Life is short, art is long

On Friday we woke up to the unwelcome news that the Caribbean’s greatest living poet had unburdened himself of bodily life on Earth. It was not totally unexpected, as he had been ailing for some time, never mind the amount of work he still managed to produce.

His paintings still came and so did the poems.

His last published work was Morning, Paramin in which he collaborated with renowned artist Peter Doig to produce a final testament to his bond with Trinidad.

The book includes poems named Santa Cruz, Moruga, Maracas and Gran Riviere, as well as Paramin.

In Santa Cruz III he writes that “Art can make us love two countries with one heart, not separately either, but blent: one cloud, one country, one continent.” In Morning, Paramin Walcott and Doig engage in a sort of call and response to each other’s work.

In the poem Peter, I’m Glad You Asked Me Along, Walcott writes about Trinidad: Everything is wrong as all forms miss perfection, hence the mask in which the whole society is based: all its endeavour is composed in song because I love the place in spite of it for its immense variety of racial voice, and wished I knew all of its languages and observed all its customs with one voice; this craziness is just where we belong – where else have you heard such music, such great noise.

Angelo Bissessarsingh may have had one advantage over the Nobel laureate because although he only lived three decades in Trinidad he probably got to know all its languages.

He certainly observed all its customs, scratching around looking where we no longer look to find gems that fascinated us. Angelo, many years ago, took my mother and I to see the resting place of her great grandfather and her long forgotten family in a cemetery in San Fernando.

We were fascinated by his easy knowledge that he shared with great appetite. His virtual museum will last forever and his books and newspaper columns have awakened a keen interest in the most unsuspecting people. Virtual Glimpses Into the Past/Snapshots of the History of Trinidad and Tobago has been shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature non-fiction category, the very first time that a writer has died between the book being entered and judged.

Angelo defied death that stalked him, stealing extra time, even making it, to all our disbelief and pleasure, to take part in the NGC Bocas Lit Fest South on San Fernando Hill in November 2015.

It may have been his last public appearance. Walcott wrote about our limited time with life and how unprepared we are when it ends, “Even you could be part of the increasing loss that is the daily dial of the revolving shade.” In the same poem in White Egrets he observed, “The more surprising the death the deeper the love, the tougher the life.” And so it is for many with the sudden death of Giselle Rampaul.

She was just about age 40 and had gone to hospital for a routine operation that ended in her being stolen from us. Giselle was an extraordinary woman. A unique Shakespeare specialist well known to that academic fraternity, adored by all her UWI students and it seems everyone else whose lives she touched.

She was a mainstay of the annual literary festival, recording interviews with local and visiting writers for Spaces Between Words, a valuable digital sound museum of contemporary Caribbean writing, which she founded. The interviews are available, free, as podcasts on the website spaceswords.

com.

The NGC Bocas Lit Fest will remember them April 26-30 at NALIS.