A (3:20)

Wow. So that's a number of decades of interest in being haunted by hell. Yeah. Are you able to kind of give a. Like, if somebody asks you to take two minutes to give a summary about the structure and the plot of Dante's Inferno, what is it that you'd say? Obviously, there's many ways you could do this, but I'm curious, and this might especially be helpful for people who aren't overly familiar with Dante's Inferno.

C (3:46)

You know, those words, you know, halfway through the journey of our life sort of followed me around for many years, but I just didn't want it to be that for me. And I tried many ways I sort of tried to play with, so I could make it my own, because I needed an entry point. I needed to just get in.

A (4:03)

Yeah.

C (4:04)

Suddenly, one day it came to me, the lines that begin my version of the Inferno, and it says, halfway Tree, the journey of our life found me there at midnight in the ramshackle state. And Halfway Tree is a busy central urban center in Jamaica. And I imagine if you're there at midnight, it would be pretty terrifying. So once I found my own place to begin from, then I just started on the journey. But the fact is, I'd done Canto 15 many years before. That's a whole other story. And you can ask me about that later.

A (4:40)

I'll come to that in a while. So, I mean, just broadly, the broad structure of Dante's Inferno is that there is the poet Dante, who finds himself at this opening to hell, and then is guided by a poet, Virgil, the ancient poet, through these kind of nine circles of hell through which he needs to pass in order to get out. He has to go in in order to go through. And in these nine different circles, there are various punishments that are occurring to different people. And like, Dante's Inferno is populated in kind of a funny way. Dante put some of his heroes in there, as well as mayors or popes who he didn't like. So it was for that time in which it was written, it was quite contemporary, and he was making very vernacular references to local leaders, etc.

C (5:31)

Yes.

A (5:32)

What are some of the aspects of that, from Dante's original that you find funny or interesting or curious?

C (5:40)

Well, I want to go back to the beginning. Do you mind if I just read from the beginning a bit?

A (5:45)

Great. Yeah. Read the first parts.

C (5:47)

Halfway through the journey of our life Found me there at midnight in a ramshackle state for to tell you the truth my feet had strayed Tongue cannot tell how. This place was tough to talk of. It made me frightened all over again. Bitter, barren. Only death itself could be worse. But the price that I pay for my survival is this. I am now must unbound to tell of the good I found down there. Well, Mom. Well, sir, how to tell how I reach down there? So it's hard, but my mind was mixed up contrary, divided and I slip and slide away from the straight path I walk and walk till I get to the foot of a mountain at the end of a stony valley where what I saw all but caused my heart to attack me in my chest. So I want to just say that you begin with that place of confusion and being lost. And everybody at some point has been lost in a dark wood. And that, for me, just propelled me through that darkness, that inner darkness, that place you reach where you're just forced to go all the way through. You can't sort of hesitate. You have to go all the way through him.

A (6:59)

Yeah. And you choose to bring a companion with you in that. In Dante's original, he's accompanied by the ancient classic poet Virgil. Who is it that you choose as.

C (7:11)

Your companion in the earlier versions of the poem? I chose my dear friend Derek Walcott, the great Saint Lucian poet who was a winner of the Nobel Prize for poetry, a brilliant, wonderful poet. But then as I worked on numerous, many, many, many versions of the poem, I realized that if I was going to set the poem in Jamaica, which I have indeed done, I would need somebody who was familiar with the terrain. And then I then decided to choose Louise Bennett, who was a great Jamaican poet and activist. She was born in 1919 and died in 2006. And she is a mother of Jamaican, the mother of Jamaican language. She was a staunch defender of vernacular Jamaican English. And she would know everything about Dante's project. And she seemed a more appropriate and more fitting and a guy that could lean back on, like the idea of the fact that she would. I'd be able to consult her at every turn.

A (8:15)

And were you too well acquainted?

