Different approaches to poetry

(Extract of an interview with Taij Kumarie Moteelall, Georgetown, Guyana, September 2012.  Moteelall is a change agent, poetess and performer. She co-founded Blackout Arts Collective and Jahajee Sisters.)

PP: Poetry is alive, but, over the years, it has undergone various modifications in its format and presentation, retaining most of the basic elements, like rhyme and rhythm altetc. Also, its following has fallen off. What kept your interest in poetry over the years?

TKM: What kept my interest is the fact that poetry and the arts have the potential to awaken the consciousness of a people; to speak of our deepest desires, hopes and dreams; and to foster transformation on a personal level, political level and social level. As an activist and an artist, I use my poetry as a channel for change.

PP: Interesting! What you say could lead us now into various dimensions of poetry. For instance, you are quoted as touting the following opinion – you believe that we could create the world in which we want to live. How are you able to do this with poetry?

TKM: Lovely question. I was influenced by Martin Carter. There is a line from one of his poems that goes like this: ‘I do not sleep to dream but dream to change the world’.
My understanding of that line is that the world is not changeable in its ordinary sense, but if we change the way we see the world, then the world changes with it. So, for me, poetry allows us to (envision) a new way forward; to reimagine the world we want to live in; to reimagine reality, not for the present day but for the future; and to be able to live in it. So that’s how I think we use poetry to create the world we want to live in. If we don’t know what we want, how can we get there? So, much of our revolution(ary) work, our resistance work, our change work has been built on what we are against; what we are fighting for; what we don’t like.  We often don’t spend enough time honing what we are for. So we need to radically reimagine the world, and that’s what poetry and the arts allow us to do. Augusto Boal, the famous artist from Brazil who used theatre to inspire people to advocate for policy change, said that liberation is built on imagination.

PP: Is that the only thing poetry could do – change ideas, attitudes?

TKM: No.

PP: Then why do you write?

TKM: When I started writing, it was more of a personal process. When I started writing, it was to understand myself. I had so many questions as someone growing up in the Indian diaspora, as an immigrant from the Caribbean to New York. I didn’t have any outlets in the school nor in my community to tell me my history or who I (was).  I was lost in the American multicultural society, and poetry became the outlet to search for myself and figure out who I am. In New York, you are always asked who are you, what are you, especially someone that looks the way I am [Indian] and speaks [English] and acts like I do. People can’t really put me in that box. So poetry, at first for me, was a deep, soul searching process….Also, it is a way of questioning ourselves, society.

But there is poetry that I have written and performed on other subjects, like nature and religion, allowing me to see and reflect on the world in which we live – the natural and the supernatural world.

PP: One of your interests, as stated in your thesis ‘Shakti in the Caribbean: Voices of the Indo-Caribbean Woman’, is support for feminist rights.  Have you found anything in your research? I raised this because I would like to focus on the women artists; too often they are left on the periphery, and very often, in many of my projects, I try to lend a helping hand to our sister artists who have so much to offer to the whole conversation.

TKM: That thesis came about after I left New York city, which is a very diverse society, and entered college, which was ninety-six per cent white, with the only people that looked like me [Indian] were Indians from the sub-continent…and many of them spoke the mother language – Hindi and whatever else – so I did not fit in their perception. I fitted in more easily with the Latinos and African Americans. So they kept asking me how did Indians get to the Caribbean? How we lost our language? How could you be Indian if you don’t speak the language? That prompted me to start researching and writing our history. There was very little to go on in respect to the Indo-Caribbean woman. So, being a woman who considers (herself) a feminist, I said to myself I need to find out more about these women, my ancestors. I returned to Guyana, and also went to Trinidad, and conducted oral history interviews, and what I found was fascinating. Even the way the women spoke was pure poetry — the repetition, the rhythm. So I took a lot of what they said and massaged it into poetry and stage play. For me, the voice of the women is there and very strong within the family, and those women played a leading role in building back our culture at a time when it could have been lost. I also found there were many powerful Indo-Caribbean women who were leaders and writers, like Rajkumari Singh, who is one of my heroines; Lakshmi Persaud from Trinidad, who had written several books; and there were lots of women artists. But women were not often heralded as much as Indo-Caribbean men.  I wanted to be a voice and a force bringing the voices of my female ancestors and sisters to the forefront.

PP: I have a fair idea of the damage done by that social construct.

To be continued…

(To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)

What’s Happening:
The current issue of The Guyana Annual magazine will be dedicated to Braithwaite, author of ‘To Sir with Love’. Tributes, reviews of his publications, and related articles are invited for possible inclusion in the magazine. You may also submit poems, short stories and articles of interest. For further information, please contact me at the above telephone number or/and email address.

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