GREAT BAY, St. Martin (November 2004) — The Salt Reaper – Poems from the flats, by the St. Martin poet/author Lasana M. Sekou, was launched here in November 2004.
This is the ninth book of verse from whom the likes of George Lamming, Dr. Howard Fergus, and Kamau Brathwaite call one of the Caribbean’s most dynamic poets.
What is sure to add fire to some seasoned poetry is an introduction to the book by Dr. Hollis “Chalkdust” Liverpool, an associate professor of history at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI).
In The Salt Reaper, writes Chalkdust, Sekou is “still a fresh mind in a fresh poetic garment, spilling out his vision for the birth of a new St. Martin, a new Haiti, a new Caribbean, indeed a new civilization.” The internationally acclaimed kaisonian is himself an author, music educator and the 2004 Calypso King of Trinidad and Tobago.
Sekou’s poems range in topics from the 1990 heavy equipment owners protest that blockaded the Caribbean island of St. Martin, to Dutch immigration, constitutional status searches by the remaining colonies in the Caribbean, Haitian solidarity, fellowship with Cuba, sons and fathers, the historical “stain” of St. Martin’s Great Salt Pond, crisis in Kigali, and war and torture in Iraq.
The signature piece of the book is “Cradle of the nation,” a poem that is “magisterial” said Dr. Carolyn Cooper, literature professor at University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Dr. Cooper flew to St. Martin to deliver the address at the book launch on November 6, attended by over 200 people at the Philipsburg Jubilee Library, reported the Today newspaper.
Sekou’s love poems this time around are fewer than usual. What is completely unusual is the impression that these sensual love poems are describing women in their 30s and 40s, as opposed to the ofttimes lusty poems of his earlier collections that were clearly romancing younger women. Chalkdust does the unusual here too by linking the love poems to an element of history and “identity.”
The Salt Reaper introduction opens with Chalkdust pointing to the “nourishing intellectualism and stimulating thoughts conveyed by the unique style and dripping-with-knowledge lines of the poet.”
What might also interest St. Martiners and the poet’s generation in the Caribbean and beyond is how the master calypsonian links Sekou to the likes of his seniors George Lamming, Rene Depestre, Paulo Freire, Edouard Glissant, CLR James, and Frantz Fanon, said Jacqueline Sample, president of House of Nehesi, the book’s publisher. House of Nehesi is also scheduled to publish the long awaited poetry anthology of Shake Keane, the grand poet and national hero of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 2005.
The Salt Reaper by Lasana M. Sekou is available at www.spdbooks.org and www.Amazon.com or inquire at your favorite bookstore and at www.houseofnehesipublish.com (The Salt Reaper. House of Nehesi Publishers, 114 + xvi pp., US$15. Paperback, Poetry/Literature. © 2004. 5”x7.5”, ISBN 0913441651).