Humour, history, 'hmmm'

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Saturday afternoon's (June 26) reading at Kingston Bookshop, Knutsford Boulevard, New Kingston, was a two-woman affair with Tanya Shirley saying, after she ended that reading with Joan Andrea Hutchinson, she knew she had to "step up".

It was a high-standard affair before an audience that grew as the afternoon went on, with many a laugh, Hutchinson going into folk history as she read from Kin Teet' Kibba Heart Bun. There were some 'hmmm' moments from Shirley as she dipped into the 'coded' erotic side of her verse (the children dispatched to read in the book shop, equivalent of a rural child being sent 'to shop' when 'big people argument' is on).

Shirley mixed newer material with poems from her collection, She Who Sleeps With Bones, starting with 'A West Indian Poem'.

"I think it is fitting to start with this, based on everything that is going on. I will not call Dudus' name," she said, smiling.

'To The Man Who Tends My Grandfather's Grave' encompasses his attentiveness to the dead, as well as the living, the man advising them not to let her father drive after a visit to his brother's grave and as "my mother drove, my father became the weather within him".

The delight

The humour began with 'Dining at Customs', as 'Miss Gloria' chose to spread table and dig in at the airport rather than leave her goodies behind. The 'coding' of Jamaican curse words was part of the delight in a poem centred around two madmen living virtually under Shirley's window and providing ample fodder for poetry.

'Grandpa in the Departure Lounge' addressed Shirley's grandfather teetering on the edge of checking out permanently, but not yet doing so.

Then there was the humorous 'Matie Shall Not Conquer', the e-r-o-t-i-c (the word spelt out to code it from the children) 'Journey' and a final poem in tribute to her grandmother, asking 'Where is God in all of this'?

Hutchinson noted that people are still surprised to know she is not a country girl, considering the content of much of her work, and recounted her first encounters with yam relatively late in life. Reading from the book, there was knowing laugher when Hutchinson spoke about ensuring the longevity of clothing, including turning the collar when it got frayed, as well as the fine distinctions between church, school and yard panty.

There was love of the hopeful, juvenile kind with the cancelling of names and tossing of 'love bush', the 'untouching' of 'touch meat' with the appropriate libation and justice, 'Bible and key' kind, from Kin Teet' Kibba Heart Bun.