photo by DL Weber Cheryl Boyce Taylor is a poet, activist and visual artist born in Trinidad. She has presented her poetry at The Schomberg Center, The Fez, Aaron Davis Hall, The Brooklyn Museum, Jacob's Pillow, Columbia University, Spellman, Vassar, and on The Lollapalooza Music Festival, among many other places. Her book of poetry Raw Air was published in 1997 by Fly By Night Press in association with A Gathering of the Tribes. Her work has also been featured in numerous publications, including Catch The Fire, Chelsea, In Defense Of Mumia, and A Woman Like That. Her newest collection of poems, Night When Moon Follows, will be published in March 2000 by Long Shot Productions. She is currently working on a new book of poems entitled There Are No War Poems For Passive Mouths. She holds an MS in Education and a MSW in Social Work. She conducts writing workshops at various branches of the New York Public Library and is poet-in-residence at the Partners in Writing Program at the Mamaroneck Avenue School District, Mamaroneck, New York. Boyce Taylor's text "WATER" was commissioned by Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival for Ronald K. Brown/Evidence A Dance Company with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The piece first premiered at Jacob's Pillow in July '99 and had its New York Premiere at The Joyce Theater in September 1999. Boyce Taylor is currently touring the piece with Ronald K. Brown/Evidence. In this interview [conducted December '99], Cheryl Boyce Taylor shares two poems from her upcoming book Night When Moon Follows, and talks with us about the power of memory in the act of creation, the use of dialect in her work, how her own creative process unfolds, and the ongoing practice of learning to "trust" the poem.

February, 2000
Cheryl Boyce Taylor
by Gerry Gomez Pearlberg
© 2000 Gerry Gomez Pearlberg

Gerry Gomez Pearlberg: Cheryl, let's start with your poem " Arima." First, let me show my ignorance by asking you to explain the title.

Cheryl Boyce Taylor: Arima is the town I was born in. A small scenic town nestled between mountains, hills, rivers and a huge silver clock tower that everyone calls the "Dial."

Pearlberg: I love the image of those mangos at the beginning of the poem...that precious fruit. This poem really appeals to the senses in a very all-encompassing way - the fondled fruit, the "swollen boredom of evening," the men cranking cars and popping open cans of beer....

Boyce Taylor: My poems are filled with sounds, aromas and tastes because it keeps me connected to my home, to my childhood which was sweet, carefree and filled with the colors of nature. In the early years I took these blessings for granted, never knowing how much I would need them someday. At the age of 13, I moved to America without my mother. It was the hardest period of my life. I stayed connected to my culture through memory, color, and sound. When I realized how invisible I was as a black girl in America I held on to my roots for dear life. I reclaimed all that I had taken for granted. The calypso, the brown stew chicken cooking on de coal pot, long family days at the river slapping sandfly from biting yu legs, bush baths in grandma's enamel bath tub, bitter coffee on her fingers...I held all of it inside to feel protected, safe and loved. These memories are the soil that makes my poems bloom.

Pearlberg: There is a rather incantatory quality to "Arima." I think a lot of your poems - especially those about your homeland, Trinidad - have this characteristic, as if you are invoking or "conjuring" the place itself.

Boyce Taylor: The years I lived in Trinidad were the happiest years of my life.....and yes, when I write sometimes I am conjuring up that time in history that brings me so much comfort. It was a time of great innocence, a time when I felt completely protected by family, school, church and community. In one of my poems from 1975 I wrote: ARIMA she holds my tears, my salts, my birth string and a river of my dreams. Is here too meh brother navel string bury.

Pearlberg: Tell me about the use of "dialect" in your poems - when and why do you choose to deploy dialect/vernacular? I guess what I am asking here is how those decisions are made, which seem to me both decisions of language and of cadence - of pacing or musical phrasing.

Boyce Taylor: I never plan to use dialect in my work - well, not directly. I sit to write a piece and I want it to be in Trinidadian dialect because I want to capture a sacred part of my soul. I want the listener/reader to know my great-grandmother's tongue. But sometimes the piece begins to write itself and I have to respect it enough to go where it is taking me. I know if I force it, it will feel forced. Still, sometimes I make errors. When I was commissioned to write WATER for Ronald K. Brown/Evidence A Dance Company, I told Ronald I would write the piece in dialect [because] that was my heart's desire. But I was wrong, I was presumptuous. The piece started writing itself with large sections coming out in some old southern dialect. I was almost traumatized, but I let it be.

I wish I could take full credit for the cadence or musical phrasing in my work. Definitely some of it is a sound, a rhythm that we Trinidadians have naturally. In the Caribbean they say we sing when we speak. Some of the dialect is conscious, but mostly it is unconscious. When I write a poem I just let it rip....this I learned from Audre Lorde. I say all there is to say, then I go back and edit. It is in the editing process that the poem disconnects itself from me and begins to write itself. In a conversation with Ronald K. Brown I asked him how he made decisions on his choreography, music and text for a piece. His answer...It's all about OBEDIENCE. Then I knew.

Pearlberg: Obedience to one's material - obeying what the poem (or dance piece or whatever) wants itself to be. That takes a lot of trust, doesn't it?

Boyce Taylor: Yes, obedience to the poem....It does take a lot of trust that has been acquired over time. Now, in the later years of my writing, I can trust the piece to evolve on its own. Still, sometimes I fall off the wagon.

Pearlberg: The introduction of "Julie" in the last stanza of "Arima" is kind of startling. I really like it, the way a whole poem can be addressed to someone in the poet's mind and that fact may or may not be directly revealed, or gets revealed so late in the game that you're not really prepared for it. That's very cool. If you don't mind my asking, who is Julie? It comes across in the poem as a lover image, of course - but there's something phantom-like or spectral about it too.

