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

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a b Wong, D. (14 February 2011). "A treasure trove from Miss Lou". Hamilton Spectator . Retrieved 28 November 2015. Stewart, Jocelyn Y. (2 August 2006). "Louise Bennett-Coverly, 86; Helped Preserve Culture and Language of Jamaica". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 14 September 2016.

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Louise Bennett Exchange Fellowship in Caribbean Literary Studies University of Toronto – University of West Indies". University of Toronto. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015 . Retrieved 1 May 2016. I’d love to see this be massively edited to see her beautiful writing gain some direction and meaning to shine through. Miss Lou moved to New York in 1953. Later that year, Eric Coverley went to New York on assignment with the Jamaican delegation to the United Nations. He reconnected with Miss Lou and there they co-directed a folk musical called Day in Jamaica. In the months that followed, Miss Lou and Eric spent much time in each other’s company at performances and parties. This resulted in their getting married on May 30, 1954. The ceremony was held at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Harlem. In 1953 she left for the US, where she performed in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, did some radio work and sang folk songs in Greenwich Village. In 1954 she married Eric "Chalk Talk" Coverley, a Jamaican entertainer and impresario, and the following year they returned to Jamaica, where they lived for the next three decades. In comparison to Part III the other six Parts act rather more like accompanying movements to the central piece, containing echoes of the same riffs, themes, phrases and anecdotes, with variations of their own. Indeed I might recommend the reader begins with Part IV, as the easiest way in to the novel, although clearly this wasn’t the author’s intention.Hon. Louise Bennett Coverley OM, OJ, MBE 1919–2006" (PDF). Jamaica Cultural Development Agency . Retrieved 14 August 2016. 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. a b Nwankwo, Ifeoma Kiddoe (1 January 2009). "Introduction (Ap)Praising Louise Bennett: Jamaica, Panama, and Beyond". Journal of West Indian Literature. 17 (2): VIII–XXV. JSTOR 23019943.

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

I had better start by saying what this book is not: it is not, in ordinary journalistic sense of the word, an autobiography; it contains no “revelations”; it is never “indiscreet”; it is not even entirely “true”. Its subtitle explains its purposes: to describe the first stages a lifelong education - the education of a novelist.” 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’. Bennett wrote several books and poetry in Jamaican Patois, helping to have it recognized as a " nation language" in its own right. Her work influenced many other writers, including Mutabaruka, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Yasus Afari, to use it in a similar manner. [2] [12] She also released numerous recordings of traditional Jamaican folk music and recordings from her radio and television shows including Jamaican Folk Songs, Children's Jamaican Songs and Games, Miss Lou’s Views (1967), Listen to Louise (1968), Carifesta Ring Ding (1976), and The Honorable Miss Lou. She is credited with giving Harry Belafonte the foundation for his 1956 hit " Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" by telling him about the Jamaican folk song "Hill and Gully Rider" (the name also given as "Day Dah Light"). [13] [14] Personal life [ edit ] Her interest in that culture was not only creative but scholarly. As drama officer for the Jamaica social welfare commission in the 1950s, she travelled all over the island, and continued the study of Jamaica's folklore and oral history that she had begun in the early 1940s. She lectured on drama and folklore for the extramural department of the University College of the West Indies and shared her knowledge of Jamaican folklore and language with many scholars. 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.

It might sound familiar to people who've read her previous novel Pond. And it is. The comparison is probably inevitable. But the books are quite different in spite of the similarities of language. "Pond" is much tighter, but structurally less challenging book. Also the subject matter is quite different. "Pond" was all about things, the idea that the things are alive in essence. This idea is still present in this novel. But the main stage here is given to a human being, the one who needs to be surrounded by words, sentences and imagined human beings to feel alive: 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: British garrison was stationed on the plain at Up Park Camp, Stony Hill, Fort Augusta and Port Royal. Here, on the average, 1 soldier died every 2½ days. According to Russell, the year 1838 was considered a ‘good’ year: only 91 men died. In 1839, 110 men perished and in the following year 121. Initially, the British government was conservative in approving a hill station for the troops in Jamaica. They were concerned about the expense of the venture.

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett – a life in books Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett – a life in books

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!”Bennett identifies herself as a writer when she’s writing, and resists the label at other times; she is wary of the “they” that seems to crop up repeatedly in contemporary discourse, and alive to the idea that language itself has been shaped by the dominant classes throughout history, with particularly scorching effects for the working class and for women. Asked recently to write about a book that changed her life she says she realised that Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology, which she studied at A-level, had had a profound effect. “After that, I just thought: ‘Oh, my God, everything’s just made up. And it’s made up by the ruling class, and there isn’t such a thing as reality. It’s all just ideology, and it’s there to suit them, and we’re all a load of plebs. And I’m not. And they can shove it!’” 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. 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). Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley (Miss Lou) renowned poet, actress, social commentator, comedienne, folklorist was born on Sunday, September 7 1919 at 40 North Street, Kingston to parents Augustus Cornelius Bennett a baker and Kerene Robinson, a dressmaker. Her choice of epigraphs was on point, I’ll give her that. As were her literary references. I also appreciated the hints of humor in chapter 2.