Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

In officially launching Lorna Goodison's From Harvey River at the Undercroft of the Senate Building, University of the West Indies, on Friday evening, Professor Edward Baugh placed the book of prose in the timeline of her poetry. He said it was "a fleshing out of her mother", which began in the poem For My Mother: May I Inherit Half Her Strength and continued in I am Becoming My Mother.

Her family's life

And when Goodison read excerpts from the book to anchor the programme, a reading that was at times as much commentary about her family's life as speaking lines from the text, she fleshed out a scene that would be familiar to those who read the former poem. "I will never forget the sound of her crying as long as I live," Goodison said. In between the sobs, her mother said: "Oh my Marcus, my Marcus Goodison, there will never be another man like you."

"Let me end up with this before I start crying," Goodison said.

It was more laughter than tears during the reading from a book which Baugh said was powered by "the mother-daughter relationship" and which began with the mother's dual residency in Kingston and Harvey River, Hanover. There was the parents' battle over her name, the mother wanting Doris and the father Clarabelle and there was laughter when Goodison said that her grandfather appeared to concede, but registered the baby as Clarabelle.

Nobody knew for 15 years and eventually her mother changed her name by deed poll to 'Dorisse', as if keeping the name she had been called all her life could distance herself from the conflict.

From Harvey River was not a tale of only Dorisse, though, and there was more laughter from the substantial audience when Goodison read about her maternal grandfather, an Irishman named George O'Brien Wilson, who made shoes. On deli-vering one pair to a lady, he told her to "oil the boots". When Irish accent and West African ears met, though, it sounded like "boil the boots", which she did to shrinking results.

Characteristics of members

And the tale of her father's dislike for horses and love of motor cars, the former stemming from a dive into a trough to play when he should have been delivering laundry and getting caught, also tickled the collective funny bone.

Then there was Uncle Eddie, who was adamant that his body should not be taken back to Harvey River when he died. After he was buried in May Pen Cemetery, Dorisse said over his grave "you just lay down right there where you can see your taxi friends drive past". There was more laughter.

But the reading ended with tears, Lorna Goodison's tears in Papine Market after her mother died, enveloped in a group of women who sold there, who comforted her with 'no mind'. And the fish vendor gave what Baugh had said was a benediction, if there was one, as he said "she's resting with the angels now".

"She dipped her finger in sugar when I was born and rubbed it under my tongue. It gave me the gift of words," Goodison read to end.

Ibo Cooper played 'Y Mas Gan' during the launch of what Dr. Anthea Morrison, head of the Department of Literatures in English on the Mona campus, called Goodison's 'love song' for her mother. And after Lisa Brown, also from the department, gave thanks all around, Cooper played The Green Green Grass of Home by Tom Jones, a favourite singer of Dorisse Goodison.