By Neil Armstrong
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| Poets Lorna Goodison and Canisia Lubrin at the 43rd Toronto International Festival of Authors at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto |
Poet Lorna Goodison says one of the women she writes about in her new book of poetry, Mother Muse, “tek a set on me” to tell her story and so with that intense persuasion she had to accede.
This was what she shared in an interview with fellow poet Canisia Lubrin in October at the 43rd Toronto International Festival of Authors at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.
In her first poetry collection to be published in Canada in over nine years, Goodison celebrates a wide cross-section of women — from Mahalia Jackson to Sandra Bland but focuses on “two under-regarded “mothers” in Jamaican music: Sister Mary Ignatius, who nurtured many of Jamaica’s most gifted musicians, and celebrated dancer Anita “Margarita” Mahfood.”
“These important figures lead a collection that seamlessly blends the personal and the political,” notes a synopsis of the book.
Goodison reimagines the lives of Sister Ignatius, Anita Mahfood and Don Drummond and in so doing creates a history lesson of their connection to Jamaican music and the important roles they played in it — and how the paths of Sister Iggy and Margarita may have crossed. She brings them to the fore early in the collection in the poem, ‘New Year’s Morning 1965,’ which references the killing of Mahfood, Drummond’s role in it, and Sister Ignatius’s work at Alpha Boys School:
Sister Iggy, as deejay, played the speeches of Malcolm X
for young Black men she helped master musical instruments.
Hail Iggy’s students taking our own home-grown music
all over the known world! She loved Don like her own.
In ‘The Poet and Margarita,’ the poet is in a state of uncertainly regarding whether she should write about Margarita.
No disrespect my sistren
I do not want to write
about you.
I’m done with your tragic
woman story.
But the poet is compelled to write, especially after hearing from Margarita that:
It’s because you are
so easy to cry
I want you
to tell them
for me.
Goodison explores police brutality, colonialism, emancipation, the current reckoning with issues of race and racism, matters affecting the Windrush Generation in Britain, and shares nostalgia too for times/occasions/places such as Christmas Market, Good Friday, and her now defunct primary school, All Saints, and a childhood friend.
Mother Muse is published by Signal Editions , the poetry imprint at Véhicule Press. It was nominated for the Derek Walcott Prize in 2021.
In March 2023, Véhicule Press will publish another book by Goodison —Redemption Ground: Essays and Adventures.
“In her first-ever collection of essays, poet and novelist Lorna Goodison interweaves the personal and political to explore themes that have occupied her working life: her love of poetry and the arts, colonialism and its legacy, racism and social justice, authenticity, and the enduring power of friendship. Taking its title from one of Kingston's oldest markets, Redemption Ground introduces us to a vivid cast of characters and remembers moments of epiphany—in a cinema in Jamaica, at New York's Bottom Line club, and as she searched for a Black hairdresser in Paris and drank tea in London's Marylebone High Street. Enlightening and entertaining, these essays explore not only daily challenges but also the compassion that enables us to rise above them. They confirm her as a major figure in world literature,” notes a synopsis of the book by the publisher.
Goodison was Jamaica's Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2020 and was the recipient of The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2019.
She is the author of numerous books of poetry and short fiction. Her acclaimed memoir, From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People was a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize and the Trillium Award, and won the B.C. Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.
Her Collected Poems appeared in 2017. She lives in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia.
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