This article by Carolyn Cooper appeared in Jamaica’s Gleaner on May 31st.

Last Sunday, on my way home from Havana, I ran into Ebony Patterson at the airport. She was one of the international artists invited to exhibit in the Havana Biennial. And the only Jamaican! On Saturday afternoon, I had happily wandered around Old Havana with my sister, Donnette, and our friend, Ifeona, trying to find Ebony’s three installations.

We managed to track down one of them. It was a typically complex image, both alarming and strangely beautiful: A mutilated male body lying in a bed of flowers. Dread reality transformed by the artist into a seemingly pretty picture. The body was carefully camouflaged, dressed in flowers that blended with the background.

The underwear was visible, bearing the K-Mart/Sears brand, Joe Boxer.

This is how the brand is described on its website: “Joe Boxer was founded in 1985, with…

Day Three: Water & Orientation

Brooklyn Bridge

Brooklyn Bridge

Starring at the Bridge took my thoughts to the old age saying, ‘Water Under the Bridge’.   I kind of wonder though,  how far under the bridge does it really go.   Do we really let go of the things that were done to us?   The things that hurt us so much that we can really forgive,  and straight out bluntly say,  ‘water under the bridge,  don’t worry about it’.   I believe, we all should be able to do this,  for the sake of our own happiness and well being.  But I for one know that it is easier said then done.   We have to try and just imagine all that hurts us flowing under the bridge,  crossing into the river,  and pray fully being swept into the sea.   Imagine if you will,  a fast current coming straight for…

This article by Kathleen Burge appeared in The Boston Globe.

As a young child, Danielle Legros Georges learned that life could stop in one place, and begin again thousands of miles away. She was born in Haiti but her family left for Zaire, political exiles from their homeland. They moved again, to Boston, when she was 6, joining some of the city’s early Haitian immigrants in Mattapan.

“I was constantly trying to make sense of things,” she said.

The small community of Haitians in Boston exposed their children to the arts — theatre and dance and painting — of their home country. Somewhere Legros Georges fell in love with poetry and she published her first creative piece in the Emerson College literary journal. Many of her poems describe her native country, which she visits regularly.

This fall, Legros Georges was chosen as Boston’s second poet laureate, following Sam Cornish, who…