Cane, Corn & Gully

by Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa

Cane, Corn & Gulley is a genealogical and autobiographical collection which unites dance and poetry to observe, question and ruminate on what it means to adopt, perform, and pass down the notion of black West Indian femininity. Using labanotation and rhythm to analyse movement from Caribbean dances to movements carried out in everyday rituals, Kinshasa uses these motifs as a form of cartography for the poems.

Cane, Corn & Gulley interrogates survival, sexual exploitation, race, gender, and class and invests in a unique discourse on the violence inflicted on the black female body (historically and presently). It explores the meaning of movement in oppressive ideological structures and serves to vindicate the rebellious acts of black women past, present and yet to come.

Genres: Poetry

95 pages, Paperback

Published November 17, 2022

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating collection. Complex with the labanotation a system recording movement using notations of up to 1000 symbols and variations. The collection explores survival, race, gender, class and sexual exploitation of black women. At times brutal and also humorous.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.5) Kinshasa is also a dancer, and in her debut the British-born Barbadian intersperses poems with choreographed dances, transcribed via hand-drawn symbols explained in a key at the end. I confess I couldn’t picture them at all, though they make attractive patterns on the page – you can see one in purple on the cover. This and the Caribbean patois in which she voices narratives of historical atrocities and contemporary microaggressions against Black people (particularly women) are the collection’s claims to novelty and probably impressed the Rathbones Folio Prize judges. Yet I found both strategies to be affected and looked forward to those poems in standard language. Some of the events are given specific dates and places in Barbados while others are more generic. Female victims of sexual oppression seek revenge, as in the gruesome “Miss Barbados Is No Longer Vegan.” This probably works best aloud, to allow one to appreciate the musicality of the voice and alliterative lines.

Some lines I liked:

we gambled all our wishes on dandelions,
now we celebrate de little tings
every unburnt rice grain & regrown eyelash
vaulting between lemon vines and dog friendly cafés.

just because we do what needs to be done,
it doan mean we nah ready, we just aware
there are too many of us to be martyrs

(from “Sometimes Death Is a Child Who Plays With Rubber Bands”)


The work is dangerous; writing into history is like feeding unknown seeds while attempting to control the rate of their growth. Sometimes when I danced, I inhaled the language of my ancestors’ captors, and they became mine. (from “Preface: And if by Some Miracle”)


if you want something to become extinct
doan give it attention.
(from “Choreography: She, My Nation”)

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Emilie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would be impossible to truly review this collection without taking it apart line by line, beat by beat, step by step. We both cried seeing Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa’s performance at the BBBF and this work is every bit as powerful. Maybe I’ll write more when I’ve gotten by tongue back.

[Maddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complex, multimodal, intelligent, brutal and yet light, such a beautiful collection of poems, loved it.

[Carmijn Gerritsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This multimodal poetry collection explores historical narratives of black personhood in light of current-day discussions around race and belonging. By employing experimental strategies such as the unique illustration of dance choreographies, the volume has a certain palimpsestic and metaphoric quality to it which is reiterated through the reflective writing in the individual poems.

[Lauren Sims · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sublime. Like nothing I’ve ever read before. Hard hitting and beautiful.

[Ben Hancox-Lachman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started trying to put it into words… didn’t like my attempt …
Rhythm is pervasive , time is blurred plotting it’s course across the pages . Just read it

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

no one wants to be naked,
someone might confuse cowskin carols
drawn across your back
with a clumsy accident
then laugh"

I think to have the confidence to produce something as interesting and powerful as 'Cane, Corn & Gully' as your first collection of poetry speaks volumes to Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa's abilities.

This is a collection of poems that speaks to how black West Indian women's bodies are perceived, used and seen by the women themselves. It jumps around the history of Barbados, the way black people are visible in white men's writing without being the focus of that writing, the way black women are used. This is about colonialism both as a personal thing and a group thing. The colonialism of bodies and groups of bodies.

Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa uses labanotation to add an extra layer to the work - although I struggled to work my way around that. I'm a bear of very little brain and it felt a little too much like mathematics to me. Which is isn't. It's the notation used by choreographers to lay out dances - musical notation for the instrument that is our bodies.

"but you never slept again,
your unthinkable thoughts
congregate by my chest behind
de garrison
we acclimatise to its purpose
become barbaric beneath de
bushes..."

The way she ties movement and words together suggests that one day someone is going to turn this collection in a dance piece or film.

Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa is also a superb chooser of titles: "I Tied My Teeth to My Feet & Ate My Own Testament"; "The Devil Can't Two-Step"; "Marilyn Munroe is de Bogeyman" and my personal favourite: "I Am Holding the Mona Lisa Hostage Until You Return My Fourth Great Grandmother."

It might be tediously reductive to say that this combined with 'Self Portrait as Othello' by Jason Allen-Paisent would make a poetic double-bill that tells the story of the exploitation and survival of black bodies from the point of view of both sexes.

[Rebecc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book of poetry (a debut I think as well), the words are strong, powerful & eloquent as one might expect & the subject matter of Kinshasa finding a way to give voiceless Barbadian women of history a voice is emotionally striking; what elevates her work is the way she has found to weave Labanotation (dance notation) into her work. It's genuinely unique & brilliant as one unpicks the women's movement from the squiggles on the page to reveal an unknown world of dance & expression. Just want to say how brilliant I think Kinshasa's poetry is, that is all!!