Kwame Dawes reads from his poetry collection 'Hope's Hospice' at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts , UWI, Mona, on Sunday, with a photograph by Joshua Cogan on the screen to his right. - photo by Mel Cooke

Kwame Dawes smiled twice during his extensive reading from Hope's Hospice, his latest poetry collection surrounding HIV/AIDS and the hospice in Montego Bay for persons living with the illness, on Sunday morning into early afternoon.

The first was in the early stages, after he had walked quietly to the podium at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, taken a drink of water and read the collection's title poem without preamble, the accompanying images by Joshua Cogan on big screen adding to the power of art.

Dawes started out singing "we are together again, just praising the Lord" and the poem included persons such as an 11-year-old whose "mind was unable to comprehend the treachery of rape".

Journey to Kingston

But after Dawes had closed with his journey to Kingston, "to sleep and more sleep", he paused to allow those filling out an already substantial audience to find their place. The smile came as Dawes remembered his earlier days at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus. "Seems you have forgotten my practice when I was in this theatre. We don't start late. We just lock the door and send them home," Dawes said, with a smile.

And there was another smile just before the end, after Dawes read Sketch and before the final Rainbow Over Hope Road, as he said that his wife was in the audience for the launch of Hope's Hospice.

There was much to applaud in Dawes' crafting of the poems (after he read about Margaret, the 11-year-old mentioned in Hope's Hospice, and her stepfather cramming "into your tender self his anger and terror" he said 'thank you' for a lone, delayed handclap), but little to smile about in the subject matter. After Portmore ("holding body and soul together/with transactions of body and soul"), the multi-part Unforgiveness and Storm, Dawes explained the genesis of Hope's Hospice.

"I didn't choose this gig. I would not. I say that confidently. I was asked to do a long article for the Virginia Quarterly Review," Dawes said, pointing out that he is not a journalist. "They said they wanted a poet. I thought I could do that part. They also wanted someone who had a connection to Jamaica."

He explained also that "many of the poems did not come out of a planned exercise. It came out of what they say in America, to process what I was experiencing."

'Treachery of the blood'

And he continued the reading with Faith, another multi-part poem which examined The Seen Things ("this treachery of the blood is a secret rushing through me"), The Unseen Things and Evidence and Substance.

He referred to the late John Marzouca, who was in charge of Hope's Hospice, and the stories he told Dawes, several times. Some of those tales were processed into poems, Coffee Break being about a man who was blowing up balloons, but died in the time Marzouca took to go to make coffee and come back to ask if he wanted cow's milk or condensed milk.

"And the balloons sat lightly on his lap," Dawes read.

Dawes reading was interspersed with recordings where the poems were delivered musically by what he described as a team of amazingly talented musicians, with whom he had worked on a production of a previous poetry collection, Wisteria, Twilight Songs From The Swamp Country.

Just as Cogan's photographs and the recordings were integrated into the reading, the book launch was part of a discussion about HIV/AIDS. Fabian Thomas, who hosted the launch and introduced Dawes, said he can recall when HIV was not a part of life and now he cannot remember when it has not. "The reality is when you have a guest who is present, you have to deal with it," Thomas said.

And Thomas described Hope's Hospice as a "creative" way of looking at HIV.

Sunday's launch was a scaled down version of the full production, which Thomas said he hopes will be put on for World AIDS Day, December 1.

In a video showed between the reading and the panel discussion that followed, Dawes gave further insight into the process of getting to the people and information he processed into poetry.

Fae Ellington hosted the panel discussion which followed the video, Peter Figueroa, Lois Hue, Ainsley Reid, Anesha Taylor and, in the later stages, Dawes and Thomas participating.