Yet Another Home

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Peter Jailall is a teacher who immigrated to Canada in 1970. Like his
first poetry collection, This Healing Place and Other Poems, Yet Another
Home explores his Guyanese past and Canadian present.

Brutal internecine conflicts are outlined in “When Nazmoon Died”;
gunmen murder a pregnant woman, but “[t]he baby inside never cried.”
“The Rice Christians’ Prayer” explores inter-group tensions by
revealing that Guyanese Hindus attack Christian converts as turncoats
who want to join the nation’s black majority with “de whiteman
religion.” “Caribbean Man Talk,” “Canada Wear,” and other
verses are written in dialect, but the use of dialect is merely a
literary device, not the political commentary it is in Lillian Allen’s
“dub poetry.”

Mississauga field mice, Toronto street people, and, of course, winter
are among Jailall’s Canadian topics. The immigrant experience is the
subject of “Yet Another Home,” in which a Guyanese nursing-home
resident reflects on Canada. In “Manifest Destiny,” Canada is seen
as a place that lures talented foreigners with dreams, but ends up
alienating them.

The teacher expresses himself in “For the Young,” a juvenile poetry
section. Youthful emotions are the focus of “My Country.”
“Hallowe’en Night” and “Daddy Please Recycle” offer standard
sentiments and political correctness. Surprisingly, these poems function
on a similar level to his adult verse, without the “objectionable”
content.