Boyce Taylor: I would love to tease you, Gerry, and tell you that "Julie" is the name of a new love, but it's the name of a type of mango. In Trinidad mangoes have names like mango Rose, John, Long. Mango bellyfull, mango dou douce etc. Neat huh?! We Caribs are full of surprises.

Pearlberg: And so are your mangoes, apparently! Thanks for clearing that up for me....So what function, if any, do poems play in mediating your experience as someone who has left the homeland?

Boyce Taylor: My poems duplicate memory. My poems recreate family stories. As you know, migration themes are big in my poetry and so is dialect. I use both to keep me connected to my culture, my language and my people. I use the language of my ancestors to inform myself, to inform others, to comfort, to understand, to be understood, and in some instances to be misunderstood. I recapture family stories, dramas and dreams in my work, thus reclaiming my heritage, my birthright. My mother's language makes me proud, makes me strong. It has calypso, soca, drum, steelpan, native and African rhythms. My poems form a bridge for me and my cultural family here, there and around the world. I have been told by many of my Caribbean writer peers that my poems evoke their own stories of home. For me that makes it all worthwhile.

Pearlberg: Do you write poetry when you go back home to visit? Are the results different in any way from when you're writing here in New York City?

Boyce Taylor: I hardly ever write when I am in Trinidad. I'm usually too full, too giddy, too excited to write. I generally take notes and spend time listening to snatches of conversation from family and strangers alike. When I travel to other places, though, I do write and it's usually emotional, tender and passionate, coming from a place of deep longing. That is the place I tap into when I write poems about Trinidad.

Pearlberg: Let's move on to " Poem for Linsey Ashley," a very atmospheric piece of writing, what with the shadowy underside of the tamarind tree, the sense of burial, of ghosts, of familial continuance...and of premature death. It's so beautifully slow, moving like a dirge or a tendril. Can you talk a bit about what triggered this poem and maybe tell us something about its title?

Boyce Taylor: Linsey Ashley is the name of my father's aunt who raised him after his parents died when he was two or three. When I was growing up my parents lived in the same town. I lived with my mom and her family but spent a great deal of time with my dad and his family - something like co-parenting, only we didn't have such fancy names yet. Anyway, we called my dad's aunt Aunt Lyn. Eight years ago I learned her real name: Linsey Ashley. It was beautiful like her. I cried realizing I knew so little about her. I was sad because I had taken so much for granted and knew I could never get that time back. I decided to write a poem to help me to recapture that time. My aunt had a great big tamarind tree in her yard, she was like the mother in the community, the spinster lady taking care of everyone's needs - the sick babies, abused wives, drunk husbands, wayward teens, unwed mothers, stray animals. She did it all. My dad and Aunt lived across the street from the cemetery; I always saw her as one who cared for them all, the living and the dead.

Pearlberg: The image of the buried navel string is really interesting.

Boyce Taylor: In the old days when a baby was born they would cut the umbilical cord and leave a little piece attached to the baby's navel. It formed a little scab and took a few days to dry up. When it dried the scab fell off and it was customary to bury it. So I believed that under the ferny tamarind tree in her own back yard, my grandaunt's navel string was buried - in that yard where she tended everyone.

Pearlberg: We can look at the navel string as a metaphor for poetry, too - in terms of what you said earlier about poetry as a link back into memory and culture, a point-of-connection to one's roots. Gary Snyder has that famous poem called "How Poetry Comes to Me" in which he talks about the poem as a timid woodland creature lingering on the periphery of his campfire. Snyder's poem ends with the lines "I go to meet it at the/Edge of the light." Do you have a particular metaphor or image for your relationship to poetry?

Boyce Taylor: My poems come to me in dreams, or in a memory. But mostly they wait for me in the blue cut of my skin where desire begins. It's like a tingling, pre-orgasmic sensation. I feel a rush, a warm glow on my skin, a sense of anticipation/elation when the poem begins. Then I must be alone to create it. Even the act of pen to paper is an erotic act for me. After the poem is complete, I carry it around for days peeking at it, smiling at it, reading it over and over again. I want to share it with everyone. I feel about to burst. The image I have for it is that of a lover.....one you are still hot for.

Pearlberg: If there were a Poetry Genome Project just for you, who'd be your immediate or closest predecessors?

Boyce Taylor: Audre Lorde, first and foremost. She taught me to be a writing woman - made me see that poetry was no luxury. I had the opportunity to study with her, and when that semester was over I knew I wanted to be a poet more than I wanted to be a daughter, a mother, a lover, a friend...Surely the seeds were already sown; she was the nurturer of those trees.

Then there's Derek Walcott - highly intellectual, academic, but still using his Trinidadian dialect. He won the Nobel prize....That is my goal. June Jordan, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez were my first inspirations during the troubled 60's. Their work gave me pride and power. Later came Adrienne Rich, Lucille Clifton, Joan Larkin, Li Young Lee and Marie Howe, my latest love - I read her books over and over. Of my peers, I would say Sapphire influences me the most. She refuses to be safe, continues to put herself on the line in her writing no matter the personal cost. She is a lot like Audre Lorde in that way. Sapphire continually reinvents herself, risking all for the text. I admire her courage and honesty. Roger Bonair-Agard is another poet whom I deeply respect and admire.

Pearlberg: Do you consider yourself a performance poet?

Boyce Taylor: Yes, but I am a page poet first. My undergraduate degree is in theater, so it is almost impossible for me to take the stage without theater being a part of it. My poems are deep, passionate and connected to my soul. I can't just stand there and read. When I share my poems I take my listener/reader on a physical, spiritual, and emotional journey. I want them to travel with me where I live. Travel with me to find my ancestors' dreams.