Elsewhere

Stewart Brown’s volume of poetry Elsewhere is reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place set to verse. The personas adopted by the poets in various parts of the Caribbean, Great Britain, and Africa speak to an ever-present awareness of ‘exiles, strangers, parasites.’ The world of the poet fashioned by Brown is collaborative, thought-provoking, and startling. In sum, the poems provide a response from a pensive citizen of the metropolis to the wreckage to be found in modern-day, former colonies.

The volume contains new and selected poems previously published. The three sections ‘Elsewhere,’ ‘Homework,’ and ‘Africa’ contain some fifty-three poems which shift voice (native and the tourist) to paint a portrait of the corruption and despair found in former colonial strongholds. They are not the paradise such places are advertised as being, but then neither is the tourist the mythological Creature he is thought to be. In the section ‘Elsewhere’ the poet locates Africa in the Caribbean and tells gritty stories of loss. The culpability of England in the slave trade is visited along with the remnants of colonial rule. The poem ‘Whales’ should immediately call to mind Jamaica Kincaid’s description of tourists. Here the poet employs the whale as metaphor for European visitors:

Whales: the great white whales of myth
and history in all their arrogant splendour.
Flopped ungainly along the sea’s edge
or hiding, blistered, under a shadowed palm,

incredibly ugly, somehow, in their difference.
Designated a protected species
they are chauffeured around, pampered like babes
and generally kept in the shade.

Not only are tourists from the empire targeted in the poet’s travels; in the poem ‘Jaguar’ the poet castigates mixed-raced people/creoles for their collusion. The jaguar is ‘a sophisticated panther / this assimilated cat knows his place.’ In spite of the ongoing invasions, the poet recognizes that the inhabitants have ‘turned / this exile to a home.’

‘Homework’ is a tour of the ordinary and often mundane existence in London. Yet, throughout the poems there is an ever-present strain for more, for world and human connection. The poem ‘Dead Man’s Shirts’ is compelling and original, offering a view of the life of a native of the metropolis that is not usually associated with travel literature. Merchandise secured secondhand leaves the poet with a desire to ‘tame the shirts, impose my scent under the arms.’ The rejection of the imposition of someone else’s taste and wares is clear here. In the poem ‘Someone, No One’ the poet laments the anonymity of life and the folly of humans to want to make connections when it is too late. After the suicide of a neighbor, ‘Suddenly everyone / wanted to know her, hows and whys and what despair.’ In ‘Dance Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee’ the poet lauds the reality of Nobel laureate Derek Walcott’s disdain for the recognition given him by the metropolis.

The final section, ‘Africa,’ offers keen observations on today’s Africa. In the poem ‘Christmas in the Sahel,’ the poet remarks on the present-day complicated relationship, offering his position as one of ‘The heirs to such / ambivalent distrust, we are / explorers only in our distance / from old certainties, liberals / in our harrowed innocence.’ This section features poems that are largely devoid of sentimentalism; rather, they offer a healthy dose of postcolonial Africa. As the poem ‘Chameleon’ acknowledges, ‘For on this continent of broken shrines / Chameleon eschews the limelight / to survive.’ Perhaps the most disarming of the poems in this section is ‘Tourist Guide, West Africa.’ The speaker both guides and enlightens the tourists on the colonial influence in the Gambia and closes the neatly planned excursion with ‘I hope you have enjoyed your African Experience, / any tips will be gratefully received.’

Elsewhere presents, in an engaging manner, the cause and effects of the colonization of Africa and African peoples. It is a remarkably compelling and sensitive exploration through time and continents. Brown deftly revises the thoughts of other poets and statesmen to arrive at a fresh reading of the ‘African Experience.’