PETER CHIN

“Jamaican,”

Thank you for reading this excerpt from my larger poem Jamaican, which I created while travelling in Jamaica and Panama during the shooting of the award-winning film of the same title that I made with collaborator Jeremy Mimnagh. This extract is from the middle of the poem, mid-stream in contemplation of the meanings of “Jamaican,” personally, anthropologically and primordially. The poem ruminates on my multiracial background, and at the same time, walks decisively away from a paradigm of “Jamaican,” dominated by an examination of race.

Peter Chin is the artistic director of Tribal Crackling Wind, based in Toronto and Cambodia, and the co-founder of the NKK International Dance Centre.