Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

Joan Day­al, own­er of Pa­per Based Book­shop at The Nor­mandie in St Ann's, wel­comed a ca­pac­i­ty crowd to the store's first Tea Time Po­et­ry event on Oc­to­ber 20.

The au­di­ence mem­bers qui­et­ly sipped from their cups, nib­bled at their pas­tries and lis­tened in­tent­ly as each of the five po­ets pre­sent­ed se­lec­tions from their work.

Pa­per Based, a book­shop that deals heav­i­ly in sell­ing and sup­port­ing Caribbean writ­ing, cel­e­brat­ed its 25th an­niver­sary on March 3. Day­al said the idea for a tea and po­et­ry read­ing se­ries, one that would fea­ture the lo­cal tal­ent of both es­tab­lished and promis­ing writ­ers, had been brew­ing for some time.

Young Trinida­di­an po­et and artist Danielle Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute; be­gan the read­ings, shar­ing po­ems that have been ac­cept­ed for her forth­com­ing po­et­ry col­lec­tion. Hold­ing the gath­er­ing spell­bound from her first word to her last, Boodoo-For­tun&ea­cute; read lines from pieces that spoke of na­ture, dark­ness and hu­man frailty. She was fol­lowed by the To­ba­go-based writer and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Alex de Ver­teuil, who is the co-au­thor of Echo of Basho: Haiku Voic­es of the Caribbean, pub­lished in 2007.

Giv­ing cred­it to To­ba­go as the pri­ma­ry source of in­spi­ra­tion for many of his po­ems, de Ver­teuil al­so treat­ed the at­ten­dees to se­lec­tions from his prose, trans­port­ing the mood from qui­et­ly thought­ful to over­flow­ing with laugh­ter. Sarah Beck­ett, a Trinida­di­an film­mak­er and artist, took to the podi­um next, shar­ing po­ems from di­verse back­grounds and giv­ing thanks to mul­ti­ple sources of in­spi­ra­tion. Among these pieces was a po­em in re­mem­brance of An­dre Tanker, as well as work from Cloud Coun­try, which she de­scribed as an odyssey.

Fol­low­ing Beck­ett was Chadd Cum­ber­batch, a Montser­ra­t­ian writer, who read from his col­lec­tion of po­et­ry pub­lished in 2010, Ya Ya Sur­feit. His in­tro­duc­to­ry po­em of a man who has had his love re­ject­ed kept the au­di­ence in stitch­es.

Cum­ber­batch de­scribed his ex­pe­ri­ences at the Crop­per Foun­da­tion's res­i­dent work­shop as life-chang­ing, adding that his time spent there was heav­i­ly in­flu­en­tial on his growth as a writer.

The fi­nal po­et of the evening, Trinida­di­an jour­nal­ist and blog­ger An­dre Ba­goo, sus­tained the at­ten­tion and in­ter­est of the au­di­ence from the lines of his first po­em, How to Put a Cat in­to a Hyp­not­ic Trance.

Ba­goo read sev­er­al pieces from his po­et­ry col­lec­tion Trick Ves­sels, which was pub­lished in March this year, and launched at the sec­ond Bo­cas Lit Fest in April. Trick Ves­sels, Echo of Basho and Ya Ya Sur­feit are all avail­able at Pa­per Based.