From special moments to inner thoughts as well as poems she has written throughout her life, local artist Annikki Hill has penned her first book, ‘Signs of Us’, an exploration of Caymanian identity through poetry and art.
She was inspired to write the book after being invited to share her poems at a symposium in 2021. “In gathering my poems from various diaries over the years, I realised I had hundreds of poems, enough to fill a book or two,” Hill told the Cayman Compass.
A journal writer since she was 8, Hill said she had created a large-enough body of work to curate for her first book, which she envisioned as “an unmasking of the Caymanian identity”.
Hill said she’d wake up every morning to jot down reflections and poems. “Some years I will write a poem a day, some years I won’t write any. When a poem comes to me, it’s usually out of nowhere and I have to rush to find a pen before I lose it.”
Her most recent poem was written just a few weeks ago. “[It] came to me in the shower. The first line was ‘I have enough pockets to hold my brother’s grudges…’ I remember cutting off the water, wrapping myself in my towel, and running to get a pen and paper before it slipped [from] me.
“I wrote the poem beginning to end, dripping wet, without any need for editing. Perhaps it will make it to the next book. But many of my poems would come to me spontaneously like this, and some of them even came from dreams I had to piece back together from memory upon waking.”
‘A toehold in’
“There is very little written about the history of Cayman, and almost nothing speaking to who Caymanians are in this age and in my generation,” she said. “In sharing my work, I became painfully aware of the silence and how much is pent up, ignored, or reserved for private dining room or domino table conversations.”
“There is an undercurrent of grief, rage, reverence and faith that the Caymanian people [are experiencing] in the 2020s that has not been recorded. This is the space that my book has a toehold in.”
Featured in the 99-page book is “a poem for every Caymanian mood”, Hill noted. Although her favourite poem changes from time to time, her choice at the moment is ‘Hurricane Prayers’, “in which I dissect the hypocrisy of people who go to church and pray for salvation from a hurricane but make decisions based on more secular and corporate thinking once the danger has passed, that sets them up for more disaster in the future storms”.
Courageous
Hill said the poems are “very strong, raw, and unfiltered, and none of these poems were written to be shared, but [when] I was invited to share my work, I had the choice: Do I clean this up and make it more palatable for the world, do I mask the way so many of us do when we go to work?
“I chose to be courageous in that moment and to express the feelings I had felt myself, or the feelings that had been shared with me over the domino table, the Easter campfire, or the fishing trip or at brunch.”
She added, “I’m saying the words Caymanian people say to each other, sharing the thoughts many are afraid to share, and I have no doubt that I speak for my generation and a good chunk of Caymanians living through this time.”
Hill said she hopes readers, particularly Caymanians, will take from this book, “the experience of being heard, represented and having a voice. I hope visitors and residents will take from it a sense of understanding and a sense of place and context. I hope our leaders will take from it a call to listen to their people. Overall, this book is a love letter to my people,” Hill said.
‘Signs of Us’ is available at The Book Nook and on Amazon on Kindle.
A book launch will be held next month, with the date to be confirmed. Hill will also take part in signings and readings.
For more on Annikki Hill, go @annikkihillwrites on Instagram or TikTok.
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