TravelliTravelling Mercies

by Lorna Goodison ng Mercies

The signifiers that Jamaica 's Lorna Goodison is indeed a poet ain't just in her extensive contributions to highbrow anthologies, the gushing critical acclaim, or her harvests of awards, including a 1986 Commonwealth Poetry Prize for I Am Becoming My Mother and Jamaica 's prestigious Gold Musgrave Medal in 1999.

Goodison, a university teacher and a painter and illustrator of some repute, with internationally recognized film projects in tow, is a poet because her poetry still sings and rants to the people--yes, all people--about oppression and resistance, recovery and redemption, joy and humiliation.

Her seventh volume of poetry, Travelling Mercies , really gets around. African-Caribbean vernacular abounds, harmonious alongside doses of biblical strictures and snippets of European tenets.

These not-so-tender mercies whip from Jamaica to Jerusalem , Cuba to Kentucky , Benin to Berlin , and, of course, to Babylon , invoking spectres of Christ and Rasta elders, slave ship hulls, and sacred Native rites.

Luxuriant yet scholarly, the writing transcends economic, mental, and tribal borders. The poems instill a sense of timelessness in an almost dreamlike literary trek that's strangely wrought with jarring wakeup calls.

The earthly realm is just another conjured pit stop alongside the quirky portraits of the great beyond in her landscapes inhabited by revered saints and righteous duppy conquerors.

-- sigcino moyo

original publication: Amazon.ca : Editorial Reviews