Redemption Ground: Essays and Adventures

by Lorna Goodison

In her first-ever collection of essays, poet and novelist Lorna Goodison interweaves the personal and political to explore themes that have occupied her working her love of poetry and the arts, colonialism and its legacy, racism and social justice, authenticity, and the enduring power of friendship. Taking her title from one of Kingston's oldest markets, a historic meeting place that was almost destroyed by fire, she introduces us to a vivid cast of characters and remembers moments of epiphany—in a cinema in Jamaica, at New York's Bottom Line club, and as she searched for a black hairdresser in Paris and drank tea in London's Marylebone High Street. Enlightening and entertaining, these essays explore not only daily challenges but also the compassion that enables us to rise above them. Goodison's poet's eye, profound vision and glorious combination of metaphysical and post-colonial sensibilities confirm her as a major figure in world literature.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

164 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 16, 2018

About the author

Lorna Goodison was born in Jamaica, and has won numerous awards for her writing in both poetry and prose, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Gold Medal from Jamaica, the Henry Russel Award for Exceptional Creative Work from the University of Michigan, and one of Canada’s largest literary prizes, the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People (2007). Her work has been included in the major anthologies and collections of contemporary poetry over the past twenty-five years, such as the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the Harper Collins World Reader, the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, and Longman Masters of British Literature.

Along with her award winning memoir, she has published three collections of short stories (including By Love Possessed, 2011) and nine collections of poetry.

Her work has been translated into many languages, and she has been a central figure at literary festivals throughout the world. Lorna Goodison teaches at the University of Michigan, where she is the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afro American Studies.

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mix of memoir, poetry, life adventure and epiphanies, I loved this collection by Jamaican writer Lorna Goodison.

The opening essay 'The Song of the Banana Man' and 'The Fiddler of Dooney' totally sets the scene for the rest of the book. It is an anecdotal story of the author and her friend, excited to be in London, overhearing two 'bobbies' (policemen) talk about a cafe they were just passing, in a way that lured them inside.

'Whassis then, a new tea 'ole?'

Their schooling in Kingston, Jamaica had been heavy on all things British and European, so entering this establishment was something related to that indirect familiarity. They encounter three boys from Ireland, who ask if they are from the West Indies; they all begin to banter, drinking toasts to the colonial experience, singing songs and reciting poetry.

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
folk dance like a wave of the sea;

The poems they chose were about ordinary people, sure of themselves, of what they did, grounding words shared by these young people, whose paths have crossed, starting out on their own journeys.
The exchange lasts while they're having their tea and comes to a natural end, upon which they part ways. The author is at the beginning of her life journey, but the lines recited by them all have staying power, and we are reminded of them throughout the collection.

And I was not sure where I belonged or what my own purpose was in life back then.... But listening to those three Irish men recite 'The Fiddler of Dooney' that afternoon, maybe I'd thought yes, that's what I'd like to be, someone whose artistry makes people dance like a wave of the sea.

In, A Taste of Honey, she recounts the experience of seeing a movie in 1963, based on a play written by Shelagh Delaney A Taste of Honey (who was 18 years old when she wrote it), the film moves her, there is a moment of epiphany. Being one of nine children, she relished the opportunity to go and see the film one Saturday afternoon alone.

Shelagh Delaney went to a play that she found boring, pretentious and condescending, and said to herself I can do better than that, and went home and wrote A Taste of Honey.

The film would win a BAFTA award.
Goodison reflects on why she was so moved by this film, how it gave her some of her life and writing purpose and inspiration.

Shelagh was pronounced 'ineducable', but was able to produce work that affected me so deeply that I ended up sitting alone in a cinema after everyone else had filed out, trying hard to compose myself enough to go outside and face a world where most people would not understand why a simple thing like a Saturday afternoon matinee could make me weep as if a close friend or relative had died.

Writing poetry from a young age, in 'Some poems that made me' we read more of this early education and a different take on Wordsworth's 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud', aka 'The Daffodils' poem, after she researches his childhood and life and decides to give the poet a break.

Over the years I have said quite a lot about this poem, as have other writers throughout the British Commonwealth who have come to regard it as the ultimate anthem to British colonial oppression.

She will encounter many poets and poems until she arrives at the one voice that cause her to stop reading everyone else and just read his poems. In the work of Derek Walcott, who would become a friend and mentor, she found poem as a source of hope and consolation; poem as a lifeboat, anchor and safe harbour.
As she begins to think of her own place in the world, she seeks out women poets, finding nourishment in the work of Gwendolyn Brooks and other African-American fiction writers, but still searching for poetry by Caribbean women, ultimately ending up writing the poems she wanted to read and finding the right language to express them.

I learnt early in my life as a writer that if I wanted to write about my people I had to learn to listen carefully to family stories then imagine, and constantly reimagine those stories...All writer's do this, but Caribbean writers face formidable or particular challenges because of the ways in which slavery, and then colonialism, erased or distorted so much of our lives that we have to learn to writer ourselves into the story in any way we can.

