By Petamber Persaud
(Extract of an interview with Cassia Alphonso, October 2013, Georgetown, Guyana. Alphonso won the 2012 Guyana Prize for Literature in the category of poetry, a shared-prize with Dr Ian McDonald)
PP Guide us through this phrase – winning the Guyana Prize for Literature in the category of poetry with your manuscript “Black Cake Mix” which captured people and places from the Pomeroon to Cuffy Monument…
CA (Delightful giggle)
PP There you go –conjuring images you have created in your poetry. And there are some exceptional pieces but before we go into the poems let me read what the chief judge had to say: “Alphonso’s poetic range includes dramatic monologues, dialogues and first person narratives which form a device in which she clarifies an imaginative world. She tackles big subjects from an original but also acceptable perspective, using words carefully to create rhythm and flow and with an eye on social history. She is concerned about language and the representation of power which means she seeks to allow things to be themselves. She does not use language to contain, reduce or to claim power over others. Alphonso’s poems are real – tangible and material and sensuously enjoyable.”Then she declared you as the winner [a prize shared with Ian McDonald]. How did you feel at that moment?
CA It felt like a dream. It felt unreal. I didn’t think that I would even make the shortlist for the category I entered – it was a manuscript – and I wasn’t even a published writer! So when I made the shortlist, I was so surprised; and then to go on to win – I was overwhelmed.
PP There are a number of things we can read into this Guyana Prize – for the first time in the history of the prize, four locally based writers have won, and three of the four winning entries were manuscripts. So it is like a new era, a new beginning for Guyanese literature and you are part of this new movement. You are a new guide [in our literature]; now guide us through these poems.
CA Well, the whole collection is titled “Black Cake Mix”, taking the name from one of my poems. I so named the collection because that poem is my favourite – it’s about my relationship with my mom, which I find very sacred and very valuable. And black cake is a Guyanese thing, that’s what we’re known for; when Guyanese come home from the diaspora, they look forward to a good Guyanese Black Cake. So the title captures Guyana – most of my poems are like odes to Guyana, the people, the places; stories I heard from relatives and filter into my poetry.
PP And the language?
CA I tried, I really tried writing dialect in my poetry for the Guyana Prize because it was mentioned that the judges would come from all over the world; so I wanted to design it so that anyone from anywhere could relate to it.
PP And you did just that…
CA Yes because we all have relatives and friends, we all make errors, we have met memorable characters, we all have good and bad moments in our lives and “Black Cake Mix” is about all these things….
PP Cassia, you are from the Pomeroon….
CA My mom is from Charity and my dad grew up in the Pomeroon, so Pomeroon is a great part of me although most my life I spend between Georgetown and Pomeroon.
PP So that’s how we have a poem called “lime picking”
CA Yes, that’s funny because we have a citrus farm up the Pomeroon River and that to me is my most favourite place to be in – so peaceful and quiet and everything, and my mom used to explain to me what happens when “plimpa” gets into your finger while picking fruits (I didn’t write thorn in my poem) is because this is what I know about…
PP …And “tambrin balls” and “Castor Oil Holiday”.
CA (clearing throat) Every Christmas and sometimes during summer especially during July/August, my mom would make my brothers and I drink castor oil – it was the worst experience ever, and my brothers, there is one in particular, would not be moved because it was so horrible and we knew it was coming, come Christmas, we knew it was coming, we knew before hand that it has to come and we had to drink it. So…ugh… even now to think about it makes my stomach turn.
PP It was a good thing you had the lime farm…
CA Yes, it came in useful to take the taste away. But nothing could take the taste of castor oil out – nothing, not all the oranges or limes…
PP Cassia, you have also created a number of characters in your poetry like ‘Miss Claudene’, ‘Maddie Clara’ and ‘Aunty Baby’, real characters – not flat descriptions of people; they are alive, full of life.
CA ‘Auntie Baby’ was like my mom’s second mom and she was really close to us and she was like a grandmother. But she passed now; she was amazing. In that poem, I wrote about her toes because her toes were very interesting because they always looked clamped down, so I asked her about them, I guess because I was little then and had no sort of filter, and she explained she used to work in the cane fields. We talked a lot about her marriage and her kids and things of that nature, so I got to understand her. And over the years, my view of her changed, so ‘Aunty Baby’ came out of that experience. ‘Maddie Carla’ was someone I don’t actually know but I have seen – I like looking at people – so I would look at her and try to image what she was thinking. She was always in this one position, so I wondered what she was thinking all time, sitting in one place all the time. I wrote about her – that was kind of funny but sad at the same time. ‘Miss Claudenne’ is about something that has happened to a few women and I captured all of that in this one poem.
PP Were you aware you were writing as described by the chief judge?
CA Some of it, yes. But you know what I learnt by being in workshops what you read in your work is not the only way to see it; others may see it differently…. (To be continued)
Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com
What’s happening:
• “An Introduction to Guyanese Literature” is now available from the above contacts and at the National Library. This book is an up-to-date guide featuring significant literary landmarks from the 16th century to the new millennium. This 150-page book including over 100 photographs is an attempt at bringing to the fore little known facts about lesser known aspects of our literature. The big books, the big authors and the big success stories in Guyanese literature are also featured. (Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)
