This precision operates as more than simply musical acuity. Who put foot out of door quick time. Who start pray fast fast. Who faint and get revive with smelling salts. Miss Gibbs forget she hips bad, till she tek two steps and fall Bra-tap. Uncle Johnny start fling rum shouting You dead man, you dead! At the same time the Caribbean consciousness is revealed. She engaged with middle school students and 39 high school students, gave a reading attended by around campus and community members, and worked with around 60 James Madison University students, faculty and staff.
Welcome to James Madison University. Welcome to Furious Flower. Welcome to Harrisonburg. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and also what that self brings to your poetry? Okay, big question Lauren! My mom and dad are Grenadian and Guyanese.
We were there until I was When they separated, I moved back to England. My mom and brothers were going to come, but the citizenship laws changed under [the prime minister, Margaret] Thatcher, and so they went to Grenada while they were trying to figure out what that meant for two boys born in Guyana. My mum got a job in America and, by then, it was too late to uproot this child again from school and start her in an American system. So, I grew up with my aunt in Brixton, England. So, it was a cosmopolitan, diasporic, Caribbean upbringing.
My writing tries to capture all these places. I think because of my formative years being in Guyana, the imagination conjures up imagery and images from there. I think having such a very strong female-centered upbringing, the work really looks at, talks to, and tries to create the Caribbean woman on the page with all her complexities—the way she has to navigate the world and the legacies of plantocracy on the Caribbean body and also the diasporic body.
When I was growing up, what I was struck by, is a kind of bilingual English that I lived with. I really like the lyricism of the language.
