My Poetry Corner November 2024 features the poem “Waiting for Rain (Again)” from the second poetry collection The Merchant of Feathers by Jamaican poet Tanya Shirley, published by Peepal Tree Press (UK, 2014). The collection was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. (All excerpts quoted are from this collection.)

Born in 1976 in the Caribbean Island nation of Jamaica, Tanya Shirley holds a BA (Honors) in English Literature from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica. In 2000, she gained an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland, USA. For over fifteen years (2002-2018), she was an adjunct lecturer in English Literature at the University of the West Indies (Mona). She lives in Jamaica.

Who is the merchant of feathers? Why feathers? In the epigraph of her poem “The Merchant of Feathers III,” Shirley quotes Psalm 91, verse 4 (King James Bible) that speaks of God’s protection: He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

But the merchant of feathers in Shirley’s poetry collection is not the Lord. As gleaned from the three poems bearing this title, it is the diversity of women from all walks of life who populate this collection. They are indomitable women who have learned to navigate the complexities of being female and have survived. As a woman, I can relate with their stories.

In an excerpt from “The Merchant of Feathers I” (p. 53), we learn:

But the merchant of feathers is now a woman
selling softness in these hard times,
stretching rations to feed the multitudes.
She is the domestic worker
tireless in her cleaning of the country’s sores.
[…]
Sometimes she chants and hits her head
against the walls, but never mind,
she is standing between us and evil spirits,
her body a buffer in the night’s dead breeze.
So often, we praise her for being the rock
but let us praise her, too, for bringing feathers 
to buoy us up, beauty so easy now to forget.

“The Merchant of Feathers II” (p. 44) is the mother whose son is found / in a compromising position with a man / in a university bathroom / and is beaten by security guards […] this is the mother who must put her son back together, / paint his wounds with gentian violet, / ice swollen tendons, protuberant eyes, / find the scars deeper than skin, / and like a seamstress mend what’s broken within, / and when his father, who isn’t worth two dry stones / or a shilling, sees his son on the news and appears / at her door to beat her son some more,…

The mother not only protects her son, her only gold, from a homophobic father, but also, if necessary, will pacify him with what he needs / to prove he is not like his son…

The woman in “The Merchant of Feathers III” (p. 70), the penultimate poem in the collection, is a prostitute at a bar with a DJ and dance floor. She is bad gyal and mermaid, windmill and still breeze. / The men line up to sip the dreams she sells…. One by one they bury the week’s worries / in the tight space between their bodies…. When night turns to morning, she sends them home, / feathers falling behind them.

The featured poem, “Waiting for Rain (Again),” tackles a broader social and economic issue: the impact of Jamaica’s worst drought on record (2013-2015) on its farmers and rural population. According to reports, the island’s annual agricultural production declined by 30 percent between 2013 and 2014. The burden is greater for the poor living in rural areas, as Shirley observes from her privileged life in the city (p. 24):

I am thinking of the drought, the parched earth
outside my door, the plant the gardener killed
with water from the pool; in desperate times,
we try everything. I have mastered the art of bathing
from a bucket. I know a lady with seven water tanks
in her forever-green backyard; she says they’re not enough.
There are poor people in this country
who’ve never had running water, who carry pails
full from the river on their heads.
Sandwiched in pews, their only prayer is for rain
to start their produce growing again, perhaps
before the next set of school fees are due.
[…]
Perhaps, I am grieving for all the dying things,
people in this desert looking out, looking in.
Perhaps, I am giving up myself as a tank, as a city river,
an oasis for all this thirst.
Let them come and drink of me, my brokenness
spilling in shards of tears.

To read the complete featured poem and learn more about the Jamaican poet Tanya Shirley, go to my Poetry Corner November 2024.