tell-tale dead woman
You lie
And 12 white ghosts are fighting over my pickins in fifty lashes
I a woman
I a free woman
I a naked woman
I a torn an tattered woman
Buy you still cyant break open my cockspur thorny shell
And memba what happen when ya rub a “nicka” wrong.
Wake up its morning
You still tied to that dock
One knot away from
Walking on water
You still taking lashes from
That raging monster
Whose rib you took
You still fighting the refection
You see in your basin
That is me
Wake up!
Lick dem drums Julia,
Lick dem drums
Related Videos
