When September Comes and Other Poems

John Walker is a professor of Spanish studies at Queen’s University.

Teacher, poet, and storyteller Peter Jailall was born in Guyana but now
lives in Mississauga, Ontario. As this title and his previous
collections indicate, he is very much concerned with human rights and
social justice.

Jailall’s poetry deals with the emigrant’s search for the place
called home, especially in the risky, dangerous world of
post–September 11. Plagued by the dangers of terrorism, the abuses of
globalization, the excesses of modernization, and the destruction of the
environment, the poet has to confront not only his own search for home
and identity, but also the problems of all displaced people. This
collection is an interesting mix of the old country and the new, the
Guyanese past and the Canadian present—a poetic search for the place
he calls home. Like all emigrants, the poet remembers the good aspects
of his homeland and childhood, despite the current violence, unrest,
racial tension, and lack of material progress. From his Canadian vantage
point, he can compare past and present, North and South, East and West,
as he searches for that elusive identity.

The point of departure for the collection’s 43 poems is the September
11th horror, captured by the title poem and a roll call of the Guyanese
victims of that massacre. The poet has experienced the horrors of racial
discrimination in his own life (first by the British colonial masters),
and he records the strife between East Indian and Black communities
(represented by “Jagan and Burnham”), the cruelty of bosses, the
“Coolie” label of hatred (e.g., “Estate Coolie,” “Coolie
Come”). At the same time, he remembers the happy days of “A Guyanese
Christmas”; presents nature pieces like “Mother Bird,”
“Travelling Through the Woods,” “Trying to Catch Nature”; and
captures the colours, scents, and rhythms of “The Ole Country.” The
philosophical musings of “After Life,” “I Can’t Go Home,” and
“Second Migration” bring it all back to the poet’s dilemma: “I
want to go home / but I can’t go home ... / So I’m staying right
here / in my peaceful Canadian home.”

When September Comes transcends regional and chronological barriers by
capturing not only the problems of the terror-filled world we inhabit,
but also the poet’s search for identity and roots—a search that
torments all emigrants.