We read 'Guinea Woman' the poem she wrote trying to imagine a woman she had never met, her great grandmother, an elegy for her mother Doris 'After the Green Gown of My Mother Gone Down', and another poem entitled 'Bedspread' inspired by news of the home of Winnie Mandela being raided by police, where they seize personal effects including a bedspread, taken because it was in the colours of the African National Congress.

The collection takes the reader to different countries and places on her journeying, sharing both fun and pivotal moments, stories of redemption, of good souls that come to set the indebted free, of her own life crisis in New York, that preceded a change in direction, acting on a promise to herself.

Like my reading experience ofBernice McFadden's excellent The Book of Harlan, whenever Lorna Goodison mentions music, like in the vignette A Part for Tarquin, I look it up and listen while reading. This one is about her freind Bernard dragging her along to a non-party that she doesn't wish to attend, and ends with them listening into the night to the pianist Wynton Kelly playing the Miles Davis sextet Some Day My Prince Will Come.

That was the night I began to really appreciate the genius of the Jamaican-American pianist Wynton Kelly, about whom Miles himself was supposed to have said, 'Wynton is the light for the cigarette; without him there is no smoking.' That night I realised that if hope has a sound it would be Wynton Kelly's piano-playing. His hope notes were like sunbeams on the morning waves coming in at Bluefields beach;

Loved it all.

[Anwen Hayward · Rating 5 out of 5]

This does everything that a memoir in essays should do. In around 200 pages, I feel like I've lived Lorna Goodison's life alongside her. Her writing is so vivid and her life so clearly and wonderfully drawn that it really does feel like a 700 page book in terms of the depth it conveys. It makes me want to seek out everything she's ever written. I loved it.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good! Another great #nonfictionnovember read!
Thank you to Vehicule Press for my gifted review copy!

[David Kenvyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a simply brilliant collection of essays. Of course, if you are a racist, misogynist you will be mortally offended that a black woman can be so perceptive, so coherent, so humane. If you are a racist misogynist, that is your problem, not mine, and certainly not Lorna Goodison’s problem. Lorna Goodison grew up black and female in Jamaica. I grew up white and male in the UK. It is salutary for me to learn of the abuse which was a normal part of her life. Some of it was blatant. Some of it was subtle, echoing the view of Lord Macaulay that a good European Library was worth more than the collected literature of Africa and Asia. He probably did not even know about the libraries of Timbuktu, Lalibela, Samarkand and elsewhere. He dismissed the Shahnameh, the Mahabharata and the whole of Chinese literature.
There are things in Lorna Goodison’s experience that I have never had to go through. I have never been abused by a London taxi driver because of the colour of my skim, because I am white. I was once subjected to a tirade about “them coming over here and not learning our language.” So, I asked if he spoke Welsh. I then pointed out that his ancestors had come over here and had not bothered to learn to speak the native language. His answer was that his ancestors were not foreigners. I pointed out that was exactly what they were. He, of course, would not accept this.
That is the problem with racism. It is simply not susceptible to argument. These are the kinds of issues that Lorna Goodison deals with in this book. She writes about being black in a world dominated by whiteness. She writes about writing in Caribbean English when it is not respected as a form of the language. She writes about the way in which Caribbean poets and others have had to struggle to be accepted in the English-speaking world. She writes about the way in which English is being internationalised and enriched by a host of writers from across the world.
The last chapter is about the people she has met and the people she wants to meet. I am lucky because I have met many of the same people, especially the South Africans. That, however, misses the point. The people that we need to meet are those who, in whatever way, are making a difference in the world. That is what Lorna Goodison is doing in this book.
Read it, and you will be changed for the better. You will become more human. It is that kind of book.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

|| REDEMPTION GROUND ||
#gifted/@vehiculepress
✍🏻
Loved this memoir in essays by Lorna Goodison. These were short but impactful pieces, personal, political and wonderfully written. I enjoyed reading about her life and travels. Hearing her stories, you feel like you are right there with her. A true gem!

For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong

[Moumita Laha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and insightful.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

"all of them made us, and all of them made you a poet.”

a soul-stirring window into Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison’s life with personal transformations and triumphs as a writer. What I am most enamoured by is Goodisons’s natural pulse on her environment, from feeling the presence of the bodies of water surrounding Jamaica to the shifting of seasons in NYC and developing that so elegantly into word.

I appreciated the seamless blend of personal poetry within texts that she sought inspiration from throughout her storied life. It was lovely to read about life in Jamaica, growing up on a beautiful, lush monocultural island, to moving to familiar scenes in Toronto and Vancouver (which surprised me!). This is the first I’ve read about poetry using Jamaican-vernacular pidgin English, Patois. Reading this felt abundant and unfolding in-between a succinct 200 pages.