Nerissa Golden
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
The tragedies and triumphs of life on Montserrat and in other parts of the world are captured in September Remember, the latest collection of poems by master wordsmith Sir Howard Fergus.
On Sunday, November 30, 2014, Dr Fergus gathered a few friends at the Brades Arts & Education Centre to share some of the entries from the more than 100 pages of stories which speak of the loss and struggles of local and global events that happened around the month of September.
“Most of the poems in this volume were written during a brief period September and October 2012. They recall unsettling events of past Septembers and reflect on the prevailing mood of tragedy, loss and hurt,” Fergus notes in the preface.
Dr. Fergus added that over a period of nine months, three murders were committed, which alarmed the population because the national annual average is about three in 12 years. “For Montserratians then, 2012 became an unusual year as September has always been a marked month apart from its baleful reputation in the hurricane calendar. When two or three young people die in Montserrat, a compact small island made even smaller by volcanic action, we have a national crisis whatever the means of dying.”
The book gives space to the memory of soca king Arrow, Trayvon Martin, President Barak Obama and lesser known figures such as Katrina Ryan, a young government statistician, who died suddenly; Anya Duncan, a school teacher who died in a plane crash and a young Guyanese business man who was murdered.
In the poem September 1 Fergus writes: September is a defining month, a defining moment, date with destiny for Montserrat, nemesis for America without discrimination. September is a factory of floods and tear, birthday of hurricanes in 1928 and ’89, diary of eruptions in Montserrat, ructions in America without discrimination and the date of Arrow’s death…”
Dr. Fergus, who has served as Speaker of the House and a former professor at the University of the West Indies says he wants his legacy to be that he contributed to building Montserrat’s literature. He acknowledges in the poem Bio-Note that while he’s achieved the status of Governor Acting and Speaker he was merely an ‘errand boy with a vote in a fiery tongue cabal…So be not envious of the famous or the foolish, who may move on slippery steps, and do not pray their tumble down. The next precarious eminence might be your own and alike the plummet.”
This is the second book released by the author this year. A Cloud of Witnesses: Some Pentecostal Pastors of Montserrat was launched on September 28.
September Remember and other works by Sir Howard Fergus can be purchased from the author and through his social media page on www.facebook.com/howardfergus.
