Review of 'Bird Head Son' by CRB

Anthony Joseph’s opening poem is titled “Bosch’s Vision”, and begins:

It started as I was leaving
…..with a dim groan in the afternoon.

What started? Where are we? The title, combined with these opening two lines, is unsettling. His is a wider canvas than Robinson’s, used to explore the personal and the universal. Like Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings, Joseph offers terrifying images of suffering and Hell, which he transposes to modern Europe and Trinidad. The phrase “a dim groan” gestures to later themes of a painful upbringing, the lamentation for a distant father, and his mother’s death, to which the section “The Tropic of Cancer” is devoted. His uncluttered opening sentence calls to mind Derek Walcott’s search for the line of poetry as a clear and most natural statement. There are other instances, as in “Conductors of his Mystery”, which ends: “He came back smelling of the sea.” On the other hand, the breath space in the second line of his opening poem offers the merest hint of Kamau Brathwaite’s Sycorax style. These elements suggest that Joseph has kept a close ear on contemporary Caribbean writing, and we should not be surprised to find echoes of other Caribbean poets throughout the collection. So, for example, in this poem he recalls Paul Keens-Douglas’s refrain “Tell me again” from his poem of the same title, which invokes, among other things, the mixed blessing of Trinidad’s oil.

Here's a new review of my recent 'Bird Head Son' collection by the Caribbean Review of Books, reviewed alongside my friend Roger Robinson's 'Suckle'.

Read the whole review here :

http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/23-september-2010/homestyle/

Capybara - from Rubber Orchestras, the forthcoming colletion

Capybara

1.

Cool and dead like long brown shoes

in an Akasic coffin with Efua beads,

rimmed like a nation of Baptist promises

and desirable bells, sapphire skin, thin skin of night.

Who hurried back to San Juan?

Whose right side of hip belonged to pleasure?

Who came

shuddering

in the dining room

on a black leather chair

deep in athletic water,

like hummingbirds

in black pitch bush

alone in the house of the Capybara?

And Trinidad,

pinpricked with departments

at the ministry of light,

push those waves of fizzing foam from your throat.

Your sister, waiting in those Hindu hills.

Her laugh, and see her airport uniform,

nestled in the footfall of that nauseous heaven.

Dust on the roof of time.

2.

Marie

of the Palestine.

Your subtle twitch, your very intention

remained in the church.

But your Deacon brews the turbulence

of an ill fitting Jesus,

and in Port of Spain

the cold Capybara’s brain is lifted up and eaten

Its eye still flash the flash eye

and I fall in love.

Venetian red is the latitude

of these cruel trees.

Reading at Soho Theatre in May 2010

Blue Hues - A poem from 'Rubber Orchestras'

This is another poem from my work-in-progress, forthcoming collection, Rubber Orchestras.

Blue Hues

She said

blue, like a strange heel

steps out of bed

hunting with devilish technique

like trick bag in the white broad’s hand

The river forest hid a palace

recap of the blue slash and pocket

we walked, sliver of a deep,

her confection was flame-red

like bursting inside

Exquisite, and parted her lips

cheek bones of her

beat back the black hustler

drag played the con for sure

like old crow whiskey

in the swedish bosom of her lullabye

her hairy thighs quivered

side of the bed

blue like fifteen echoes of winter

southbound to boulevards of dirty kickbacks

weeping like Bessie

Smith with her speckled head

she guaranteed a 50-50 split

There was a funk box in the rocking room

I was years well heeled

I played a tight con

in the hard eyed world of big time crooks

once, the half witch crushed blood in my rainstorm

and awfully in love

I wore a brokedick hat like a jitney driver

starving in a bargain for coins and Dutch head

with a broken shinbone

dope racket slick and mean

like some hurting thing

till the leather tong snapped

and sealed the sweet miracle

of her breath and hip

blue blowoff in the slum section

built upstairs

of gorilla pussy and champagne.

Poem for Franklin Rosemont

This is another poem from my forthcoming Rubber Orchestras collection. This time, a poem written in tribute to the late Franklin Rosemont, leader of the Chicago Surrealist Group.

