more info on st. lucia

7/28/2019 More Info on St. Lucia

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My Dream Home, St. Lucia

Birds of many colors fly by,

Palm trees swaying in the breeze,

Stars are shining in the sky,

A tropical moon shows so brightly,

Waves crashing on the shore

Thats the St. LuciaI see out my door.

Top Notch Glamorous Thick Chick

The Star-Apple Kingdom

There were still shards of an ancient pastoralin those shires of the island where the cattle dranktheir pools of shadow from an older sky,surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as'Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye.'The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheelsprinkling like petals from the star-apple trees,and all of the windmills and sugar mills moved by muleson the treadmill of Monday to Monday, would repeatin tongues of water and wind and fire, in tonguesof Mission School pickaninnies, like rivers rememberingtheir source, Parish Trelawny, Parish St David, ParishSt Andrew, the names afflicting the pastures,the lime groves and fences of marl stone and the cattlewith a docile longing, an epochal content.And there were, like old wedding lace in an attic,among the boas and parasols and the tea-coloreddaguerreotypes, hints of an epochal happinessas ordered and infinite to the childas the great house road to the Great House

down a perspective of casuarinas plunging green manesin time to the horses, an orderly lifereduced by lorgnettes day and night, one disc the sun,the other the moon, reduced into a pier glass:nannies diminished to dolls, mahogany stairwaysno larger than those of an album in whichthe flash of cutlery yellows, as gamboge asthe piled cakes of teatime on that latticedbougainvillea verandah that looked down towarda prospect of Cuyp-like Herefords under a sky


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lurid as a porcelain souvenir with these words:'Herefords at Sunset in the Valley of the Wye.'

Strange, that the rancor of hatred hid in that dreamof slow rivers and lily-like parasols, in snapsof fine old colonial families, curled at the edgenot from age of from fire or the chemicals, no, not at all,but because, off at its edges, innocently excluded

stood the groom, the cattle boy, the housemaid, the gardeners,the tenants, the good Negroes down in the village,their mouth in the locked jaw of a silent scream.A scream which would open the doors to swing wildlyall night, that was bringing in heavier clouds,more black smoke than cloud, frightening the cattlein whose bulging eyes the Great House diminished;a scorching wind of a screamthat began to extinguish the fireflies,that dried the water mill creaking to a stopas it was about to pronounce Parish Trelawny

all over, in the ancient pastoral voice,a wind that blew all without bending anything,neither the leaves of the album nor the lime groves;blew Nanny floating back in white from a featherto a chimerical, chemical pin speck that shrankthe drinking Herefords to brown porcelain cowson a mantelpiece, Trelawny trembling with dusk,the scorched pastures of the old benign Custos; blewfar the decent servants and the lifelong cook,and shriveled to a shard that ancient pastoralof dusk in a gilt-edged frame now catching the evening sun

in Jamaica, making both epochs one.

He looked out from the Great House windows onclouds that still held the fragrance of fire,he saw the Botanical Gardens officially drownin a formal dusk, where governors had strolledand black gardeners had smiled over glinting shearsat the lilies of parasols on the floating lawns,the flame trees obeyed his will and lowered their wicks,the flowers tightened their fists in the name of thrift,the porcelain lamps of ripe cocoa, the magnolia's jet

dimmed on the one circuit with the ginger liliesand left a lonely bulb on the verandah,and, had his mandate extended to that ceilingof star-apple candelabra, he would have orderedthe sky to sleep, saying, I'm tired,save the starlight for victories, we can't afford it,leave the moon on for one more hour,and that's it.But though his power, the given mandate, extendedfrom tangerine daybreaks to star-apple dusks,his hand could not dam that ceaseless torrent of dustthat carried the shacks of the poor, to their root-rock music,


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down the gullies of Yallahs and August Town,to lodge them on thorns of maca, with their ragscrucified by cactus, tins, old tires, cartons;from the black Warieka Hills the sky glowed fierce asthe dials of a million radios,a throbbing sunset that glowed like a gridwhere the dread beat rose from the jukebox of Kingston.He saw the fountains dried of quadrilles, the water-music

of the country dancers, the fiddlers like fifesput aside. He had to healthis malarial island in its bath of bay leaves,its forests tossing with fever, the dry cattlegroaning like winches, the grass that kept shakingits head to remember its name. No vowels leftin the mill wheel, the river. Rock stone. Rock stone.

