Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

Abebe Payne closed Tuesday evening's fellowship of the Poetry Society of Jamaica. - photo by Yahneake Sterling

The week-long Kingston On The Edge Festival went into the spoken word on Tuesday evening, making a stop at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Arthur Wint Drive, St. Andrew. The larger-than-usual audience at the regular last Tuesdays gathering of the Poetry Society of Jamaica indicated that the festival's reach had an impact and, at the end, the sporadic cheers throughout poet Abebe Payne's performance indicated his reach and impact with those gathered on the various levels of the college's amphitheatre.

He was the second of the evening's guests, the first, Claudette Beckford-Brady, being a departure from the standard fare of poets, as she read her short story Fi Wi Mango Dem. The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission gold medal-winning story told the tale of Miss May and her run-in with a young man next door, who was determined to pick the mangoes on the limbs of a tree which hung over her yard, but had roots in his.

First encounter

At the first encounter, Miss May looked out her window to find out the source of rustling in the tree and "finally a torso in a torn merino and a head came into sight ... the young man with an insolent grin on his face". He said he was picking a few mangoes as "nutten naa gwaan". When Miss May told him she was not his 'godmother', as he called her, and he had no right to the mangoes he informed her "It is not your tree lady. It inna fe we yard. A fi we mango dem."

Thus began the tussle over the fruit, Miss May's son Calvin getting involved with legal reasoning, which failed, as the young man decided that the roots were in his yard and duly severed the limbs under dispute. Her son reminded her that to err is human and forgive is divine, laughter rising as "Miss May decided that for today, she would be more human than divine." Still, she decided to pray and forgive, then a few months later, a clean-shaven, courteous young man she could hardly reconcile with, the scruffy, rude person she had had an encounter with, approached her.

He said he was sorry, that it was a wicked thing to have done, invited her to his baptism and informed her she could have any fruit in his yard. "No more my mango, but fi we mango dem," he said to end the story.

Beckford-Brady is the author of Sweet Home, Jamaica, already published in the U.K.

Payne played on, and with words with meaning, delivering his lyrics fluently and with rhythm, advising all to "get yu limbs dem limber" and observing "nuff want fish, no want fishing line". He noted that his mother was present and it was the first time she was seeing him perform, then announcing that the next poem was for the family.

'I like the cheers'

It went through the fathers, mothers and the youths, coming backto a refrain that said in part "In Rome you do what the Romans do unto your brother before him do unto you." After the cheers and applause had subsided at the end, Payne smiled and said "This is why I do it still. I like the cheers."

And there were many, many more to come, as he went interactive by asking the audience to repeat "puff, puff blow" on a marijuana poem ("this one is advocating about the legalisation of banned narcotics, so to speak"), before he went into pieces for the women, saying "Your vision is provision, yu fatten me eye," and stating "Natural me circle you like a satellite."

He closed with a poem of relaxation, advising to loosen a button and telling the lady "yu run outta button den pull a G-string", to a final explosion of spontaneous applause.