Words, movements and music served at Jamaica Poetry Festival

The 13th staging of the Jamaica Poetry Festival inside the Louise Bennett Garden Theatre on August 13 was a Sunday dessert of spoken words, songs and movements. And the piece de resistance for the evening was Professor Edward Baugh’s poetic verve and acumen.

Yasus Afari, whose event it is, and accompanied by master drummer Calvin Mitchell, was rebellious, redemptive, patriotic and insightful at the same time. He didn’t differ much from Professor Clinton Hutton, who went there, ancestrally, politically, sarcastically and questioningly.

Jean Lowrie Chin brought nostalgic, but was she the ‘ Jonkunnu Baby’ of which she read? And who was the Chiney man who jumped to her rhythm? Her husband was in the audience beaming. Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett finally exposed his poetic side, with a poem about tourism resilience. What else could it be about? Ras JaJa and Dr Winsome Miller Rowe dished out things on which to ponder and savour.

Musically, 10-year-old Jazzy J, a Jamaican-Canada singer/actress and youth ambassador for the festival, belted the roof off with The Girl is on Fire, and The Impossible Dream ( a cappella) after which she made monetary and material donations to the Jamaica Society for the Blind, members of which were in the audience.

The ‘singing dentist’, Dr Emerson Henry, a St Thomas parishioner, did not ‘kin’ teeth when Tourism Minister Bartlett said something about the road work in St Thomas and month’s end. To help deliver Lord Creator’s Don’t Stay Out Late Dr Henry brought dancers, Karen Wright and the very nimble Silvera Castro, while he was accompanied on guitar for the rest of his set by John Campbell. Jamaica Farewell was in tribute to the Harry Belafonte to whom the event was dedicated, along with Louise Bennett Coverley and Lebanese poet Khalid Gibran.

It was the octogenarian Boris Gardiner who gave the night cap with Don’t Want Have to Tell her a Lie, Someone Love You Honey and Forever My Darling. He told the audience of how his Every Nigger is a Star appeared in flopped movie of the same name, and again, in the 2016 Academy Award Best Picture, Moonlight. It was co-written by his brother, Barrington, now deceased. He closed the show after 10 with his 1986 mega-hit, I Wanna Wake up With You. The dessert was over; breakfast to come.