Hurricane Watch

New and Collected Poems

Olive Senior

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781800172166
• eBook ISBN: 9781800172173
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Poesie

Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems brings together Jamaican Poet Laureate Olive Senior's first four books of poetry alongside a new collection. Recipient of the Musgrave Gold Medal in 2005 from the Institute of Jamaica, Senior has long been recognised as a skilful and evocative storyteller but what this book shows is the consistency and range of her achievement. Senior's poems are delicate, formally playful and always finely observed, whether responding to Jamaican birdlife, the larger natural world or the traces of a complicated historical inheritance. Often, and always surprisingly, her poems' brilliant descriptions and vivid, gripping narratives open out into ecological reflections, politics and culture in original, surprising and sensuous ways.

185

GARDENING IN THE TROPICS (1994)

187

GOURD

189

TRAVELLERS’ TALES

191

MEDITATION ON YELLOW

‘The yellow of the Caribbean seen from Jamaica at three in the afternoon.’

Gabriel García Márquez

1

At three in the afternoon

you landed here at El Dorado

(for heat engenders gold and

fires the brain)

Had I known I would have

brewed you up some yellow fever-grass

and arsenic

but we were peaceful then

child-like in the yellow dawn of our innocence

so in exchange for a string of islands

and two continents

you gave us a string of beads

and some hawk’s bells

which was fine by me personally

for I have never wanted to possess things

I prefer copper anyway

the smell pleases our lord Yucahuna

our mother Attabeira

it’s just that copper and gold hammered into guanín

worn in the solar pendants favoured by our holy men

fooled you into thinking we possessed the real thing

(you were not the last to be fooled by our

patina)

As for silver

I find that metal a bit cold

The contents of our mines

I would have let you take for one small mirror

to catch and hold the sun

I like to feel alive

to the possibilities

of yellow

lightning striking

perhaps as you sip tea

at three in the afternoon

a bit incontinent

despite your vast holdings

(though I was gratified to note

that despite the difference in our skins

our piss was exactly the same shade of yellow)

I wished for you

a sudden enlightenment that

we were not the Indies

nor Cathay

no Yellow Peril here

though after you came

plenty of bananas

oranges

sugar cane

You gave us these for our

maize

pineapples

guavas

– in that respect

there was fair exchange

But it was gold

on your mind

gold the light

in your eyes

gold the crown

of the Queen of Spain...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• SHELL (2007)
• OVER THE ROOFS OF THE WORLD (2005)
• GARDENING IN THE TROPICS (1994)
• TALKING OF TREES (1985)
• EYED: NEW AND UNCOLLECTED POEMS
• Notes to the Poems
• List of Illustrations
• Index of Poem Titles
• About the Author
• Copyright