The mountains rolled like whales through phosphorous stars,as he swayed like a stone down fathoms into sleep,drawn by that magnet which pulls down half the world

between a star and a star, by that black powerthat has the assassin dreaming of snow,that poleaxes the tyrant to a sleeping child.The house is rocking at anchor, but as he fallshis mind is a mill wheel in moonlight,and he hears, in the sleep of his moonlight, the drownedbell of Port Royal's cathedral, sees the copper penniesof bubbles rising from the empty eye-pocketsof green buccaneers, the parrot fish floatingfrom the frayed shoulders of pirates, sea horsesdrawing gowned ladies in their liquid promenade

across the moss-green meadows of the sea;he heard the drowned choirs under Palisadoes,a hymn ascending to earth from a heaven invertedby water, a crab climbing the steeple,and he climbed from that submarine kingdomas the evening lights came on in the institute,the scholars lamplit in their own aquarium,he saw them mouthing like parrot fish, as he passedupward from that baptism, their history lessons,the bubbles like ideas which he could not break:Jamaica was captured by Penn and Venables,

Port Royal perished in a cataclysmic earthquake.

Before the coruscating faades of cathedralsfrom Santiago to Caracas, where penitential archbishopswashed the feet of paupers (a parenthetical momentthat made the Caribbean a baptismal font,turned butterflies to stone, and whitened like dovesthe buzzards circling municipal garbage),the Caribbean was borne like an elliptical basinin the hands of acolytes, and a people were absolvedof a history which they did not commit;


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the slave pardoned his whip, and the dispossessedsaid the rosary of islands for three hundred years,a hymn that resounded like the hum of the seainside a sea cave, as their knees turned to stone,while the bodies of patriots were melting down wallsstill crusted with mute outcries of La Revolucion!'San Salvador, pray for us,St. Thomas, San Domingo,ora pro nobis, intercede for us, Sancta Lucia

of no eyes,' and when the circular chapletreached the last black bead of Sancta Trinidadthey began again, their knees drilled into stone,where Colon had begun, with San Salvador's bead,beads of black colonies round the necks of Indians.And while they prayed for an economic miracle,ulcers formed on the municipal portraits,the hotels went up, and the casinos and brothels,and the empires of tobacco, sugar, and bananas,until a black woman, shawled like a buzzard,climbed up the stairs and knocked at the door

of his dream, whispering in the ear of the keyhole:'Let me in, I'm finished with praying, I'm the Revolution.I am the darker, the older America.'

She was as beautiful as a stone in the sunrise,her voice had the gutturals of machine gunsacross khaki deserts where the cactus flowerdetonates like grenades, her sex was the slit throatof an Indian, her hair had the blue-black sheen of the crow.She was a black umbrella blown inside outby the wind of revolution, La Madre Dolorosa,

a black rose of sorrow, a black mine of silence,raped wife, empty mother, Aztec virgintransfixed by arrows from a thousand guitars,a stone full of silence, which, if it gave tongueto the tortures done in the name of the Father,would curdle the blood of the marauding wolf,the fountain of generals, poets, and crippleswho danced without moving over their graveswith each revolution; her Caesarean was stitchedby the teeth of machine guns,and every sunsetshe carried the Caribbean's elliptical basin

as she had once carried the penitential napkinsto be the footbath of dictators, Trujillo, Machado,and those whose faces had yellowed like posterson municipal walls. Now she stroked his hairuntil it turned white, but she would not understandthat he wanted no other power but peace,that he wanted a revolution without any bloodshed,he wanted a history without any memory,streets without statues,and a geography without myth. He wanted no armiesbut those regiments of bananas, thick lances of cane,


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and he sobbed,'I am powerless, except for love.'She faded from him, because he could not kill;she shrunk to a bat that hung day and nightin the back of his brain. He rose in his dream.

Derek Walcott

Poetry, Music, Art: A Celebration to Benefit St. Lucia

March 3, 2011 at 1:03 PM (Art,Fundraiser,Hurricane Tomas,Literature,Music,Photography,Poetry,St.Lucia,Steel Pan)

I was born and raised in St. Lucia, a tiny island in the West-Indies, and though it

may be viewed as just a dot on the world map, I wouldnt trade my

small island upbringing for anything in the world. At 16 degrees north of the equator, St. Lucia wears a fertileskin of dark rich volcanic earth covered in lush vegetation, and rises pristine out of the blue waters of theCaribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to fold itself into fecund hills and majestic mountains, deep valleys and

serpentine rivers all fed by cool tropical rains.

Masquerader on the streets of Castries depicting a pregnant Mary as part of Christmas Celebrations in the city

The island brims with sensuality and life. The waves constant caress carves sandy beaches out of the shorelineand keeps the island and its inhabitants isolated from the rest of the world. As a result, St. Lucians havedevelopment a rich and unique culture. The combination of St. Lucias impeccable natural beauty and its deep
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culture that inspire me as a writer. I grew up reading books that took me on journeys and adventures all aroundthe world, creating a longing for foreign places, peoples and languages, but it is St. Lucia that grounds me as awriter.

