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2. “Whirlwinds Coiled at My Heart”: Voice and Vision in a Writer’s Practice
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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2 “Whirlwinds Coiled at My Heart”: Voice and Vision in a Writer’s Practice Olive Senior I think of “voice” and “vision” in many different ways: the words and conceptual meaning as separate but, more often, inseparable. I always visualize what I write and I write what I envision. In the same way, I feel I have a mandate to give voice to the speechless (inanimate or human) even as I visualize their animation, and this, in turn, enlivens my inner vision. The loop is continuous , or so I would like it to be. Without implying exclusion of other sensory experiences, I’d like to discuss the importance of voice and vision in my practice. The Importance of Voice You think I’ve stayed home all my life, moving at snail’s pace, sneakily living off another’s labour? You think I’ve nought to leave behind but empty shell? Come: study me. Take my chambered shell apart. Brace yourself for whirlwinds coiled at my heart. This is my poem “Gastropoda,” which introduces my latest poetry book, Shell. In this and other examples of my work, shells speak in their own voices directly to the reader or listener, and so do maize, sugar cane, other plants and so-called inanimate objects, birds, Guédé, the Haitian lord of the dead, the 21 Yoruba Shango, and humans both dead and alive, some walking out of the pages of history. Many address the reader in their own voices. Or they narrate stories of themselves and others. The author speaks directly to Christopher Columbus and Pablo Neruda, to drop a few names, and sometimes they speak back. In both my poems and short stories, there seems to be a constant conversation between author and subject, or subject and reader or listener. And often in my fictions, explicit or implied, there are other voices as a kind of commentary, counterpoint, or background to the story. The voices are rarely alone. They always speak in or out of a community, even those who, within the community, are lost (e.g., the “mad,” the children, the poor and dispossessed, the lonely, the people on the fringes of society). Very few of the voices that appear in my poetry and fiction would have appeared in my literary role models. I grew up in colonial Jamaica, and our educational system, including the curriculum, was that of English public schools. What I read then was English literature and all that that implies. Let me hasten to say, I had an excellent high school education. What I deplored was what was missing. My most popular work in the Caribbean today is probably a poem called “Colonial Girls School,” which I think a lot of people growing up in different colonial cultures can relate to. Part of it goes: Borrowed images willed our skins pale muffled our laughter lowered our voices let out our hems dekinked our hair denied our sex in gym tunics and bloomers harnessed our voices to madrigals and genteel airs yoked our minds to declensions in Latin and the language of Shakespeare Told us nothing about ourselves There was nothing about us at all How those pale northern eyes and aristocratic whispers once erased us 22 “WHIRLWINDS COILED AT MY HEART” [3.235.42.157] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 02:35 GMT) How our loudness, our laughter debased us There was nothing left of ourselves Nothing about us at all Studying: History Ancient and Modern Kings and Queens of England Steppes of Russia Wheatfields of Canada There was nothing of our landscape there Nothing about us at all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . So, friend of my childhood years One day we’ll talk about How the mirror broke Who kissed us awake Who let Anansi from his bag For isn’t it strange how Northern eyes In the brighter world before us now Pale? (lines 1–25, 42–50) The poem ends on a positive note; it is addressed to a school friend who, like me, went on to break the mirror that was held up to us then, a mirror that did not reflect who we were or our potential. We were not English schoolchildren, but children of Africa, of Europe, of Asia, and of the Americas in various heterogeneous mixtures. Only because that mirror broke could I become who I am and write the way I do. Many things contributed to the breaking of the mirror, including political independence and the quest for nationhood. But for me, it...