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"The Lamplighter" by Jackie Kay
Bloodaxe £9.95

Jackie Kay’s dramatic poem was written to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. As the author wrote in the Guardian, she was initially reluctant to take the commission:

…I thought that enough had been written about slavery, and that I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a black writer…

Research into the subject helped change her mind and she used testimonies and original accounts to shape her work. The collection comes with an accompanying CD of the BBC radio recording of the text that has been much praised. The story is delivered with five voices, one male and four female, and details experiences in the slave fort, the ship, the plantations and of the impact this economic process had on the British industrial revolution.

The narrative focuses on the lives of four women, Constance, Mary, Harriot and the Lamplighter. Through these characters Kay tells of forced separation, loss, violence, sexual exploitation, resistance, survival and the job memory plays in keeping such experiences present.

Kay places much emphasis on the sensory as with these lines:

We sweated and dripped continually…

I could hear the sugarbirds whistling… 

Till my fingers looked like bindweed

This serves to locate the historical in the realm of the personal. Such details allow the text to speak to a contemporary audience in an intimate manner. In turn, I felt as though the characters worked to speak with the voices of the countless unheard and that the telling was in itself of primary import.

In taking this course Kay does not negate the inherent complications and contradictions that arise when approaching such an expansive history. Oftentimes the characters’ voices are crystalised in this confusion:

Mary: 
                  I tell my story to remember.

Black Harriot: 
                  I tell my story to forget.

As a result the reader is forced to confront the necessity of remembering along with the pain of doing so. Thematically, the presence of absence roars through the work and Kay is adept at ensuring we never forget the very physical repercussions of events that are often supposed to have dissolved with time.

Mary: 
                  There is not a brick in this city

Lamplighter: 
                  But what is cemented with the blood of a slave

Constance (sings): 
                  Bristol belongs to me.

This history is something that concerns us all in the present and the Lamplighter is a strong acknowledgment of this. I feel that such a work would be well placed on the secondary curriculum to ensure that this frequently silent history is subject to the process of re-memory that it clearly deserves.