In 2004, Linda M. Deane gathered together a bunch of "tamarind-tongue tie-up" love poems to the environment, inspired by and about the long gap where she lives in Haggatt Hall, Barbados.

She submitted them to the 8th annual Frank Collymore Literary Endowment - her first time submitting her poems to any competition and was thrilled to be shortlisted. At the awards ceremony in January 2005, Cutting Road Blues: A Narrative placed first, also earning the Prime Minister's Award for its "Barbadianness."

It's only taken 20 years, but those Blues will finally see the light of day later this year. Published by The Independent Press, with a foreword by Barbados' Poet Laureate, Hon. Esther Phillips, the collection features most of the original winning work, new material, and cover artwork by Akaila Armstrong.

They say in time the mulberry tree becomes a silk dress...

Visit this page often to keep track of that process, to pre-order your copies of Cutting Road Blues, to save the launch date (sometime in August!), to enjoy excerpts like the one below and in the video (which contains poems from the collection and more recent work), and to support a Summer Storyteller!

 

Not the Usual Route:
A Cutting Road Blues poem (Excerpt)

This morning do not hang a left.
Do not march ’til the magic of Anwar’s garden
fades you by. Do not step to the sleeping
St. George valley and do not whisper
to the spectre moon loitering still
until the sun gains spite to chase it
from the sky. Do not shout Gena.
Her house of blues rides
a different route.

Not now for the stagger of junction
with its morning fender bender: the two cars banked
as if by boys bored with their Hot Wheels.
Not now, either, for the corridor that angles away
to the other side of Salters’ speeding lanes.
The cloaked routes arrowing through
ghosted plantation; acres manicured
into neat whimpers...Tek mi home.
Not now, thanks, for the sudden notion
that—save for bunctious bougainvillea
and the gangly grace of coconut palm, straggling
markers of wild grass, a persistence of cane
and a call of ocean trapped by the wind in casuarinas—
this place could be anywhere but here.
Tek mi home...tek mi home. Not now for the cry
of certain migratory birds and...wait! Toots and the
Maytals? Out of the blue, a reggaefied lament, ragged
distortion from a radio somewhere in this seclusion.
Not now, for the notion that this place, this c’untry
rooaad could tek mi...tek mi home to any place
but here.

[....]

This morning...
holds no time

This morning...

take a chance instead.
Hang a right at de corner,
the sharp one
where de men camp out, slam
and gamble with their survival.
There will be no sign of them—yet
but coc’nut shells and Guinness tops, beer bottles
and the Brother with the battered keys
mark the spot; last night’s curses
and bashment lyrics still buzzing the air,
Easter kites trapped in power lines.

This morning[....]

Take that left,
but not around the finished houses.
Instead, venture where the track’s unbeaten,
adjacent to a clutch of lots, vacant: foundations
to be dug, bushes whacked.
Get the latest from the vendor in the beat-up truck
and be halted, not by screaming headlines,

but by the soundless holler
of a cold stone fragment, forsaken,
save for a beam of light this morning
filtered through dew
and enflamed flamboya,
light falling at your feet,

illuminating
the road, silent. The sun, 
a slow-hand lover rising

to warm old bygone
be bygone: still tilting
at progress

lament
oft heard
still undertold

harvests
home and no
forgiveness yet

just bitter,
embattled burial
ground

lest we forget
as the land
fast-forwards

and new giants dwarf 
the memory

of

old

mill

wall.