Poem for Franklin Rosemont

beyond words

or destinations

visual and multiplying

intricate and persistent

they found a faraway place

in paris

its potential splendour

hid sequels and contrary sex

in the early hours of 1960

proclivities

of struggle and synthesis

within the most complete utopia

of fire and speed

dream letters

were drowned

in invisible stars

silent suburbs of jazz and primitive hell

were spontaneously glimpsed

in rigid cities

in which these souvenirs

were read

at the chicago public library

shuddering

loosley

in method and name

on the avenue between Greene and Zion

intergalactic radio

sent a message

unifying voice

like a violin

during the anxious months of miracles

and triple time

proto-hip like every second syllable, free floating

like a giggle to the subversive current

of eden’s swift sea

by prime energy of libido

by degrees of fear

darker skin and the fragment of shadow

lucid and unique

as paradox to paradox

as serious as blue silk

These are the definitions of the palace of signs

these are the masks with which

I hitchhiked across the wonderland

and travelled by radio

to resemble that mask

eccentric and boundless

in the image of you.

Belladonna in the South seas

further

past stairs and doorways past

afro-american ruins

bamboo by the dozen among those denizens of marvellous film

dead

yet actually distant

and exhilarating

like dissident blues swung from the zydeco

in the brutal suburbs of Pharaoh Sanders

emerging

from light

into some literary response

Black Brown and Beige : Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora

I have 2 prose poems included in this landmark anthology, which was probably the late great Franklin Rosemont's final testament. Its an incredible collection of surrealist writings from the Caribbean and the entire African Diaspora. Essential reading if ever there was.

Caribbean Erotic Anthology

I have some work included in this new anthology of Erotic Caribbean writing. Many years in the making. My contribution is called 'The RealTime Trajectory of Explicit Love'.

A wide-ranging anthology of poetry, short fiction, and critical essays designed to generate thought about what is still a conflicted area of Caribbean literature and culture, this revealing, in-depth examination explores the many facets of the erotic in contemporary Caribbean literature—from desire; the psychology of abusive relationships; the role of fantasy; and issues of infidelity, lust, rape, self-respect, self-love, and child-birth. This anthology also discusses the Caribbean frameworks of sexuality as a cultural construct, from the role of machismo, homophobia, and Protestant-fundamentalist sexual ideologies as specific forms of denial and hostility to the open expression of sexual desire. The essays then extend the book’s scope beyond literature and consider the impact of the erotic upon other aspects of Caribbean life, ranging from song lyrics to the general issues of female empowerment in Caribbean societies. Featuring the work of well-known writers such as Nalo Hopkins, Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes and the work of many fresh new talents such as Obediah Michael Smith, Christian Campbell, and Tiphanie Yanique, this anthology aims to create a new framework in which the full spectrum of the erotic in Caribbean literature and life can be freely explored.

Buy it from Peepal Tree : http://www.peepaltreepress.com/single_book_display.asp?isbn=9781845230890

Work included in two new anthologies

I was fortunate enough to be in included in the new anthology of contemporary British Poetry 'Identity Parade' (Bloodaxe) as well as in 'Red' the new anthology from Peepal Tree, both published this month.

"Riff for Morton" from "Rubber Orchestras"

This is the a poem from a new collection I'm working on, Rubber Orchestras. The collection will feature 100 poems, and will be published in early 2011 if all goes to plan. More soon.

Riff for Morton

Damper down

both phallic and acquainted

with African blues.

The hips suggest

good jazz )(i.e.sex)

Anita, 1900.

the african fiction of whiteness is absolute.

arcade saloons and dance halls

gambling down like evil or false notes

blue notes of white magic

Jelly roll morton

at the cadillac cafe

pimp or piano drunk and sick

on the bricktops of vancouver

Ragtime Billy

from Chicago

a clarinetist at the Regent

1923

went southwest with the wrath of poseidon

gambling down

in terrific storms which broke down

the pensacola kid

at the Paradise gardens

with the first three notes of Dead Man Blues

and The Pearls

yes he left mamanita, yes he left

yes he let his beard grow

spat blood in the broom closet

yes he let his beard grow

there were many diamonds

she left many diamonds

cash on cadillac cars

duke ellington

had swing bands

basie and calloway

had a cluster of tricks

which in fact were as spikes at kingpin sessions

and in the exact rooms of the kidworth hotel

where days passed like clinic cards

Morton left the sepia spot and took his body to the jungle inn

on 126 North West

Red Peppers and the attack of alibi, restless priests

listening to Pops Mabel

at the church of intercourse

Jelly you rascal

you minstrel

you lover

you bone meat of the creole caribbean

- vicious semen, Jelly

bake ‘em brown and break a banjo across their backs

jelly you blues talker

1930

the worried blues and the voodoo of your laughter

stepping lean in stove pipes

with the prestige of your father

to the very end.