A Likkle Miss Lou: How Jamaican Poet Louise Bennett Coverley Found Her Voice

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From 1966 until 1982, often three times a week, she composed and delivered Miss Lou's Views, topical four-minute radio monologues. From 1970 until 1982 she hosted Ring Ding, a weekly television show for children, in which they performed and were reminded of various elements of Jamaican folk culture. If Bennett appears wedded to artistic flexibility, she says she is more emphatic on a political level; she is firmly opposed to the systems of privilege that enable a monarchy, for example, or the election of “a complete buffoon” such as Boris Johnson. “There’s no ambiguity on that. If there was a revolution, I’d be there.” In Ireland, she praises the practical support offered to, among others, artists and writers; she received benefits when she was writing Pond, having explained to the authorities what she wanted to do, “and I just can’t imagine anything like that ever happening in a million years in the UK”. I don’t imagine she’d think of her books in such a transactional way, but it seems to me that the authorities have had a pretty good return on their investment. Preference, if any, for a particular University or other institution and name of Professor with whom I desire to study:

Louise Bennett review – a stunning debut Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett review – a stunning debut

Claire-Louise Bennett’s second novel, like her first book, Pond, enacts a quest for quiddity – the syntax that embodies a cast of mind, the phrase that nails a sensation, the narrative structure that feels like life as it is lived or anyway processed. At times the effect is exhausting. Bennett’s unnamed, 40-ish narrator, raised in south-west England but resident in Ireland, holds forth in fevered, looping, breathless prose, and displays a tendency to travel long and far down the blindest of alleys. She can be arch and even twee. But whatever challenges the book poses to breezy reading are the product of unswerving fidelity to its own raw spirit. She was described as Jamaica’s leading comedienne, as the “only poet who has really hit the truth about her society through its own language”, and as an important contributor to her country of “valid social documents reflecting the way Jamaicans think and feel and live” Through her poems in Jamaican patois, she raised the dialect of the Jamaican folk to an art level which is acceptable to and appreciated by all in Jamaica.a b c Johnson, Linton Kwesi (March 2007). "Louise Bennett, Voice of a People". Wasafiri. 22 (1): 70–71. doi: 10.1080/02690050601097773. S2CID 162314187. And there are stories within the stories of course. The stories of her actual life are intermingled with the stories the protagonist creates there and then. And the books… She is the one who defines certain key events of her life through the books she reads. Or rather, the book by itself often would be that key event. There are many names. I counted 18 females writers mentioned as a list. But that is how she lives; that is what is important to her: The writing is very much more people and relationship based than “Pond” (which set out to deliberately reject what Calvino called “anthropocentric parochialism”) but shares much of its emphasis on patterns, connections, impressions as well as ultimately on solitude, the individual and the outsider. Bennett not only had a scholarship to attend the academy but she auditioned and won a scholarship. After graduation she worked with repertory companies in Coventry, Huddersfield and Amersham as well as in intimate revues all over England. The narrator’s largely solitary lifestyle enables her to eschew what Bennett (pictured) has called “anthropocentric parochialism”. “In solitude you don’t need to make an impression on the world,” the author explained to the Irish Times, “so the world has some opportunity to make an impression on you.” When that impression fails to materialise, in “A Little Before Seven”, the protagonist presses down on the worktop to give herself “a little more density”. In “Morning, Noon & Night” she lies in bed next to her boyfriend, thinking of the vegetables “out there in the dark”: “I’d splay my fingers towards the ceiling and feel such yearning!”

