Stitching Together Memories: An Interview with Poet Grace Nichols
Today, Bookends’ series of conversations #Caribbeanstrong between Jacqueline Bishop and writers from around the region continues with the featured writer Grace Nichols, whose first collection of poetry, I is a Long-memoried Woman, won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Since then Nichols has written several other books of poetry, children’s stories and poetry anthologies, and a novel for adults, Whole of a Morning Sky.
Grace Nichols, born in Guyana, now makes the UK her home. Her poetry is featured in the Welsh Joint Education Committee and Edexcel English/english Literature anthologies, which means that many students in the United Kingdom have studied her work.
Grace Nichols, it is such an honour to have this chance to interview you. I have been a fan of yours for so many years! This interview will be based on your book I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems, as well as from your most recent collection, The Insomnia Poems.
I will start with the poem “Sugarcane” from your first collection, which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, in which a narrator is talking about the art of survival of this plant. What I found so interesting is that plants are often feminised in poetry, but in this case you decided to make sugarcane a man. Can you talk us through your reasons for doing this?
So the poem has its roots in that historical space. Sugarcane has been described as a ‘sweet crop’ with a ‘bitter history’ since it was the main reason for the introduction of African slaves to the Caribbean. The idea of making sugarcane masculine was a natural one for me, not least because of its phallic shape. The long-memoried woman empathises with Sugarcane; indeed, she falls in love with a man cutting sugarcane, and for her the two become indistinguishable. Like sugarcane that has its juice wrung out of it, the man has his sweat and blood sucked out of him.
I simply adore the Fat Black Woman’s poems!
fat is a darling a dumpling a squeeze fat is cuddles up a baby’s sleeve
It seems to me long before there was a term called “fat shaming” you were exploring this in your poetry. A few questions here: When did you realise that you had a cycle of poems about the “fat black woman”? What did you find so personally engaging about this character? Was she based on anyone you knew or is she fully of your imagination?
I suppose the idea for the Fat
Black Woman’s Poems came out of a subconscious rebellion against the stereotype image of beauty to which the Western world subscribes. That cycle of poems was written over 30 years ago, a few years after coming to England. It comes out of a sense of playfulness and she isn’t based on anyone I know. She’s a character or persona I created, an exaggeration who relishes ‘acting-up’ as the outrageous opposite of the very thin woman (usually blonde) held up to us as the ideal model of beauty by the fashion industry. The Fat Black Woman begs to differ and enjoys her own sensuousness and sensuality. For me she doesn’t represent fatness per se, but rather a largeness and generosity of spirit. A sense of unbounded freedom. I doubt whether I would have come up with that book of poems in Guyana, for example, as that obsession with body size doesn’t really exist.
One of the things that stand out about your work is really vivid imagery:
O but look there’s a waterpot growing from her head
Or, in another case:
The fat black woman want some heat/hibiscus at her feet blue sea dress to wrap her neat
These images in fact recall paintings and made me wonder if you practised any of the visual arts or wrote these poems by looking at works of visual art?
I have always loved the image-making power of poetry. I’m still practically bowled over when I come across a particularly striking image that makes us