Mike Owuor
20 January 2007
interview
Nairobi — Dr Velma Earle Pollard is an award-winning Jamaican writer, poet and academic. Her novel, Homestretch, is currently one of the optional literature set books for secondary school students in Kenya. Although she has retired as a lecturer from the university of West Indies, Jamaica, the 69-year-old has no plans of retiring as a writer.
What do you know about Kenya?
That it is the home of Ngugi wa Thiong'o who is a great literary voice and friend of Kamau Brathwaite, one of the most famous Caribbean writers. I also know that the landscape is very beautiful and the Maasai people are from there.
How do you suppose the Caribbean writer, Brathwaite, acquired the name "Kamau" which is clearly a Kenyan name?
It has to do with his friendship with Ngugi. Ngugi himself tells the story of the naming in World Literature Today, Autumn 1994, and in Brathwaite's collection, Barabajan Poems, he treats it as well.
What defines your home country, Jamaica?
In the tourist sense one might say Sun, Sand and Sea; others might say Reggae Music or "Jerk" Pork and "Jerk" Chicken but we who live here can think of many other features. "Jerk" is a popular method of preparing meat with certain specific spices and originally using a particular kiln-like wood fire. By the way, allow me this opportunity to correct two errors in the otherwise very well written Notes to Homestretch by Zipporah Mutea, which is a Longman publication meant to be used alongside the text. First, Jamaica has comparatively high temperatures all through the year and is never cold though the temperature might go down to 70 Fahrenheit (20 degrees centigrade) in mountainous parts during certain months.
Here are famous lines from "Nature" by the late H.D. Carberry: "We have neither Summer nor Winter/Neither Autumn nor Spring/WE have instead the days/When the gold sun shines on the lush green cane fields "
Secondly, Jamaica has two languages: Standard Jamaican English, which is the official language, and Jamaican Creole, known locally as Patwa, which is the vernacular and language of the man in the street.
Your seminal monograph, Dread Talk: The Language of the Rastafari, has been described as a "penetrating work of the socio-linguistics of Rasta culture". How influential are the Rastafari in Jamaican society?
Nobody can contradict me when I say that Rastafari has been the most influential movement in Jamaica in the 20th Century with regard to culture, music, language, food, fashion... you name it.
What are you reading at the moment?
Everything about the relationship between Scotland and Jamaica, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. I was invited to be one of four academics on a project originating in Italy, looking at the literary representation of the Scots in the Caribbean. I am looking at the Jamaican part in both Literature and History. The Scots accounted for about one third of the British people who came to Jamaica after 1655 when the English captured the island from the Spanish.
Do you have any favourite African writers?
This is a difficult question. I have read most of those whose work is available in English but I have to admit that Wole Soyinka captured my imagination long ago and has remained my favourite.
What would you consider a significant similarity between African and Caribbean writers?
I think when we write in English we share certain ways of using the language creatively. Some of the turns of phrase are not identical but similar in ways that allow us to understand each other immediately.
Let's talk about Homestretch. What prompted the writing of the novel?
I was tired of reading about all the bad things that happen in Jamaica. I was at a conference and had been listening to readings from novels in which everything was ugly and dirty and everybody was poor and hungry and I knew that although that represented somebody's reality it was not the only Jamaica. I decided to write about the Jamaica I have known.
Why the title "Homestretch", or rather, who is on a homestretch?
Homestretch is the last mile of any journey home. The title thinks of all the "returns" in the novel.
What sort of primary audience is Homestretch aimed at?
I wrote for Jamaicans who needed to know some of the better things about their country. I had to find a fictive framework in which to place it. Of course my pet peeve, migration, immediately came to mind.
What is the significance of using bits of Jamaican Creole in your novel?
I actually use both Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole. My narrative voice is Jamaican English but my characters use one or other of the languages depending on who they are, the situation and the topic of discussion. This reflects the use of the languages in the society
Why are the female characters in Homestretch more prominent and developed in more detail than their male counterparts?
If they are it could be because the younger migrants in the story are girls. In my Novella, Karl, the most developed character is a man.
Aren't you a feminist?
No, though I sympathise with some of their thinking. In any case I do not know how you define "feminist".
In your novel, David and Edith come back to Jamaica after 30 years of living in England while Joy Chambers is about to qualify as a teacher 30 years after dropping out of school. What is the magic behind 30 years?
If there is magic I did not plan it. I am sure you know that we write things that sometimes have greater significance than we know. That happens to me more in poetry. I was not aware of it here.
You mention Marcus Garvey a couple of times in Homestretch. Does this suggest that you consider him an important figure in the scheme of Black consciousness?
