Caymanian Poets in the Virtual Yard

We celebrated Poetry Month by hosting a month-long series of poetry sessions on social media with Cayman Connection member, Lauren Williams. We were astounded by the beautiful poetry submissions from members on the themes Hurt, Growth, Identity and Love, and were honoured to share them with the public each week. Our final event on Wednesday, April 28th at 5 PM GMT saw three award-winning Caymanian Poets – Leonard Dilbert, Nasaria Suckoo-Chollette & Lauren Williams – in the Virtual Yard sharing their writings and engaging in lively discussion with attendees.

Lauren Williams shared her positive experience of hosting Poetry Month online, followed by a reading of her poem, My Chaos – a personal journey of discovery and growth. Cayman-Talk by Nasaria Suckoo-Chollette conjured up sights, sounds and feelings of growing up in Cayman, and touched on social issues including race. Finally, Leonard Dilbert read his beautiful piece, One Water and One Water (the Return) – a thought-provoking two-part poem exploring man’s destruction of the natural world in his disillusionment about the importance of strength, power and progress.

Click below Mr. Dilbert’s latest work, “New -True Blue Manifesto“, which accompanied a visual art collaboration at the Cayman Islands Biennial II – Reimagined Future(s) | National Gallery of the Cayman IslandsNational Gallery of the Cayman Islands.

Mr Dilbert's "New -True Blue Manifesto"
“I was super-excited to hear from the Caymanian poets yesterday. Caymanian treasures. Let’s keep involving the younger generations to carry these traditions on.”
– Jana
“As an artist, I found the poetry event to be that sort of, safe space for me to unpack the wonky little images in my head and allow them to just dance and act out the words that I was listening to as I was sat on the couch just meditating to the flow of the stanzas.  So, I particularly loved that…well, Nasaria’s poems; how she performed them in, as she said, “Cayman talk”…and that for me was…it got a little emotional when she was reading the poem the first time and that’s because it really…it really, really captured home.  Whoever’s experiences she was describing I could still picture it coming off of the little road on West Bay I would walk down with the Coco Plum trees and the Sea Grape leaves. I could picture it, I could taste it, I could smell it…all from the little red shanks walking and crawling up people wall, hanging up over yuh door  – gaw yuh frighten to come out when crab season come! I was picturing all of those little things.  In short what I’m saying is, I absolutely loved every poem, I enjoyed the session and we do, definitely, need more.
– King Navassa

“Today’s session was really lovely, I think my favourite aspect was being able to hear from a range of poets with their own styles. hearing everyone share how they experienced each poem also helped me to consider new aspects of them that I hadn’t thought of!” 
– Zoe