The latest poetry book for schools to come off the press from Hodder & Stoughton, this is a welcome addition, and probably the best available so far. It is a handsome book, beautifully printed and laid out (so that most of the poems hold on a single page), with generous margins and with each of the eight sections preceded by a pleasant line drawing by Jennifer Northway, illustrating some scene related to the theme of that section.

Borders are put in place for the purpose of regulation. They act as lines of demarcation, whether actual or imaginary. They attempt to provide clear visual and psychological markings of where one thing or place begins, and where it ends. To go beyond any border is to cross over defined lines which have been used in various ways to determine the identity, place, and function of a particular landscape, whether this landscape be physical or psychological.

"April comes in
with yellow poui
defining Mona..."

In "And Caret Bay Again", veteran Caribbean poet Velma Pollard treats us to an exciting mixture of the old and the new—many old favourites from previous collections (“Crown Point”, “Shame Trees Don't Grow Here”, “The Best Philosophers I Know Can't Read or Write”, “Leaving Traces”) and 18 new poems. (The volume is divided according to these different collections of works). This new collection (re-collection) is tied together by an exciting feature taken from the world of Art—the diptych—that is signalled in the title of the book.

Former taken-for-granted approaches to the teaching of literature and by extension the teaching of poetry in the Caribbean classroom are no longer stable. Concerns over low student achievement in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination in key areas such as poetry, create considerable debates over how teachers of English in the Caribbean should both respond to and be prepared for the teaching of poetry in the English classroom.

Introducing any poetry composed in English into Japanese classrooms of higher education requires two processes: one is the translation of English poems into Japanese and the next is to familiarize Japanese students with the cultural contexts in which the poetry is written and read. Once the two requisites have been achieved, Japanese students are able to enjoy the culturally different world of English poetry.

Caribbean literature relies on the reader's capacity to identify elements of the textual landscape and interpret them within appropriate environmental, cultural and historical contexts. The pedagogical approaches discussed in this paper are taken from The Island School's [Bahamas] Literature of the Sea course which features an intensive study of St Lucian poet Derek Walcott's epic Omeros. Curriculum is designed to help students access these elements of the text through observation and direct interaction.

The paper I delivered at the Caribbean Poetry Conference was based on my findings while planning and teaching a series of lessons introducing Year 8 students (12yr olds) in Haringey, North London to Caribbean poetry. 

The Western tourist in the Caribbean is unavoidably in a position of in-authenticity and naïve but guilty spectatorship—always already on the outside; always ready with a camera—to take /capture/shoot static moments of picturesque in-significance. “Here’s one of me in front of the hotel…on the beach…outside the Independence Monument…” The relation of the ‘tourist’ to the place visited is by its very nature one of impermanence, of temporary, fleeting and superficial pleasure—of escape from the ‘real world’.

Environmental writing and criticism have tended to stress the value of local knowledges and experience, which are often perceived as inherently resisting processes within modernity that separate human beings from direct, sensuous apprehension of their environment. More recently, however, writers such as Ursula Heise have begun to argue for a more ‘cosmopolitan’ form of consciousness in the modern world, thoughtfully engaged with modes of apprehending environmental connectivity (particularly within the new media) that have a global reach.