Grace Nichols – A Voice of Reclamation

Jul 25, 2010 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature

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– By Petamber Persaud

It took me a while before I could open Picasso, I Want my Face Back, Bloodaxe Books (2009), another thought-provoking collection of poems by Grace Nichols. Yes, I was fascinated by the cover design with the painting of the ‘Weeping Woman’ by Pablo Picasso. Transfixed on the cover, trying to discern what feast Nichols has prepared this time for the reader.
Picasso, I Want my Face Back – what was Nichols trying to reclaim this time? The face of nameless, female ancestors whose contributions are still unsung? Reclaiming the rightful position of the woman? What injustices were Nichols crying out against – Latin reclamare – going with my subheading, a voice of reclamation?
Titles of her other books pasted themselves on the cover of the book in my hands – I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), that won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, telling the story of an enslaved woman’s sufferings, steadfastness and eventual triumph; The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984) giving voice to the Black woman as she tries to be herself in defiance to the dictates of Western values; Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (1989), a discourse on identity as ‘dust has the right to settle/Milk the right to curdle/Cheese the right to turn green’ because ‘Wherever I hang me knickers – that’s my home’, and Sunrise (1996) ‘reclaiming various strands of her heritage’ – Africa, Guyana and the Caribbean, the folktales of Anancy, the effervescence of calypso and beat of the steelpan and the colourful creolese language. Sunrise won the Guyana Prize for Literature (1996) in the poetry category.
A look at the formative years of Grace Nichols in Guyana may shed some light on her writing and choice of subject. Nichols was born in the 1950s in Highdam, Mahaica, a rustic village on the coastland of British Guiana. She was born into a world of books and music.
Her father was a head teacher and at home she was surrounded by books – she was fascinated by the kingdom of books and language. Her mother used to give piano lessons. The music in her poetry came from that and other sources – like the singing of birds, the whistle of the wind in the mangrove, the roar of the Atlantic Ocean, the rhythm of calypso music and the beat of pan, the call of the fisherman and the fruit vendor, the odour of mud and salt when she went crab hunting, the mystery of fishes under the surface of sun kiss water, the silence of a dark country night, the eerie jumbie story, the closeness of storytelling, the folktales, the tricks of Anancy, the lusty singing in church, the correctness of Standard English and the colourful creolese, the whole of the morning sky, the whole of the evening sky.
Nichols harps back now on the influence of dream on her writing, for example, the dream that led to her first collection of poems, I is a Long-Memoried Woman. And inspiration came from the preacher at Helena Presbyterian Church, screaming ‘to illustrate his sermon/of Jesus and the higher life…[d]on’t be a kyatta-pilla/Be a butterfly’.
That was her world until she was about eight years old when the family moved to the city of Georgetown, challenging her mind with issues of ethnicity, identity, independence, human rights and injustices, womanhood and the disadvantaged woman, and the awakening of the ancestral spirits in her.
As she moved into the world of higher education, doing the Communication Course at the University of Guyana, she was able to appreciate the culture and myths of Guyana’s first people which in turn led her to research other cultures and her own ancestral heritage.
The mind was now engaged to write as the opportunities availed themselves moving into the world of work. She worked as a journalist at the Chronicle, favouring the feature and the human interest stories. Honing her skill as a writer continued on the job as she worked for the Government Information Service. Her creative voice was about this time coming to the fore in short stories and poetry. The first chapters of her first and only novel, Whole of a Morning Sky, were already paged.
In 1977, she moved to the UK, along with another major influence on her life and writing, John Agard. In this new place which she also calls home, the caterpillar blossomed into a butterfly in the world of literature. Here she also turned to writing for children, and on numerous occasions collaborating with Agard to compile books of children literature. The titles of some of the children literature include Trust You, Wriggly, (1981), Leslyn in London, (1984), Come on into My Tropical Gardens (1988), The Poet Cat (2000), Everybody Got a Gift (2005), Paint me a Poem (2004).
Grace Nichols was poet-in-resident at the University of the West Indies, and at the Tate Gallery, London. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Her recent collection of poems, I Have Crossed an Ocean, displaying some twenty-five years of her writing, is the essential Grace Nichols.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@ yahoo.com
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• The Guyana Annual 2010 issue is now available at Guyenterprise Ltd. on Lance Gibbs and Irving Streets, Queenstown
· Creative Writing Workshop, contact Charlene Wilkinson at the University of Guyana, School of Education & the Humanities.
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