Walk-Foot Woman and Other Poems

Description

Walk-Foot woman and Other Poems (hereafter Walk-Foot Woman) is the first of five collections of poetry by Dr. Velma McClymont. Written over a period of twenty years (and some during the Covid pandemic when the world was in lockdown), the poems reflect the poet’s journey from her rural Jamaican childhood to growing up in London during the Windrush era.

Carving out a space for herself in the literary world, McClymont is proud of her Caribbean heritage (orature/the West African storytelling tradition), which is explored in the title poem, “Walk-Foot Woman”. In this ‘lyric poem’ that captures another time and place, the poet charts her journey and ends thus: “I left a trail for those who’d come after. I, the walk-foot woman, tied seven strips/Of my plaid headtie on random branches.”

Throughout the collection, McClymont’s poetry relies on different forms: free verse, sonnet, haiku (Jamaican-style), elegy, ode, pastoral – and rhyming schemes too! Her style is often lyrical (“Bread Basket: Ode to Maya Angelou”), humorous (“Garden Statuary”, “Celebrity Fridge”, “Scenes from Gatwick Airport”), gossipy (“Black Forest Gateaux”, “The Reaper’s Garden”, “Yabba Pot: The Good Old Days” – Jamaican labrish), serious (“Sea Breeze”, “Footprints Upon Our Souls”, “Fossils in Rocks”, “Watery Wealth”)  and haunting (“The Yellow Butterfly”, “Enemies of the Empire”, “The Stone-Breakers”, “Black Ivory: Call and Response”, “I Shall Return”), especially when exploring transatlantic slavery (“Archway of No Return”, “Merchant City”, “The Imperialist Yoke”), nature (“On the Brink”, “The Fickle Weather”) and the Jamaican landscape of her childhood (“Compulsive Walkers”, ”Jamaican Talls”, “Drumilly Remembered” et al).