Uses metaphors drawn from the fauna and flora of Jamaica and images drawn from painting as the over-arching devices. The author explores the tensions between plenitude and emptiness, presence and absence, the nourishing and the poisonous in her memories of the rural Jamaican childhood that has shaped her.
A satisfying and original work, this collection of poems offers moving personal insights as it reconstructs a Jamaican childhood from memory. Using striking metaphors drawn from the fauna and flora of Jamaica as well as images of painting as overarching devices, this volume explores the dichotomies of plentitude and emptiness, presence and absence, and nourishment and poison. Never allowing her longing for the island to become sentimental, the poet meticulously recreates her world in these heartfelt poems.
