Sounding ground / Vladimir Lucien.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lucien, Vladimir, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Saint Lucian poetry (English).

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

73 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Leeds : Peepal Tree, 2014.

Summary:

Vladimir Lucien's poetry is intelligent, musical, gritty in observation and graceful in method. You can see a young man building his house of poetry, just as his poems reflect on building a marriage and making his home. The world where he builds his house, St Lucia, has deep fault-lines of class and culture, with two languages - English and the French patois of the people; a society confronting the legacies of colonialism and the impact of tourism and global capitalism. While Lucien's poems are never abstractly or overtly political, there is often a witty and self-reflective politics embedded in them. He builds his house with stories of ancestors, immediate family, the history embedded in the language choices of a St Lucian writer, reflections on the submerged belief system of Tjenbwa, and heroes such as Walter Rodney, CLR James and a local steelbandsman. This is a collection that is alive with its conscious tensions: between divergent family visions of respectability and revolt, tradition and modernity. It is enriched by an instinctive humanity that encompasses socially aspiring ancestors, an authoritarian headmaster and the rebellious children of the poor - the "negative elements" of the squatter settlements. There is, too, amidst a young man's zest in life, a tender awareness of the inescapability of the frailty of age. In the music of the poems themselves, there's an enlivening counterpoint between the natural rhythms of Creole speech and the metric organisation of the line and its patterns of sound. Book jacket.

Contents:

Interior

Sambo I 11

Donbwé 12

My Grandmother's Mind 13

Medium 14

Basil 15

Stone 16

The World of Flat Things 17

Bush Tea 19

A Picture 20

Ital 21

The Last Sign of the Cross 22

The Story of Toutouni 23

Overseer: Good Hair 24

Overseer: Detention 25

Overseer: Ranks 26

Overseer: Epilogue 28

Black Light 29

At the Grave of C.L.R. James 30

The True Sounds of Numbers 31

Tjenbwa: Neophyte 32

Tjenbwa: Night-shift 33

Tjenbwa: Protean 34

Tjenbwa: Kokma 35

Tjenbwa: Gwan Bwa 36

Tjenbwa: Devil's Bridge, Morne Lezard 37

Tjenbwa: Sacrifice 38

Tjenbwa: Ethnography 39

Centipede 40

Home 41

Horn 42

Rainfights 44

Pastoral 45

Coast

To Celebrate St. Lucian Culture They Put On Display 49

Mi Jean 50

Reduit Beach 51

Declaration 54

Crane 56

Circle 58

Sambo II 60

Corbeau 61

Death of a Steel Rassman 62

For Jorel 63

Sambo III 66

Small Island 67

The Lights 69

Ebb I 70

Ebb II 71.

ISBN:

9781845232399

1845232399

OCLC:

872986870

Publisher Number:

99959155409