Little Girl Dancing

Little Girl Dancing is a collection of over forty poems, plus two short stories, that offer lenses through which various facets of Jamaican life may be viewed. Like the tropical landscape which forms its backdrop, the book espouses a range of themes such as love, childhood, family, death and religion. Apart from presenting works which the ordinary reader can relate to, Little Girl Dancing seeks to augment diverse representations of life as a gateway to a better understanding of the...
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Little Girl Dancing is a collection of over forty poems, plus two short stories, that offer lenses through which various facets of Jamaican life may be viewed. Like the tropical landscape which forms its backdrop, the book espouses a range of themes such as love, childhood, family, death and religion. Apart from presenting works which the ordinary reader can relate to, Little Girl Dancing seeks to augment diverse representations of life as a gateway to a better understanding of the human condition. The casual reader will recognise that most of the pieces are about individuals. This is not by chance as the idiosyncracies of the human character have always proved a most fascinating study. The array of emotions we experience and how we react to the challenges within our environment are, after all, what life is about. My philosophy of education (i.e. cultivating interest through entertainment) is a lynchpin for this project; the majority of the works are therefore short and may be digested within a breath or two. This approach has many benefits, foremost being the reader's ability to grasp the central idea of a concise poem, rather than lose its essence at the end of a long-winded piece that can oftentimes be a turn-off.While these offerings, on the whole, are more disposed towards academia, they are also fitting for the random lover of the genre who will, at the very least, be able to relate to the subjects espoused. I have explored a variety of forms - elegy, ode, narrative, sonnet, free and blank verse - with each influenced by its own structure, theme, voice, rhythm and flow. The author merely facilitated this autonomy as the poems unfolded, with the reader left to judge their effectiveness.