Janet Naidu spun vivid pictures of her Guyana memories as she read selected pieces from Sacred Silence her third collection of poems.
Writers, aspiring poets, several students from the Covent Garden Secondary and other persons attended the launching and poetry reading at the Umana Yana last evening.
Naidu was born in Covent Garden, East Bank Demerara and immigrated to Canada in 1975. Her poetry reflects her love for Guyana and later her struggle to cope with a new home even as she is being haunted by memories of her homeland.
Sacred Silence consists of 59 poems. These poems are divided in four sections. This third volume of poem, Frank Birbalsingh says in his review, “considers themes mainly of love and loss mainly in the context of migration, and the struggle for fresh identity in a new land.”
Living the “in between” of being a Canadian and a Guyanese, Naidu said, is very difficult. It is hard, she explained, to simulate and try to retain your identity in a new place. Memory is a significant part of Naidu’s poetry. It motivates her.
Her father, she related, worked hard in the “backdam” and her mother sold vegetables at the market. Naidu’s mother was illiterate so she accompanied her to record the creditors in a book.
“Images of Guyana come to my mind… wherever I am whether it is Ireland or India… the landscape in those countries bring images of my homeland to my mind,” Naidu said in an attempt to tell a fellow poet what motivates her.
She read some poems from her second collection Rainwater and several from Sacred Silence. Selections from Sacred Silence were also read by Elfrieda Bissember, Curator/Director of the National Gallery of Art, Castellani House and some of the students. Among the poems in this collection are “Movements”, “Wanderer”, “Senseless”, “Selflessness”, “Deciphering Habitation”, “God’s Abiding Way” and “Attachment”.
Naidu’s passion for poetry was heard as she read a poem entitled “A Portrait”.
“…by the pond, I looked for answers…the pond chases…willing to be in silent repose…everything comes and goes and comes again,” Naidu read.
Her first collection of poems, Winged Heart (Greenheart, 1999), was shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Literature in the poetry category in 2000. It is a collection of poems of love, power and ancestral memories set in Guyana and Canada. The weaving of the emotional connections is captured in layers of meaning that illuminate an understanding of migration, tragedy and resilience. The healing elements of human survival and continuity form a thread throughout the poems. Her second collection, Rainwater (Greenheart, 2005), deals with issues of migration, identity and struggle. There is a pervasive sense of love, despair, endurance, exile and settlement in all three of Naidu’s collections as she conjures up events and scenes, as well as places in her memory, from Guyana and Canada.
Petamber Persaud, Coordinator of Writers in Concert, urged that “we should pay tribute to our women writers”. He said Naidu’s work has the ability touch, guide, move and inspire.