Hon. Dr. Louise Bennett Coverley (1919 – 2006) - The Rt. Hon. Dr. Louise Bennett Coverley (1919 – 2006) - The

An invasion of artists from the Commonwealth arrives in England next month. They are coming here to take part in the first Commonwealth Arts Festival to be held from September 16 to October 2. Programmes are being staged in London, Cardiff, Liverpool and Glasgow, and rehearsals start in August. The longest of these (the fourth) has as its centre a story the narrator first started many years previously – which starts life as a rather eccentric character study of an flamboyant Venice-based flaneur before evolving into more of a Borgesian fable about the power of literature – the evolution reflecting the narrator’s own evolving and expanding experience as a reader (the phrase “I hadn’t yet read ….” acting as a recurring motif). But even this centre is at best the starting point for various digression – digressions which seem often more at the non-sequitur than chain-of-association end of the spectrum. And for me that is a metaphor for Claire-Louise Bennett’s writing – a sense that the conventional literary novel with plot, characters, linearity is not for her – a refusal to fit into pre-existing templates and a search for something new to do with literature. A search though that has perhaps not yet reached fulfilment and is still uneven in its results but still interesting for an observer. Other times though I found the writing a little less original or redolent. A lengthy section on menstruation seemed to be something that would have been provocative twenty years ago. And this is buried in a second chapter set in the narrator’s school days which seems sprinkled with thesaurus -swallowing overwriting – for example repeated attempts to try chemistry explosions are: Such recursive hijinks were most often deployed in the science labs, where the pupils’ incendiary hands might easily alight upon and combine a spectrum of appliances and substances that could be counted on to interact with each other in a palpable and fairly predictable fashion – though the exact scale of the ensuing reaction could not be quite so reliably gauged.” – in retrospect though I wonder if this chapter represents the narrator’s early development as a writer. If it hadn’t been for one chapter in the middle of this book (Won’t You Bring in the Birds), I would have definitely given this book at least 3 stars and probably closer to 4.

Claire-Louise Bennett's debut novel Pond was my favourite novel of 2016 and one I'd rank in the top 10 of the decade, so I have her mentally filed alongside similarly brilliant wordsmiths under "I would happily read her shopping list," and here, via her narrative avatar, I had that pleasure: Initial Officer Training Programme (IOTP) provides basic military officer training to Officer Cadets (OCdts) and their equivalents from law enforcement and uniformed services. The programme falls within the tactical level of the Professional Military Education (PME) framework of armed forces and is modelled from the Royal Military Academy Sandhursts’ (RMAS) Commissioning Course. It was designed with the direct support and guidance of RMAS Instructing and Support Staff.

Claire-Louise Bennett: ‘If there was a revolution, I’d be Claire-Louise Bennett: ‘If there was a revolution, I’d be

The home of IOTP is the Caribbean Military Academy (CMA) Newcastle, which is located at the Newcastle Hill Station, St Andrew, Jamaica. The frequency of being here is both what Bennett responds to in others – Quin’s work, she says, “doesn’t feel just like experimentation. That feels like someone really trying to get at what being alive at that moment feels like and is like” – and what she tries to represent in her own work. She’s been writing since Pond came out, she explains, but for a time – perhaps in part because of talking about the book so much in interviews and at events, and feeling herself pinned down by others’ descriptions of her work – she struggled to come up with something that felt like a book. The other chapters are in some ways riffs around the same ideas, linked by narrator and recurring ideas, themes and incidents – all underpinned by literature – writing and reading.

Louise Bennett was born on September 7, 1919. She was a Jamaican poet and activist. From Kingston, Jamaica Louise Bennett remains a household name in Jamaica, a “Living Legend” and a cultural icon. She received her education from Ebenezer and Calabar Elementary Schools, St. Simon’s College, Excelsior College, Friends College (Highgate). From time to time in the history of a nation, there emerges someone on the national scene who seems to embody the very psyche of its people; capable of distilling, interpreting and expressing its collective wisdom, its hopes and its aspirations, its strengths as well as its weaknesses. In Jamaica, Louise Bennett is such a person.” (Corina Meeks, 1987) a b "Louise Bennett, Queen of Jamaican Culture". Archives & Research Collections. McMaster University Library. 2011. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016 . Retrieved 1 May 2016. Though she and her husband moved to Fort Lauderdale early in the 1980s, and to Toronto in 1987, they kept in touch with Jamaicans and their cultural identity. Miss Lou used to say: "Any which part mi live - Toronto-o! London-o! Florida-o! - a Jamaica mi deh!" (Wherever I live - Toronto, London, Florida - I am in Jamaica.)

