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BDN is pleased to present the remarks of Mervyn Taylor at the launch of Dawad Philip’s “A Mural by the Sea” at Brooklyn Public Library, Linden Branch, Tuesday, October 23, 2018.
Book Launch—A Mural by the Sea by Dawad Philip
I first met Dawad back in the 70’s, when a mutual friend, Cora Daniels introduced us. He bore a remarkable resemblance to Bob Marley then, as he might now, if Bob had lived. He was mostly a painter at that time, in an eclectic frame of mind, his mentor being a poet/stoic named Edward English, out of Bed-Stuy. Eventually, poetry would become our bond.
The poem itself is an act of faith. It begins with a line, a thought, with no notion how it might get to some satisfactory conclusion, probably miles away from where the writer envisioned. I wouldn’t call Dawad religious, although he has explored many fields of worship, from the Catholic to the Ethiopian. But he is a person of unusual faith, willing to take the plunge, to go into uncharted territory, sometimes to the apprehension of those in his company. Time and again we dismiss it as a crazy Libra thing…Baraka was one, too. But more often than not, the payoff was considerable, if only in the form of a good story to share, beginning with, “Hear, nuh…if yuh know what happen… “ Whereupon yuh might as well settle in for the entertainment.
When it came to ventures like bringing Tony Hall’s landmark play “Jean and Dinah” to Brooklyn, to running the Big Apple Calypso Revue for a good ten years, sheer will was often the only gas making things go; that, and an unshakeable belief in Trinbago culture. You’ll hear a strong testament to this in the poems presented tonight, especially in one called “New World Language”.
During his career in journalism, when he was editor at the Daily Challenge, I saw the same faith under pressure, when rape charges were brought against the Central Park 5. Dawad, instinctively believing that these boys were being railroaded, dared to go against the rule that said the victim of such alleged crimes was not to be made public. I watched him on Channel 5 one morning, Roseanne and her co-host fired up, shooting their “How Dare You’s” and “Who Do You Think You Are” at this island boy as he fought to maintain composure under scrutiny by a whole nation, only a small tribe of immigrants in Brooklyn saying a prayer.
But God, Yahweh, whichever deity you believe in, works in mysterious ways. These many years later, it turns out these boys were innocent, the real victims, still condemned by an evil we will not name. Without tangible proof, but with the valued history of The Scottsboro Boys and Emmett Till, in his own way, with the pen, Philip defended them. The same faith made him mash brakes one night and intervene in a domestic situation, begging a Rasta to let good sense prevail, to think about “the lil pickney” as that brother was set to get physical with the woman clutching their child.
It’s been many years of successes and disagreements in poetry and in mas. Of questioning who the hell finds a tailor to sew costumes quite up in Laventille, of needle breaking on Tuesday costume Carnival Monday night. Of working on portfolios, racing to drop them off at the New York Foundation of The Arts office barely meeting 5 pm deadline of receiving those beautiful letters that begin, “We’re pleased to inform you…”, and the check falling out of the envelope.
It’s been many years between Invocations, his first book, and this Mural by the Sea, many adventures in between. The next, I understand, is in the works. Once, we bathed in a river, up Aripo, in LeRoy Clarke’s mountain retreat. When we came out, we had leeches on our skin. I think of them now as metaphors for our poems—hard to come off, full of blood, and trembling. Here is one of them.
Mervyn Taylor, a Trinidad-born poet, lives in Brooklyn. He has taught at Bronx Community College, The New School and in the New York City public school system. He is the author of six books of poetry, including The Waving Gallery(2014), and most recently, Voices Carry (2017). A new collection, Country of Warm Snow, is due out in 2019.