Dr. Earl McKenzie, whose collection of poetry, 'A Poet's House', was released, recently.
Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
EARL MCKENZIE has lived, studied and worked in quite a few places. He grew up in Mount Charles, St. Andrew, ("Up there," he said, the left index finger pointing to the green hills from where we sit beside the pool at the SCR, UWI Mona campus), attended Mico College, on Marescaux Road in a part of the parish where the roads are much straighter, had his first teaching job at Frome Senior School, in Westmoreland and taught at Church Teachers' College, in Mandeville for a quarter century.
And, that is just in Jamaica, as he studied art for a year at the Alberta College of Art, then English and creative writing at Colombia University in the U.S., before settling on Philosophy, for which he earned a doctorate from the University of British Colombia, in Canada.
The habit of writing poetry was formed at Paisley Elementary when McKenzie was about seven or eight, encouraged by a teacher named E.A. Gregory and continued at Oberlin high school under the influence of the Robertsons, the wife teaching Literature, and her husband being principal. In between was a single scholarship offered to Paisley Elementary for a place at Oberlin, McKenzie and another doing so well on the test that it was shared between them. The habit of writing on yellow legal pads came from straitened circumstances.
"I think it started at Colombia, when I would buy cheap newsprint. They were all yellow. I formed that habit," McKenzie said.
The longhand he starts with in exercise books goes through severe culling before being typed. "I do a lot of rewriting. Many may say my poems are simple, but when you see that eight- or 10-line poem it started out as a five-page poem and I worked on it and chiseled it down and condensed," he said.
These condensations of thought are published regularly in the Literary Arts section, which now appears in The Sunday Gleaner, and have been collected most recently in his second book of poetry, A Poet's House, put out by Mango Publishing. In early June, McKenzie read from the book in the Round, at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona, in a triple purpose event, which was also his second solo painting exhibition and a retirement function from the university's department of language, literature and philosophy, where he lectured and continues to do part-time work.
ASPECTS OF HIS LIFE
McKenzie had pointed out that the book itself combined three aspects of his life. "The cover is my painting, the writing is my poetry and a lot of the poems are very philosophical," he said then.
The title is a bit ironic, seeing that he is in transition mode. "I am about to move. The title poem does not come from this house, but the house at UWI. A lot of poems were written in the house I am living in now," he said.
McKenzie pointed out that his books tend to come in clusters, as the short story collections, A Boy Named Ossie (Heinmann) and Two Roads To Mount Joyful (Longman) were published in 1991 and 1992 respectively. The poetry collection, Against Linearity (Peepal Tree) came in 1992. The clustering seems set to continue, as another poetry book is scheduled to be published later this year or early next year.
"I have written 10 books in all, so four have come out," McKenzie said. That leaves two philosophy books, two volumes of poetry and two short story collections waiting to hit the press. And there is more, much more, at that longhand stage.
"I have a few more books in me. My notebook is big and fat and full of ideas. I have a lot of things I plan to do," McKenzie said, noting that his painting was also coming along well. His canvases had been dormant for some time, although he had had a solo exhibition at the Manchester Parish Library in the 1970s. "I thought I was spreading myself too thin. I decided to concentrate on philosophy and writing, so poetry got left behind," McKenzie said.
IDEAS
His notebook of ideas comes from being attuned to what is happening around him and noting it. "You cultivate a certain receptiveness and openness to experience. You never know when an experience will come. I always have paper in my pocket or in my wallet and a notebook at home ... At a certain time every week I pick up my notebook and go through and decide what to work on. I keep a notepad by my bedside. If for some reason I cannot speak I compose poems in my head and then write them down," McKenzie said.
The notebook is not beefed up only by what he sees and hears, but also his discipline. "Philosophy is my hub and they (poetry and painting) are spokes branching out, even my work in education and so on," he said. Still, "it took me a long time to discover that philosophy was my intellectual home".
It is a home that can be approached from different directions, as McKenzie said "sometimes I an working on a painting, it stops, and the creative writing takes over then it goes into philosophy. Sometimes I work on a poem and it becomes a painting. Or I will read something in philosophy, which starts a poem".
He said that his poetry tends to be emotive, while his prose fiction and painting tend to be more intellectual.
And now, he is moving his physical home once more.
So it will be the poet's house, The Sunday Gleaner suggests.
"It will certainly be a poet's house, like all the houses I have had," Earl McKenzie says, smiling.
Experience leads to poemsOBSERVATION AND experience have sparked many poems for Earl McKenzie.
He told The Sunday Gleaner that the title poem of his first book, Against Linearity, came because "over a period of time I noticed things". Among them was being in a line at the post office attempting to buy stamps and seeing the clustering that took place. Shortly after he was on a road outside May Pen, Clerendon. "I was stuck in traffic and I was overtaking a car and saw a man overtaking me!" he said.
Then, "in Mandeville they were doing a Jamaican movie. Two nights I could not get in. The third night I was the first person to buy a ticket and when I went up in the balcony some people were there before me". They had come in through the exit. That prompted McKenzie to write that Jamaicans are set "against the line as rigid as death".
In 'A Tale of Two Tongues', also from that collection, McKenzie writes that "to Miss Ida it's no bother/to laugh and suffer in one language and worship in another". The character is based on a real person, but "the Miss Ida name captures the kind of person".
"When this person was saying grace, perfect English. While speaking to the parson, perfect English. But I never heard her speak English outside of those circumstances and it struck me," McKenzie said.
EDUCATION
'The Makers' is about his parents and McKenzie said "I write about both of them quite a bit in my poetry... My mother especially worked very hard and made sacrifices so I could get an education. She especially saw the value of education."
'Bird Singing' from his most recently published book, A Poet's House speaks to how fragile our existence is with "this is the story of our lives, perched on things that can kill us we sing our mortal songs". It cane from observation. "Where I live, there are a lot of birds. They wake me up in the morning. There is an electric wire by the gate and the birds would perch on it and sing their songs," he said.
And it struck him that "we are living our lives in such close proximity to destructive forces".
'Walking', from his forthcoming collection, comes from his regular exercise, while 'Almond Leaf', written as he watched a leaf fall from a tree at one staging of the Calabash International Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth, proved to be prophetic about himself, as McKenzie said at the Round, Philip Sherlock Centre, UWI, Mona, in early June.
- M.C.
