Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

Most peo­ple who love po­et­ry know that a po­em may ac­quire more of its own life when said aloud, re­cit­ed by some­one who un­der­stands the rhythm of the thing, the places that em­pha­sis and an­ti-stress ought to go. Read­ing Ma­li­ka Book­er's Pep­per Seed, then, is like want­i­ng to taste the raw strength of each po­em, where al­most every po­em cleaves to a pow­er­ful back­bone of in­tent.These po­ems are not just for de­mure tast­ing with good table­cloths and Sun­day lunch man­ners; in fact, they're for the op­po­site. They de­mand a di­rect, bone-gnaw­ing, ap­proach: they go down to the mar­row of what mat­ters and in read­ing them, so do you.This is Book­er's first full length col­lec­tion and was pub­lished by Peepal Tree Press in 2013. A British writer with Guyanese and Grena­di­an roots, Book­er's work has been pub­lished in sev­er­al an­tholo­gies and jour­nals. Her 2008 pam­phlet, Bread­fruit, was re­leased by Flipped Eye Pub­lish­ing. Book­er was the Roy­al Shake­speare Co's first Po­et in Res­i­dence.

There are un­com­fort­able places lodged in child­hood mem­o­ry, shared fa­mil­ial scars and per­son­al trau­mas buried be­neath the skin. The emo­tion­al lega­cy of our Caribbean so­ci­eties is, typ­i­cal­ly, to bear hard­ships with fake sto­icism, and much of Book­er's po­et­ic move­ment pris­es the rusty lid from com­mu­nal se­crets. These po­ems are say­ing what's not fre­quent­ly said even with­in the sup­pos­ed­ly equal­is­ing space of­fered through fic­tion.In Pep­per Sauce, a po­em with­in the col­lec­tion's first sec­tion, Tes­ta­ment, we read of a teeth-grind­ing grand­moth­er with "one hand push­ing in fresh hot pep­pers, seeds and all, turn­ing the han­dle of that old iron mill, squeez­ing the limes, know­ing they will burn and cut raw like acid." These pre­pared pep­pers have been spe­cial­ly marked for a pun­ish­ment met­ed out to a ter­ri­fied grand­daugh­ter, a penance that un­com­fort­ably prick­les in the mind long af­ter the po­em has been read.

Tes­ta­ment is barbed-wire-fenced with rev­e­la­tions like these, burst­ing at its seams with the cru­el­ty of ma­tri­archs; the en­durance of es­tate slaves; the re­joic­ing clam­our when a colonis­ing tyrant meets his end. In Death of an Over­seer, his demise prompts "women to raise up they red pet­ti­coats and dance, tram­pling he grave, while ma­chetes pound stone, lips drown rum and burn on high­wine."The col­lec­tion's oth­er sec­tions are Cru­cial Times, Lamen­ta­tions and Al­tars, fol­lowed by an Epi­logue that holds a sin­gle po­em, My Moth­er's Blues. This fi­nal piece is lit up with pri­vate mis­eries that are at once in­te­ri­or and syn­ony­mous with the com­plaints of moth­er­hood: the bur­dens of un­grate­ful chil­dren; the sep­a­ra­tions that work them­selves in­to a fam­i­ly as time goes on; the grim sad­ness of hav­ing no one left to feed, be­cause all the mouths one loves are dis­tant.To get to My Moth­er's Blues, a lilt­ing lamen­ta­tion and a mu­si­cal trib­ute, the read­er must walk with the nar­ra­tor on her oth­er jour­neys and these are con­duct­ed around the world. From Brix­ton to Brook­lyn, from Trinidad to Guyana and even in the seem­ing root­less space of oth­er, stranger coun­tries po­ems emerge like nec­es­sary sun­light. From mul­ti­ple places, they echo with flinty, mud-and-glit­ter truths. "This is the life your an­ces­tors lived," they say, fre­quent­ly fol­low­ing up ob­ser­va­tions culled from cen­turies ago with, "This is the life you are liv­ing now."

Pep­per Seed's po­ems are as in­ter­est­ed in check­ing out the dif­fer­ences be­tween our for­bear­ers and our­selves, as they are in telling sto­ries of how women nav­i­gate the world. Not every piece is a suf­fer­ing cry; far from it, some of these po­ems dance straight from the pages and in­to our de­sire for move­ment, for some ki­net­ic bac­cha­nal that spices things up and makes life worth liv­ing. In Sweet Liquor, the nar­ra­tor de­scribes a fete scene in which "man does tek over the dance­floor and smash they bod­ies, flesh hit­ting flesh, jump­ing and hol­ler­ing like the army evict them, like them bod­ies have nuff sin to wuk out they sys­tem."This is the cross­roads that emerges, ex­ul­tant­ly, through so many of these po­ems: life is salt­ed with every bit­ter­ness, but de­spite that, danc­ing rages on.As Pep­per Seed re­in­forces, the fiery spec­ta­cle of our brief walk on earth seeks out its own beau­ty. Like these po­ems, we call light and mir­a­cles to our­selves and deal with the dark­ness as it in­evitably hitch­es on for the ride.