Poets on islandwide tour ‘to make a change’
MALACHI SMITH knows firsthand both the ugly, destructive side of humanity, and the creative beauty of the arts. That’s because the former policeman (in Jamaica and Florida) is now a full-time activist and poet.
Disgusted, he says, with the crime and violence infecting much of Jamaica, he is intent on using poetry to make a change.
“With the number of illegal guns and violence around, and murders all over the place, we have become the wretched of the earth,” he told an audience on Monday evening at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. “But we’re poets speaking truth, and with or without sponsors, we’re going to light a fire in Jamaica and make a positive change,” he added.
He was giving an introduction to a performance-poetry session by a group of Jamaican poets he had assembled. Earlier in the day, the group had started out on what Smith hopes will be an annual islandwide tour of schools and colleges.
He told me that the group had visited Kingston Technical High School and The Mico University College, where the presentations were particularly well received. The group was scheduled to head for Montego Bay yesterday for three performances at Mount Alvernia High School, Cornwall College, and Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College. Today, they will be in St Elizabeth at the parish’s technical high school (STETHS), Hampton High School and Munro College. There could also be appearances in Manchester, Clarendon (at Glenmuir High School), and St Catherine.
The tour ends in Kingston on November 14, when the group performs at the University of Technology, at the YWCA, and the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.