Wheel and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poetry

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

Wheel and Come Again presents work by 40 writers of Caribbean origin.
They live in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well
as on various Caribbean islands. Together the poems exhibit an immense
range of tone, style, and diction. Some are written in mainstream
English, while others are so thickly accented with Caribbeanisms that
this reviewer couldn’t entirely follow where they were going.

In his introduction to the book, Kwame Dawes convincingly argues that
although reggae poetry is derived from reggae music, it has developed
such complexity that it is an independent art form: “what has emerged
are not reggae songs (without the music and fire of performance) but a
new poetic fired by the reggae mood, the reggae intelligence and the
reggae aesthetic.” He concludes, “This volume points to a new
approach to Caribbean poetry, an approach that accepts that a
distinctive aesthetic has now emerged and is giving shape to the
writing.” It’s like witnessing the beginning of a new mountain after
a volcanic eruption, exciting and more than a little intimidating. Lorna
Goodison captures this feeling in her poem “Jah Music”: “The sound
bubbled up / through the cistern one night / and piped its way into /
the atmosphere, / and decent people wanted / to know / “What kind of
ole nayga music is that / playing on the Government’s radio?” / But
this red and yellow and dark green / sound, / stained from traveling
underground, / smelling of poor people’s dinners / from a yard dense
as Belgium, / has the healing.”

This poetry speaks of liberation and self-discovery. It “has the
healing.”