Caribbean Beat — September/October 2019 (#159)

Skin Can Hold
by Vahni Capildeo (Carcanet Press, 128 pp, ISBN
9781784107314)
Vahni Capildeo’s pen does more
than take no prisoners: it implicates
the reader with an intelligence
so searing you could fry
fish on its patina. Consider the
disgusted beautician in “Shame”,
who handles brown skin during
a waxing appointment with
a torturer’s cruelty: “The skin
was stripped and festered and /
purpled and scarred. The ancient
and worshipful triangle of mystery
/ became the record of an
intimate war.” Alongside this purposeful
rage — never reactionary, always a feat of polyglottal
blistering — lies true, invitational playfulness. Harnessing
the invocations of late Guyanese poet Martin Carter’s “I Am
No Soldier”, Capildeo presents “syntax poems” in response,
described as “rearrangeable elements for future experiments,”
best activated by bodies in motion. On your feet,
then, the syntax poems sing, dismantling the traditional
audience-speaker receivership of performed, and read,
poetry. There are revolutions to dingolay.
Gardening in Trinidad and Tobago:
Our Style
by Chancy Bachan-Moll (The Garden Club of Trinidad, 170
pp, ISBN 9789768255822)
Whether your thumb is
green, or you can’t cultivate
a cactus, there’s no denying
that a verdant world
blooms between the pages
of this more-than-a-coffee-table-book.
Founded
in 1993, the Garden Club
of Trinidad has spread its
modest tendrils, from
an intimate gathering of
friends growing greenery, to a bountiful organisation committed
to holistic preservation of T&T’s natural landscapes.
Even if the science of bromeliads and other plant families
eludes you, an evening of reflective contemplation spent
with Gardening in Trinidad and Tobago: Our Style has
the power to enliven, educate, and inspire. Every curated
garden photographed herein, be it modest or expansive, is
stunningly presented, with love glistening from each leaf.
Reviews by Shivanee Ramlochan, Bookshelf editor
Enter the World of Hardears
Jouvert Island. Home to flying buses
piloted by giant fish, defended by landships
— vessels built of ancestral memory:
here’s a realm where everything depends
on the essential life force called “vibez.”
It’s a world informed, and inhabited, by the
indisputably Caribbean. Here shines a contemporary
graphic novel series as ambitious
and fully realised as anything emerging from
larger metropolitan studios.
The world of Hardears is masterminded
by Barbados-based Beyond Publishing,
helmed by Matthew Clarke (creator/story/
art) and Nigel Lynch (story/script). Alongside
fellow creators Aguinaldo Belgrave and
Tristan Roach, who oversee other projects,
Beyond Publishing is on the frontlines of
what’s achievable in comic books of the
current era: these titles are as politically charged as they are
packed with feats of super heroism and special effects.
In Hardears Volumes 1 through 4, Jouvert Island braces
against a baleful anthropomorphised super storm, confronts
the corporate face of hyper-mechanised industrialisation,
and takes us into the clouds on the soaring wings of a landship,
piloted to the tattoo of tuk band music.
Our principal hero, Bolo, King of the Crop,
Champion of the Agri Guild, works stubbornly
to thwart the postcolonial power of
Mr Hardin, alongside resolute heroine Zahra.
There’s even a diminutive, tangerine-hued
animal sidekick, Duppy, last of the Barbados
Raccoons, who supplies picong and pithy
observances. From moko jumbies to stern
nautical empresses, Clarke and Lynch have
poured rapt, fascinated attention into the
Hardears world: a tradesman, speaking no
lines but magnificently bedizened, is given
perfectly calibrated room to cavort on the
page alongside a crafty, faceless villain.
These are islands made for multiple
memorable returns: it’s impossible not to
be compelled by this impeccably imagined
romp of a graphic novel. You’ll find that steeping yourself in its
pages produces ample vibez.
To order the Hardears series, visit
www.beyondpublishingcaribbean.com
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
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