On my ‘other’ blog I’ve just put up this post with Maggie Harris. But I wanted to put her words up here too because one thing I’d like to use this page for is to celebrate the rich thread of writing in Kent right now.
So this is the first of a series in which I hope you will get to know other writers better. Many more to come…
Maggie was born in Guyana and have been living in the UK since 1971. She runs poetry workshops for all age groups and was a founding member of The Write Women. You can read some of her poems here and you could also have ‘picked’ some at Solly’s Orchard in Canterbury during the last Canterbury Arts Festival!
Maggie’s latest book is her evocative autobiography, The Kiskadee Girl, about growing up in Guyana during the 50s and 60s. She’s also working on a series of short stories based on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and has asked Kent poets (including me) to respond to the individual stories for a performance later in the year.
But for now, here are her completed sentences…
When you were small, you wanted to be … a dancer and an artist. I pined to be a ballet dancer, something that was not on the menu for small town not-rich Guyanese girls. I practiced on our windowsill pretending it was a barre, and drew countless versions of beautiful dancers enpointe. But other dancing styles were all around me, stemming from the rich music of calypso and reggae and South American sounds from across the border, and of course pop and soul from the UK and America. I loved to dance and did join a contemporary group as an adult and took part in some performances. Music still fuels my feet and my soul. Being an artist stemmed from the realization that I could draw, and becoming a visual artist became an aim, which was part of my migration plans, and I did exhibit work in the UK in the eighties. I loved reading, my other passion, easy in the days of no TV in Guyana, and started to keep a diary from the age of ten, and write stories and love songs which became poems. Deciding to be a writer came much later, in the 80s, and the diary did lead to Kiskadee Girl.
The one thing you can never resist is … silver Ferrero Rochers (have I spelt that right?!)
(Who cares – here are some for you… the gold ones are for me…)
You may not say it aloud but… I am a fatal romantic. My passion for love has been the ship I sailed since the age of 15. Pablo Neruda and Leonard Cohen will be coming with me to that desert island.
The last time you went ‘WOOP’ with excitement was … when my book Kiskadee Girl arrived. Apart from the challenge of moving from poetry to prose, and the fact I’d been awarded an Arts Council New Writing Award some four years before it was eventually published, meaning I had to finish it! – it was also a huge responsibility to not only write a family story, but also to truly represent the wide-ranging, multi-ethnic and vital history made up of so many ingredients –colonial history, lost voices, and of course, love stories! Kiskadee Girl had begun its journey as a book from a small piece called The Conch Shell in an adults’ creative writing class several years ago. It took me time to realize that you didn’t have to be a celebrity to write an account of your life, and how we measure our life in relation to others.
Your five favourite words are ….
Rhythm … afro-beats, folk-songs, violins, guitars, The Imagined Village …
Soliloquy… the poet’s song
New Amsterdam… my home town in Guyana
Bougainvillea … beautiful and Caribbean but also a migrant. I wrote a poem To the Bougainvillea in my second collection From Berbice to Broadstairs … after buying one in a Broadstairs garden centre and taking her home –
O my Lady of carmine verandas, My Lady of the canes
O my darling of planter’s rum punches
Clinking of ice in the shade …
Belisha, Beloved, my Darling, Survivor of hurricanes
Below you begonias are weeping
In your English benediction of grace.
Favela … rhythm and roots, out of poverty, eternal hope
Lovely, Maggie, and as a thank you, here’s Leonard waiting for you – you can see the desert island behind him, I’m sure….