Louise Bennett-Coverley

After graduating from RADA, Bennett worked with repertory companies in Coventry, Huddersfield and Amersham, as well as in intimate revues across England. [9] During her time in the country, she hosted two radio programs for the BBC – Caribbean Carnival (1945–1946) and West Indian Night (1950). [7] Indeed, for all her digressive self-narration, her imperiously delivered opinions, it is not always easy to know what our protagonist feels about the events of her life. When she reassures Dale that she barely thinks about what he did, she seems to be telling the truth, but in the aftermath she cannot really determine if she is upset or not, even as her body shakes—which, to this reader at least, is a response that should provide some kind of answer. What it means to be upset is physically expressed but not articulated as emotion. Our narrator is in one way thoroughly devoted to the project of living out who she is, leaning into her tastes and proclivities. But this comes at a certain cost, and, for her, the cost is self-knowledge. Cross, Jason (21 October 2016). "Miss Lou Archives launched at National Library of Jamaica to promote her great legacy". jamaica-gleaner.com . Retrieved 27 November 2016. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but make it a feminist rendition with a female protagonist: In this Künstler- and Bildungsroman, an unnamed narrator ponders her development as a reader and a writer in an experimental style. She grows up in a working-class family in South West England, then moves to Ireland (like the author), always accompanied by the stories she constantly ingests. Yes, this is a book about the love of storytelling, but not in a moralistic, reading-is-good-for-you kind of way: Here, literature is an obsession, both a force of connection and separation. Bennett geeft haar stem aan een naamloze vrouw die via herinneringen en verzinsels vertelt over hoe een leven vol boeken en verbeeldingskracht haar heeft gevormd als individu, lezer en schrijfster. Als het ware met de motorkap van het schrijfmetier wagenwijd open, sleutelt ze aan haar verhalen: over hoe ze een met menstruatiebloed doordrenkt slipje op de toonbank van Dior wou leggen en zeggen ‘dit is het volmaaktste rood ter wereld’; hoe die ene onvergetelijke leraar haar allereerste verhaaltjes wou lezen; hoe in de supermarkt waar ze werkte (aan kassa 19, inderdaad) een Rus twee vingers van zijn vrouw liefkozend in zijn mond stopt; hoe ze door haar eigen lief werd verkracht. Een simpele opsomming van thema’s en anekdotes schiet echter gegarandeerd tekort. Onverwachte wendingen, herhalingen en zijpaadjes die zomaar tien bladzijden innemen, geven meermaals het gevoel alsof je in een vijvertje duikt dat uiteindelijk een heus meer blijkt. De meeste episodes worden doorspekt met tientallen aangehaalde romans en collega-schrijvers, van E.M Forster tot Anaïs Nin, want ‘een goed boek sluit je niet echt. Dat blijft terugkeren en infiltreren met je leven.’ Voor de Britse dient literatuur het leven als gids en aanvulling, niet als afleiding. ‘We lezen om tot leven te komen.’And perhaps grasping the book as a whole isn't the point - as the narrator reminds us Sometimes all it takes is just one sentence. Just one sentence, and there you are, part of something that has been part of you since the beginning, whenever that might rightly be. After her year at RADA, Louise hoped to continue her studies in the Caribbean, most notably spending a period of time in Trinidad. In a letter to the British Council, she wrote that ‘after a very profitable year of studies at the Royal Academy…I have come aware of the fact that the natural end of my course lies in the West Indies’. Didn’t think I would like this as much as I did/do, but all I can say is that the second half is really worth it. Might update with a more thorough thing later, but for now, I’ll share some of my favourite lines. Louise Bennett Coverley fonds". McMaster University Library. William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections . Retrieved 28 November 2015. Morris, Mervyn (2014). Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture. Andrews UK Limited. p.126. ISBN 9781909930117 . Retrieved 1 May 2016.