In this suite of poems, Roopnaraine dramatises both the universality and the particularity of the miraculous gift of love. As for Donne and his world 'contracted thus', love brings 'All of space in a narrow bed'. That space is rich in the resonances of place and time. England, Italy and Guyana are not only the backcloths against which the drama is acted out, but the points of literary reference which make these poems a celebration of the word as well as the flesh. We hear echoes of Ovid's Amores, and every so often absent Guyana breaks through into consciousness like the 'Spurwings on lily-leaves on a London pavement'.
"The sequence as a whole shimmers with dazzling imagery... and the urgency of a poem that needed to be written."
Mario Relich, Lines Review.
Rupert Roopnaraine was born in 1943 in Guyana. He is political leader of the W.P.A., a film-maker, art critic and fomer cricketer.
"The sequence as a whole shimmers with dazzling imagery... and the urgency of a poem that needed to be written."
Mario Relich, Lines Review.
Rupert Roopnaraine was born in 1943 in Guyana. He is political leader of the W.P.A., a film-maker, art critic and fomer cricketer.