Caribbean writers and poets: John Robert Lee, your new collection of poems, Belmont Portfolio, is published by Peepal Tree Press of Leeds in November. What can your readers expect?
John Robert Lee: I thought this new book could be read as a companion volume to my previous Pierrot (Peepal, 2020). It wasn’t planned that way, but form and thematically it could be seen that way. Here, as in Pierrot and in previous works, I explore my world and what is happening there, Caribbean and international; my culture and its history, its music, both traditional and contemporary, its life in all this complexity; my own personal experiences of maturation, aging, and my ever-deepening faith. The second part is very autobiographical, simple and confessional poetry.
CWP: Belmont Portfolio, intriguing title and cover. And them?
JRL: The cover is by Trinidadian artist Jackie Hinkson. A general theme behind the poems is “a return from…a return to” and this art seems to capture the idea. I attended Carifesta in Trinidad in 2019 and stayed in Belmont. Every day, walking towards the savannah from Pelham Street, I took photographs of buildings, fences, etc. From these photos was born a series of poems inspired by the photos which gave birth to the long title poem Belmont Portfolio. Dedicated to the Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace. The poem contains my impressions of the little bit of Belmont I saw, makes various broader connections, and it also brings in references to famous calypsonians like Shadow (probably my favorite kaiso griot) and David Rudder, associates, like so many other famous Trinidadian singers. and artists and writers with Belmont.
CWP: The publisher’s blurb describes it as “a magnificent and varied collection in which the observational, the sacramental, the elegiac, the prophetic and the personal are interwoven.” Vladimir Lucien, in his approval, says that you are “the chronicler of the infinite in small places and in honest everyday experiences”, that you have “succeeded in refining a poetic voice as modest and simple as the places it tell “. In 1993, Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott said that you were “a scrupulous poet…it is not a common virtue among poets, to be scrupulous and modest in the best sense of the word, not to extend to the excess the scope of the truth of one’s emotions, not to go for the grandiose…you don’t get anything in poetry that is…preachy or self-advertising in terms of morality. Canisia Lubrin, the very talented young Saint Lucian poet residing in Canada, writing of Pierrot, had said that “the depth of her knowledge of poetic form and craft comes through clearly in every line.” Such praise from many respected circles! How do you respond?
JRL: Well, I’m grateful that these very accomplished writers, major voices in their own right, were so generous. They put their finger on what I have always tried to do with my poems. Being Saint Lucian means they can pick up on Saint Lucian references and allusions that non-Saint Lucians might miss. A book that influenced me was “The Sacred in Life and Art” by Philip Sherrard (1990). His ideas guide these poems in several ways. I have always been aware of the transcendental, the divine, the sacred in the world around me, in life experiences, and I think about how this should be translated into my art. My latest manuscript is entitled After the Poems, the Psalms, which also attempts to maintain this vision of the sacred, the divine, in the midst of our banal, painful, confused daily experiences. As also shown in the Psalms, great Hebrew poetry. I have no interest in being dogmatic about my metaphysical beliefs, no interest in living under theocratic authoritarianism or so-called Christian nationalism. As a person who loves democracy, I believe in freedom of choice. So yes, the “sacramental, the elegiac, the prophetic” is in my poems. Vladimir’s comment that he is a “chronicler of the infinite in small places and in…everyday experiences” is true and is reflected in the kinds of details I am trying to sketch. Derek understood early on what I was trying. And Canisia evokes my long-standing interest and dedication to form and craft. Jeremy Poynting of Peepal Tree Press has been my editor for four books, we have always worked well together. My previous books with Peepal Tree, the leading publisher of Caribbean, Black British and Asian literature, a prestigious and respected independent British press, are Elementary (2008); Collected Poems (2017), Pierrot (2020) and now Belmont Portfolio (2023).
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CWP: You seem quite prolific. What’s in the works? And any final thoughts?
JRL: In January, during the Nobel Laureates Festival, I’ll be launching something called IKONS: New and Selected Poems. I publish it locally under my Mahanaim Publishing imprint and with the Mgr Patrick Anthony Folk Research Center (FRC). This publication is a way to celebrate my 75th anniversary and my several years of local publishing as well as joining the FRC in celebrating its 50th anniversary. It will contain selections from previously published books and new, previously unpublished poems, as well as artwork by various Saint Lucian artists. The cover art comes from the walls of a 200 year old prison which was sadly demolished by the government of the day in 2020. All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to artists in need. I have already submitted to Peepal Tree my new manuscript After Poems, Psalms, with a cover by international Saint Lucian artist Llewellyn Xavier and I am working on a new book of 12-line poems called Journal. I occasionally review literature and write a monthly Christian column in the Voice of Saint Lucia. Earlier this year, I published a chapbook of twelve of these articles called Sermons Under the Sun. I continue to be active in my local Baptist church where I preach occasionally. I manage a mailing list of over 100 writers and artists where I pass on information about Caribbean literary and artistic interest. I am no longer actively involved in theater and broadcasting as I once was.
I mourn the genocidal massacre in Gaza and the long oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I recognize that many Jews also want peace and a solution to this intractable problem and mourn their own losses with them. I mourn what is happening in our Caribbean with the phenomenal increase in gun crime everywhere and I watch with concern what is happening to gangs in Haiti. The situation in Haiti poses a dire warning to the rest of the Caribbean, where gangs have proliferated rapidly in recent years. I am concerned about what is happening in Ukraine, Sudan and Afghanistan (oppression of women) and India (with persecution of Muslim minorities) and all other similar suffering.
I am concerned about the issues surrounding climate change and our vulnerability as small island nations. Our carelessness in places like Saint Lucia with the removal of so much plastic and other waste from our oceans, our land use, our huge dependence on hotel type tourism and all the problems associated with it. I am also saddened by our understanding of nationalism and independence and how we are still so dependent on larger powers that keep us in a neocolonial state. I have many questions about media in the Caribbean, now compounded by social media and the ease of access to so much questionable stuff from everywhere. We still do not have enough Caribbean-focused media to provide relevant and necessary information and education.
I also observe what is happening in America, how liberal democracy has been overthrown by autocrats and their fanatical, non-liberal, non-democratic supporters, spouting very conservative religious and political rhetoric. Already in our Caribbean, our own liberal democracies are also under threat from autocrats and illiberal factions entering the ballot box. Aided by the propaganda and pervasive influence of social media and external manipulators of local politics, many of whom are right-wing.
I continue to mourn all kinds of discrimination and violence, all over the world, racist, gender-based, against indigenous peoples, against people of different faiths and religious ideologies, against fundamental civil rights.
But I continue to marvel at the miraculous beauty of our Caribbean and our planet, the resilience of our people, in whom I find daily a testimony of the sacred, the divine, the sacramental. And I continue to applaud, appreciate and admire the achievements of my contemporary writers, artists, musicians and dancers in the Caribbean and elsewhere.