SPRING CLEANING

by Jean Binta Breeze

Genres: Poetry

89 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Jean "Binta" Breeze MBE (born 1956) is a Jamaican dub poet, and storyteller. She has worked also as a theatre director, choreographer, actor and teacher. She has performed her work around the world, in the Caribbean, North America, Europe, South-East Asia and Africa, and been called "one of the most important, influential performance poets of recent years".

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
I always find reviewing poetry a challenge and especially so here as Breeze’s poetry is really meant to be spoken. Jean Binta Breeze began as a dub poet in her native Jamaica; she is recognized as the first woman to write and perform dub poetry in what was a very masculine arena. Her work has developed and moved on and is very varied (including writing scripts, choreography, directing and dancing). Breeze deals with difficult topics and highlights injustice, but she does so in quite an oblique way. She looks at the experience of black women in a more subjective and experimental way.
Breeze is very clear about what she thinks though; she doesn’t like the word colonialism:
“Let’s not call it colonialism, that is an academic term. Let’s call it what it is – international theft of resources and robbery of people’s land. Colonialism doesn’t say that.” She talks about the debt of poorer countries in a similar way:
“All our countries are in debt to the World Bank and the IMF. We are in debt to the very ones who stole from us in the first place.”
Her range in her poetry is very wide and forward looking:
“There is this suggestion that we are all there trying to deal with our colonial heritage, instead of actually being at the forefront of what is happening politically in the world today.”
Some of the poems here are particularly striking; “Riddym Ravings (The Mad Woman’s Poem) is an exploration of the experiences of a homeless black woman, informed by Breeze’s own mental health history. The title poem “Spring Cleaning” is about Breeze’s mother and is intertwined with the hymn “The Lord’s my Shepherd” and is very moving.
I enjoyed this collection and there is plenty of footage of Breeze reading her poems on you tube; take a look.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

An anthology of poems by a black British woman of Caribbean descent. The poems are written in a mixture of English and Patois. So sometimes difficult to understand, however as that's usual for poetry, no worries. I once again have to use my word of the week and describe it as emotive.