Footnote:
Enthält: Introductions (20:36); Talk by Lorna Goodison (28:09); Discussion (59:25)
D 2021
In englischer Sprache
Description:
Perhaps it was seeing an illustration of Henry Holiday’s painting, ‘Dante and Beatrice’, in a history text book at school in Jamaica that started my fascination with the Divine Comedy; for I remember that I had a premonition that this poet and whatever primal force it was that rendered him so undone by the sight of this woman, was destined to play a part in my life. […] Then literally midway through the journey of my life […] I turned to really reading the Divine Comedy. I began to understand why I always had a sure appointment with this poet: uncompromising as an old testament prophet, stern as a Rastafarian elder, and loving and compassionate as my own and the divine mother. This poet and his monumental work guided me through my own version of Inferno and Purgatorio, and gave me permission to contemplate Paradiso. […] in this talk I will speak about the writing of it and of other cantos from the Divine Comedy that I have attempted since then, setting them in Jamaica and employing Jamaican vernacular. I will also read some of my own poems that have come under his influence.