Castries habor in the background

I had no idea I wanted to be a writer until my late teens, but I think the seed was planted long ago when Iattended Methodist primary school and learned that Derek Walcott, had attended my school. By secondaryschool, I was introducing myself to my classmates saying, My name is Natalie and Im fascinated by GreekMythology. My good friend Kama and I still laugh about it to this day. I then sat in Mrs. Edwards class at St.

Josephs Convent and soaked up all she had to say about literature. It wasnt until then that I began to think that

I too could someday write great stories. The woman displayed a passion for Caribbean Literature that inspiredme to want to read more, to dream that I could someday create and share my very own stories. From there Iattended the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College where I studied under Kendel Hippolyte and his wife JaneKing Hippolyte, two of St. Lucias most noteworthy poets. My time with them was what truly convinced me

that writing was what I wanted to do with my life. I remember having a serious conversation about it with

Kendel. He told me that it wouldnt be easy, but well worth it if I was prepared to work hard at my craft, and Iam forever thankful for his guidance. Now, as I work on my first novel, I can truly appreciate how inspiring St.Lucia is for a writer.

Severely damaged road in Tomas' wake

I followed the news of Tomas from my Los Angeles apartment remaining glued to my computer. Countlessimages and stories kept appearing on facebook and I couldnt pull myself away. That same tropical rain thatnourishes all life on the island had become torrential, causing landslides and mudslides, damaging roads andinfrastructure, washing away homes, livestock and vehicles.
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Damaged home

The southernmost districts of Vieux Fort and Soufriere, home to Hewanorra International Airport, the famousPitons and the worlds only drive in volcano, were most heavily impacted by the strong winds and heavy

rainfall. I know Soufriere and Vieux Fort, but couldnt recognize them once Tomas had left them disfigured,hardly recognizable. I cried.

Soufriere endured the brunt of Tomas rage, getting cut off from the rest of the island as chunks of the major

artery of roadway circumventing the island were washed away. The town could only be reached via boatfollowing the storm and residents were trapped without fresh water or electricity as authorities struggled toaddress the threat of waterborne diseases. Locals were advised not to consume meat off dead cattle and to boilall drinking water. The John Compton Dam was also severely damaged and roads leading to the dam wereimpassable, cutting off access to any and all water supply. In the end, there were fourteen confirmed deaths,including one American whose vehicle ran off a road and fell down a precipice. The Prime Minister,Stephenson King, described the island as a war zone and damages are estimated to be in the amount of $100million US dollars after an air survey was conducted.

I followed all this online and was lucky enough to talk intermittently to my mother. She stays in the north ofthe island and managed to remain safe throughout it all. Landlines were down but we could still reach each

other via her cell phone until the battery died. The family home suffered minimal damage due to flooding, butmy aunt wasnt so lucky, she lost part of her roof to the strong winds.

Doing laundry after the storm
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I was still very affected by all the information coming out of the island when I returned to campus the followingweek but was somehow unaware that I was carrying the weight of it around with me. I felt helpless, hopeless,and something of a traitor for not having shared the experience with my people and was deeply saddened by theidea of not being able to offer any help from all these thousands of miles away. It was a typically beautifulSouthern California day when I emerged from my apartment and returned to campus. The sight of all thesmiling young people, students, going about their business as usual, seemingly without a care, struck me astragic. I felt alone, like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. It was in that moment that I realized howeveryone around me was unaffected by this serious, devastating incident in St. Lucia. The news hadnt made

any ripples in America because a small island like St. Lucia does not get a lot of attention in the internationalmedia.

It was then that I decided to do whatever was within my power to help. Because I couldnt afford to send food,water or money home, I approached Patrick Fuery, the Chair ofChapman Universitys EnglishDepartmentabout the possibility of hosting a fundraiser. Dr. Fuerys reaction was positive and encouraging, andas a result, the fundraiser,Poetry, Music, Art: A Celebration to Benefit St. Lucia, is scheduled for April 5th atChapman University. I am therefore extremely thankful Dr. Fuery and the English department, CatherineKeefe, a Chapman alum, and editor ofdirtcakes,for sponsoring the poetry contest, Dr. Anna Leahy ofTabulaPoetica, for being my mentor and working with me on planning this event. ToLynne Thompson, thank you foragreeing to read your poetry.Donna Grandin, much love for your donation and photographersChester Williams

andBill Mortley, and Stephen Paul, thanks for allowing me to share your images. My sincere thanks to poets,Kendel Hippolyte, Jane King Hippolyte and Travis Weekes. It feels good to know there are people willing tolend a hand.

