Limestone Layla al-Juhni Jimmy Witherspoon

Jimmy Witherspoon

including Read Me and Laugh (2005) and Space Poems (2006)

and one practised by my father and mother

All forms of strange excess Flourished - helped stave off horror and distress

who has benefited from the people’s struggles of the past

Limestone Layla al-Juhni Jimmy WitherspoonLimestone is the epic poem of Barbados and a major development in an indigenous Caribbean poetics. Drawing on the folk music of Tuk, Anthony Kellman invents his own forms of Tuk verse to write the story of his island from the destruction of the Amerindians to the present day. Part one uses both invented characters and actual historical persons such as Bussa and Nanny Grigg, the leaders of the 1816 slave revolt, to explore the epic of loss, survival