Most certainly. He is one of Jamaica's national heroes. His life and work have been a great inspiration to black people in the US, the Caribbean and Central America. In all of these places he founded branches of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
With the history of failure in past efforts like Garvey's "Return to Africa" enterprise and the Negritude movement, what do you think is the state of Black Consciousness today and will Caucasian language, culture and economy continue to dominate?
I think the expressions of Black Consciousness today are more subtle than those of yesteryear. More strides are being made than you think. It has to begin in the mind and many minds are re-thinking positions.
As Anthony says in the novel, " language and European culture have us in chains", otherwise why should Charley and David quote Percy Shelley's poem, Ozymandias: "I met a traveller from an antique land," instead of a poem by Claude Mckay, Velma Pollard or any other great Caribbean poet?
Because those Caribbean poets were just beginning to write when those men were in school. Their grandchildren would quote Caribbean writers.
To what extent do you agree with those who consider Homestretch to be a call to black people in Europe and America to return and savour the beauty of "home" as well as a subtle indictment of the white race for its snobbery, negative stereotyping, discrimination and racial prejudice against blacks?
I wouldn't describe it in that way. I did not think I was writing a call for anything. I was simply describing situations, some real, some imagined within a narrative framework.
What sorts of "horror stories", hinted at in Homestretch, are experienced by girls from the Caribbean who get married to African men?
The main "horror story" is that they arrive to find that there are other wives there. The other "problem" is the supremacy of the extended family. You will find reference to these things here and there in Caribbean literature. You need to know however that there are many Caribbean women married to African men living in different parts of Africa, in England and in North America and they have not experienced this.
I hope this does not mean that my chances of marrying a Caribbean girl are diminished, does it?
It does if you are already married.
What is obeah?
Let me quote directly from the Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage by Olive Senior: "The word used in Jamaica to denote witchcraft, evil magic or sorcery by which supernatural power is invoked to achieve personal protection or the destruction of enemies " The entry takes up five columns in the book but this will do.
Is the fact that in Homestretch Brenda does not rule out seeing Milton again a symbolic message that Blacks in the Caribbean will never reject their "home" in Africa, despite everything?
I don't think I was sending a message but the fact is that conscious black people in the Caribbean have never rejected their home in Africa.
Is the "Milk River Bath" in the novel fact or fiction?
Fact. Mineral springs in Jamaica are said to be the most radioactive in the world. Milk River has rooms with private baths where people go to stay to have access to the water, which has healing properties. There is a less radioactive spring with the same facility at Bath, in another part of the island.
Do places like Woods village, Rock Spring, Birthright, Cinchona, Porus where the novel is set or events like Mento Yard really exist?
Woods Village and Birthright are fictional, the others are real. Mento Yard is an annual event showcasing Jamaican Heritage.
What is your attitude towards Christianity and the proliferation of churches, given that one of your characters says: "Jamaica has some kind of world record for churches per square mile but I don't think we have any record for righteousness"?
Jamaica is actually reported to have that record in the Guinness Book of Records. The character is suggesting that having churches or even going to church is not the same as being upright.
Although single mothers and their children are usually scorned by conservative sections of the society, you have shown great sensitivity towards them in Homestretch. Why?
Jamaica has had a history of single women bringing up their children from the days of slavery when estate owners and managers fathered children on different estates. Sociologists have had a lot to say about single mothers and absentee fathers in the island. Different agencies are working hard to change that.
Why do you show scant respect for "dry land tourists" and Jamaicans who hoist affected English accents in Homestretch?
This is a general attitude in the society. Every now and then a cartoon appears about them.
Homestretch is very enjoyable and easy to follow. Does this mean that those studying the novel should scour beneath this veneer for an underlying symbolic message?
But you seem to have found a number of messages without scouring too hard. I try always to write simply even in my academic writing. I feel I have failed if what I write is not accessible.
During a recent visit to Kenya, Wole Soyinka told those who complain that his writing is too cerebral and philosophical to look for other writers whose writings they can easily understand. What is your take on this?
I agree with Soyinka. He is being realistic. He cannot change his writing style now. In any case, the change cannot be retroactive. Those who can understand him will appreciate his work. Those who cannot will appreciate somebody else's work. There are enough audiences to go around.
What are your plans now that you have retired from the University of West Indies?
My plans have always been to continue writing and that is what I do. From time to time I go abroad to teach for a semester and I give lectures and readings in North America and Europe when I am invited.
Dr Pollard, thank you very much for slotting in time for this interview with The Standard.
You are most welcome.
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