~St. Lucia~Destination-location-St. Vincent and Martinque

West Indies island-a paradise many seek~The landmark Piton's-

Amazing jungle covered peaks-Rising a half a mile-

Above the Carribean Sea~'Tis a tropical climate breeze-

Scented with wild Red Ginger Flowers-Orange Tulips and Hot Pink Bougunvilla-

'Tis a Palm tree lined retreat~Vocanic sand beaches and rain forests-

Emerald green-Anse Chastanet- a resort- in harmonies

Enchanted scene~Try a cocktail of Coco Passion and -Enjoy the Peppermint scented mist-

Or go to the Kai Belte Spa (House Of Beauty)-And breathe in the island bliss~

For dining pleasure-Trou Au Diable and Piti Piton-
http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/english/http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/english/http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/english/http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/english/http://aphroditeares.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/an-update-on-poetry-art-music-a-celebration-to-benefit-st-lucia/http://aphroditeares.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/an-update-on-poetry-art-music-a-celebration-to-benefit-st-lucia/http://aphroditeares.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/an-update-on-poetry-art-music-a-celebration-to-benefit-st-lucia/http://aphroditeares.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/an-update-on-poetry-art-music-a-celebration-to-benefit-st-lucia/http://dirtcakes.org/http://dirtcakes.org/http://dirtcakes.org/http://www.chapman.edu/poetry/http://www.chapman.edu/poetry/http://www.chapman.edu/poetry/http://www.chapman.edu/poetry/http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=722059201&ref=ts#%21/profile.php?id=1442184706http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=722059201&ref=ts#%21/profile.php?id=1442184706http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=722059201&ref=ts#%21/profile.php?id=1442184706http://www.bluerootsartstudio.com/http://www.bluerootsartstudio.com/http://www.bluerootsartstudio.com/http://chester-williams.artistwebsites.com/index.htmlhttp://chester-williams.artistwebsites.com/index.htmlhttp://www.billmortleyphotography.com/http://www.billmortleyphotography.com/http://www.billmortleyphotography.com/http://www.billmortleyphotography.com/http://chester-williams.artistwebsites.com/index.htmlhttp://www.bluerootsartstudio.com/http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=722059201&ref=ts#%21/profile.php?id=1442184706http://www.chapman.edu/poetry/http://www.chapman.edu/poetry/http://dirtcakes.org/http://aphroditeares.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/an-update-on-poetry-art-music-a-celebration-to-benefit-st-lucia/http://aphroditeares.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/an-update-on-poetry-art-music-a-celebration-to-benefit-st-lucia/http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/english/http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/english/


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Candle lite dinners divine-Piquant salt fish or baked maui-maui-

Would be choices of mine~Water taxi to the fishing village of-

Soufriere and encounter the friendly spirits-Of local natives there~

Or go to the drive in Volcano and view-

It's rare activity-Yes- St. Lucia* has a little something for-

Most everybody!

A true Paradise to see**

ByTheodora Onken
http://www.thestarlitecafe.com/myhome.php?user=theodora_onkenhttp://www.thestarlitecafe.com/myhome.php?user=theodora_onkenhttp://www.thestarlitecafe.com/myhome.php?user=theodora_onkenhttp://www.thestarlitecafe.com/myhome.php?user=theodora_onken


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Saint Lucia is a beautiful island with the only drive-in volcano inthe world!! It so happened that when Sulphur Springs (Saint

Lucia's volcano) erupted, pieces of rock fell inside it. Quartz canbe found at the Sulphur Springs and a mineral that looks like

gold. However it is not gold. The name is unknown. We havewonderful beaches and people are kind-hearted. I'm not saying allthis because I am a Saint Lucian but it is truly marvellous. Above

is the Saint Lucian flag.


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The Coat of Arms of theOne and Only, Saint Lucia Saint Lucia's National

Bird, the AmazonaVersicolor

The National Plant of Saint Lucia, Bamboo


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The National Tree of Our Beautiful Saint Lucia,

the Calabash tree

The Rose The MargueriteNATIONAL COSTUMES


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The Wob Dwiyet

Madras

The National Anthem

Sons and daughters of St. Lucia

Love the land that gave us birth

Land of beaches, hills and valleysFairest isle of all the earth

Where so ever you may roam

Love, oh love our island home.

Gone the time when nations battled

For this "Helen of the West"!

Gone the days when strife and discord

Dimmed her children's toil and rest.

Dawn at last a brighter day,

Stretches out a glad, new way.

May the good Lord bless our island

Guard her sons from woe and harm;


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May our people live united,

Strong in soul and strong in arm;

Justice, truth and charity,

Our ideal for ever be!

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