"It's just art, just a change from hotel room wallpaper."

A few minutes after I sat down in the Frank Conroy Reading Room at the Dey House on Wednesday, April 29th, a woman who I did not know began to introduce the reader for the evening, Mark McMorris. Even the introduction was poetic, and the woman spoke in a very sing-song way. She told us that McMorris was born in Jamaica and is the author of three books of poetry. He is also a sound and performance poet and has written multiple fiction works. She said, “His work brings us a world…” She explained that McMorris’s poetry creates connections between different places and cultures, while also having a political edge.

Mark McMorris is a statuesque Jamaican man with graying hair and a round, friendly face. He looks academic and has the air of an experienced poet. He started by reading from a manuscript that he began writing in 2003, called “traces of current affairs.” He read many different poems that started with “Dear Michael;” Michael is the name of one of the archangels. The “Dear Michael” letters sounded very intellectual, but I have to admit that the concept of them went over my head. I did not really understand them, and I found myself listening to his voice rather than the words themselves. He has a very low, soothing voice. I feel that the reading would have been more effective if I had had the poetry in front of me; much of the reading went far too fast. He also jumped to other poems, and then went back to more “Dear Michael” poems. I feel that I would have been able to understand better how all of the poems fit together if I had been able to see them on paper.

Other parts of the reading made me wish that here was some sort of program as well… One of McMorris’s poems started with the words “Dear K.” I liked the poem, it was short and the whole thing sounded like one run-on sentence. However, I realized that I had no idea if the name of the person who was being addressed was “Kay,” or if he was shortening the name to “K.” The poem could have had distinctly different feels with each of these two options. Also, at the beginning of the reading when McMorris was being introduced, I heard the guy sitting behind me confirm with his friend that the poet’s name was “Martin Morris.” It was unfortunate that McMorris’s name was not written anywhere.

Despite the fact that there were parts of the reading that went over my head, I very much liked some of the specific stylistic choices that McMorris made as a poet. During some of his poems, McMorris’s Jamaican roots really shined through. Some parts started to sound like songs or chants, and his accent seemed to be more apparent when he was reading than when he was just talking normally. I very much liked this line: “No, no, no, no… NO a thousand nos!” As he read this part, McMorris’s voice got louder with every “no.” It was intense and added dimension to the poem. Many of McMorris’s poems did not rhyme, but I loved his use of things like alliteration and onomatopoeia. He also mirrored sentences after one another and repeated words throughout certain poems. One of my favorite lines was the following: “If myth is material practice, if I burn my arrows today, when will I begin to write?”

By Rachel McNamee