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GATEWAY TO LIGHT, LOVE AND LIBERTY!

Meryl James-Sebro, Ph.D. Reviews Soul Portal

There is hope. Yep, in the midst of unimaginable crime, insecurity and social, environmental and spiritual degradation, hope lingers, available for all with eyes to see; ears to hear; minds to absorb. This is not the fast-food hope that is disposable. It is not foreign fare that is mimicked. Soul Portal, a collection of stunning poems and prose by Dara Healy, probes and feeds the soul. It opens the window to deep, reflective and incisive self-examination that requires colossal courage and astounding sensitivity. Only the brave dare enter. It is woman warriorship at its best!

Soul Portal’s entry point “Awakening,” leads to the high art of self-discovery, with its prized and elusive end gifts of self-knowledge, self-acceptance and self-actualization. If that sounds like a prescription for an ailing nation, then poet/writer Healy should indeed be authoring national gender policies, development plans and public sector reforms, not to mention anti-crime solutions that dig deep and cure wide. But the clarity and honesty that come with catharsis so often invite the frustration and despair that precede true liberty. If only, with patience, one persists.

I want to run away from here
From the walls that bind me
From the pretensions that suffocate me
From the people that baffle me

And Healy persists, so Soul Portal introduces us to the self-determination, compassion and self-love that come from releasing the spirit to breathe…to live…to be, and, more critically, the freedom to choose.

I smile
At myself in the mirror
And speak self-affirming
Mantras
To the image which looks back at me
I reach up
And
Out
Arms extended
Above my head
Invigorated
To take that step
Out the door
Into a life
That
I determine

Self-determination, for woman as for nation, is a powerful tool. It is the blood and guts of life and love; the heart and nerve of rediscovery and self-affirmation. For as she records in “The Simple Notion,” dedicated to Caribbean writer/scholar George Lamming:

Imagine their force
When they discover
The simple notion
of choice

Healy’s Soul Portal is a stinging rejection of self-contempt and impotence, personal and national. Its flip side is the bountiful blessings of the birth of twins, which Healy celebrates in words that speak as much of her young twin sons as for our own young twin nation.

I breathe in
Push and shove
My heavy frame
Ignore the searing
Rending wombed pain
Legacy of
Twin beauty birthed

But the magic, the mystery, the promise that birth unfolds is marred by the violence in private and public spaces, with emphasis on that no-longer-secret battle zone of all times, the home. And so she honours “Diane Zamore and battered women everywhere,” directing our gaze to the one-sided justice that twice victimizes those who dare to protect themselves and for that one act, remain in punishment for their one major crime, that of freeing themselves from a lifetime of torture.

Shards of glass
shatter the stillness
the silence
of three years of incarceration
A lifetime of punishment
for a lifetime of abuse
A lifetime of humiliation
for daring to say
No More

Healy’s “Laventille Rain” dreams of potential and possibilities lurking beneath a landscape that groans from neglect, desperation, neglect and loss, and remains a poster for the penalty of failing to reach out to others across the yawn of societal dis-ease. Note, however, the source of this compassion and soul-searching in one so talented, so exposed, so grounded, so equipped to use her time in less painful pursuits than confronting self, space and place. The pain of looking inward, personally, politically and spiritually – for we feminists know well the connection that still seems to escape the ruling patriarchy -- is a legacy of die-hard, no-turning back women: Ida, her stalwart grand-mother; Eintou, her poet laureate mother, whose creative breasts she obviously suckled. And so, “Because she walked,” exhibits an ability to engage and link self and place, resulting in the painful permission to blossom and bloom, oh so gently, oh so graciously, or so courageously into one fearless enough to confront and feel so deeply. A grouping of love poems bears witness to this depth of feeling, adding the requisite spice to this first collection of poems and essays. Without them however, the work becomes the kind of home-grown literature for which our education system cries out.

The collection takes a stunning turn and moves to an incisive climax, drumming up significant Trini-moments of struggle and triumphs. These gems of optimism, represented in people, places and events, cannot -- no, must not -- be overshadowed by emphases on globalized, monetized, free-market, oil/gas commerce that is propelling the few into unspeakable wealth for the few foreign-connected elite. The increasing social, political and economic marginalization of the masses on whose backs urban skyscrapers have built a new skyline with new priorities call to action new artists like Healy.

For example, her “Baseman from Hell” recalls the Seventies struggle for Afro-Trini dignity and personhood. How quickly we forget. But Healy, as artists must, prods our memory, starting with her own memories of the grassroots political involvement of her mother, Eintou Springer, and the raid of their home by policemen with drawn guns. Cultural icons such as Makandal Dagger, Liseli, Dave Darbeau, Sparrow, Shadow, Despers, Boogsie, Phase 11, Tapia, Little Carib Theater scream: Who/what are these demons stalking our land? Where are our warriors committed to the struggle for dignity and justice? This writer echoes the cries of a terrified citizenry. Do they know of those who have waged their battles and gone on?..Beverly Jones, Syl Lowhar, Andre Tanker, Kitchener, Astor and many others. Soul Portal thankfully tugs at our individual and collective consciences in a Sankofa-like turning of our heads backwards in order to advance. It should be no surprise, then that “The Masquerader,” dedicated for “Uncle Peter Minshall” and “Lead Us not into Temptation” bring up the rear. In that final las lap moment, it all comes together in an essay titled, “The Merry Monarch and Me,” when this petite, soft-spoken, delicate young woman asks the burly flag man for a “tush” with the flag.

I started to perspire with the weight of the flag. It had seemed
so small in his hands. Afterwards, I kept repeating, “It felt so big
in my hands, it felt so big.”

It is the weight of soul and nation that converges in this brilliant, sensitive work. The gateway to effective governance must come from self-knowledge as a prism for exploring those inward depths in order to embrace and accurately interpret external realities. It is only then, as Soul Portal encourages, we can even engage in any serious debate on the fundamentals of meaning , value, ethics -- not to mention common old-fashioned decency, or simply “manners,” as Leroy Clarke so appropriately calls it -- before we can even get to the serious work of national identity, unity and security. Dara Healy is on point. The weight of the flag, in leading the band, as in leading country, causes one to perspire. It is as individual a process as it is a collective one, because those drops of perspiration have become blood and tears for us all. So we are all tasked to find the spirit, concealed in the word perspiration, through which word warriors like Dara Healy and those on whose shoulders her Soul Portal stands, have long been guiding us.

Healy promises that this is only the first of many works. So be it!

*** *** ***

Meryl James-Sebro, Ph.D. is the managing director of FirstWorks International, and the author of “Revealing the Power of Gender Mainstreaming: Enhancing Development Effectiveness of Non-governmental Organizations in Africa,” and the recently released, “Genderstanding Jesus: Women in His View.”