Prompt-a-mania with Malika Booker

By Kim Moore

CW: discussion of slavery and violence

The summer in poetry land often goes a little bit quiet. There aren’t as many readings or workshops or events to go to. School holidays for me and I’m sure many others mean there’s less time to actually think, or the thinking time you do have is swallowed up by warming up, for example another bowl of spaghetti hoops because the first bowl had a glass of water accidentally tipped into it. For example. Anyway - I digress.

If poetry land for you feels like a distant dream at the moment, then fear not! The brilliant Malika Booker is running a couple of online day retreats called 'Prompt-a-mania’ on August 17th and August 18th from 10am - 4.30pm.

I teach alongside Malika at Manchester Metropolitan University and count myself very lucky to do so - I’ve heard her work with students and witnessed first hand her incisiveness, her knowledge and her compassion. Annoyingly, I will be camping somewhere in East Yorkshire when these workshops take place, otherwise I would be there in a flash.

I wanted to include a poem by Malika to show you all what an amazing writer she is and feel very lucky that she agreed to send me a brand new poem. “Our Women at Funerals versus the Domino Installation” was a commissioned poem by Magma for their “Schools” issue - full of poems that would be good to teach in schools. You can find the poem at the bottom of this post.

I can absolutely see why Malika’s poem would work well in schools - I would probably use it to discuss with students the joys of writing about a group of people, and then discuss the pitfalls that can happen as well - which would give a great opportunity to talk about stereotyping and inclusivity.

In Malika’s interview, included in the same issue, she talks about the poem being inspired by, and in response to, two poems - “de Carribbean Woman” by Jean Binta Breeze and “Epitaph” by Dennis Scott. I hadn’t heard of Dennis Scott before - much to my shame. I found “Epitaph” being discussed on a few blog sites - the first three lines are

They hanged him on a clement morning, swung
between the falling sunlight and the women's
breathing, like a black apostrophe to pain

It’s a stunning, painful and perfectly precise image to start a poem with. The rest of the poem tells the story of the hanging of an enslaved person. By the end of the poem, the speaker moves from the use of ‘They’ at the beginning of the poem to ‘we’. The poem asks

what can we recall of a dead slave or two
except that when we punctuate our island tale
they swing like sighs across the brutal 
sentences, and anger pauses 
till they pass away. 

The use of ‘we’ asks complicated questions about the responsibility of those who tell the story of what happened, and holds up the brutality of language and its failure, as well as calling into being the idea of sentences as punishment - assuming the murderers and perpetrators are not sentenced, then the “brutal sentence” can only fall on the victim, on their family, their ancestors and those who continue to tell the story of a place and a people.

In Scott’s poem, the brutality and violence of someone being hung is juxtaposed against ordinary everyday life - he writes

All morning while the children hushed 
their hopscotch joy and the cane kept growing
he hung there sweet and low

That idea of ordinary life continuing against great tragedy called into mind W.H.Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts - another great poem that juxtaposes ordinary against extraordinary.

Malika’s recent work is preoccupied with exploring Carribbean funerary rites (rituals, wakes and burials). It’s fascinating to see how the Scott poem has inspired her poem. Scott’s women and their breathing, which I hear as heavy, as ragged and full of pain are placed centre stage in Malika’s work.

These women are full of movement, full of energy. They are busy “like invisible worker bees”. They cook: “slicing bread, baking / cake, seasoning chicken, and rocking babies”. But they are not just practical - they are “the holders of culture”, they know “what hymns to sing, and what happens on each day”. They care for the living, and when the time comes, they also care for the dead, and not only care for the dead, but pass on how to care for the dead to others.

These women are figured as not just women, but “archivists”, as “institutions”, and halfway through the poem they become the “black apostrophe to pain”. Interestingly, they are also configured as brackets - another punctuation mark - the women literally using their bodies to hold and contain, but also to possess pain - to hold that as well, or perhaps be possessed by it, but ultimately “crack and straighten / under all this lead dead weight”

I hope you enjoy the poem, and if you fancy a day or two of fantastic writing exercises, stimulating discussion and working with a poet with a heart as large as her intellect, then do book on Prompt-a-mania

Our Women at Funerals versus the Domino Installation
                        The women breathing like a black apostrophe to pain
                                                                              Dennis Scott
BY MALIKA BOOKER

It is always women. As if they are the holders 
of culture. The archivists, who can tell you 
what hymns to sing, and what happens on each day. 
Who are industrious in the kitchen, cooking: 
rice and peas, saltfish cakes, slicing bread, baking
cake, seasoning chicken, and rocking babies. 
Whilst our men mostly sit around the table 
like an installation, fingers curled around ivory
dominos, regularly one would push back his chair,
stand, step back to slap his last domino down
with might, bouncing the table’s load with his
winning shot. Then sit to shuffle the pack
to deal again, with much ole talk, throats arched 
to knock back hard rum, while chatting old 
time stories about the dead. How as they sit 
my aunties, like invisible worker bees replenish 
empty bottles, exchange dirty glasses, and refill 
saucers with sweet biscuits. Heaped food 
will magically appear in front of each man. Even 
in dead house making him feel like a king 
in a country that only wants to see a beast in him.
These women are A black apostrophe to pain – 
see how they contain, hold on, pass on, hold in, 
know what is expected – How to bathe the body, 
dress the dead like they are alive, so they leave 
this world with dignity. How they contain, feeding 
and feeding those bodies in grief. They are 
our institutions. The way they curve and curve 
their bodies like small brackets. She tells me 
how she curved her back to help her boy 
when grief drag him down in her front room. 
His first funeral service and how it hit him 
snot and eye water hard. Held him the way 
Caribbean women does rise she son, with
a drumbeat pon im back. Held him as he 
bawl, rocked this big man she bought 
into the world like the baby, she cradled 
at birth and she contained – she shushed, 
rubbed his back, patted – contained. 
These women are our breath, our oxygen, 
vital for our survival – these proud upright 
spines how they crack and straighten 
under all this lead dead weight.