C (8:17)

I Knew her very well. She was a family friend. And I actually lived in one of her houses. She. She lived upon a hill which is. Becomes in the. In the poem Mount Bunononus. And bunonos is a Jamaican word which means lovely, delightful. Beauty like the delectable is described as the delectable mountain. And in Jamaica it would be a Bono nunus mountain.

A (8:40)

Could you read a bit from page 11 of where we get to meet Ms. Lou, as you call her?

C (8:45)

I would certainly like to do that. Okay. I was beating my retreat to a lower level. Before my frightened eyes, a big woman appeared. Her voice calm, like for a long time she'd been quiet. And when I see her in this wretched place, I plead, help me do pity me. Whoever you may be living somebody or may pen duppy do help me. She. I did a live one time, but no me not living. Me come from good parents. My father was a baker. My mother was a dressmaker. And I born when King George sit down upon him throne. You was a little girl picnic. When I wish upon a star for the gift of write poetry that praise people in our own drama tongue. That's our introduction to Ms. Lou.

A (9:32)

Yeah. What was it like for you to write a friend of yours into this? I wonder if this gave you a kind of a deeply personal experience of making the Inferno your own.

C (9:42)

Well, she in fact, made Jamaican language. She gave us permission to speak and be proud of what is the Jamaican language. And she faced a lot of opposition. You know, a lot of people accuse her of corrupting the society by encouraging people to speak in the way ordinary people spoke. And it was unlike Dante's project and. Or Bob Marley's project. Bob Marley said he wished when he spoke or sang and wrote his lyrics that even the smallest child could understand them. I understand that Dante said that he wanted everybody to be able to read Inferno. Even women.

A (10:19)

Even women. There's something so radical. You know, these days we think of Dante's Inferno as a great classic. And sometimes for that people might think that a great classic is going to be impenetrable or really distant from the vernacular. But actually, at the time, it was radical. It spelt the end of Latin, really. It introduced the vernacular Italian. And it became the standard for written Italian.

C (10:45)

Yes. Which is why it would make sense for me to have done. Try to do what I have done, which is to write in Jamaican English. I write it the way I speak, sort of. You know. Some things are in standard English, some things are in Jamaican Creole, but mostly it's about my Poetic voice and how much it is informed by Jamaican speech and most of all by Ms. Lou's project, which is a. Just giving us permission to say, this is the way we speak. It's quite lovely, actually, the way we speak. And it's legitimate and, you know. Yeah, it's good.

A (11:20)

Yeah. I know that you. You said that you had done earlier versions before where you had a different companion as you. As you translated it. Then what was your process? Were you reading this from Italian and. Or how were you feeling your way through it? Were you reading lots of other people's translations?

C (11:38)

Yes, I did. For years. I read many different translations. But what would happen to me is that I would do that and then I just go away and they would just leave me, you know, I wouldn't. I was just thinking, well, that's how they do it. But once I began, the very first Canto I attempted to work on was Canto 15, about Brunetta Latini, which I was asked by the South bank center then and to 20, 20, I think. No, it was. Anyway, it was too many years ago, 20 something years ago to just do an adaptation of one of the. Translate one of the Cantos. And I. I just kept going back to Canto 15. And the reason I think I was. I gravitated towards this Canto, I was drawn by it, was that in all the Inferno, he. He speaks to Serbinetta with such love and lack of judgment or condemnation and respect. And he never names his sin. He never says, you know, this is what you're guilty of, or anything. And I thought that was such a brilliant and wonderful and Christian way to be, you know, and so that's the very first one I did. I mean, of course, this is not true of him in the other Cantos, but that sort of gave me a way to go forward.

A (12:55)

Yeah. And do you. I know that at various points you've done pilgrimages across Europe, kind of doing your reverse journey of the colonizing journey of Europeans over to Jamaica. You've gone back as a Jamaican to look at places and look at the art and look at the history and to be a voice returning back. Did you take trips as well when it came to thinking about Dante's Inferno the same way that you've done with paintings?

C (13:25)

Well, I've been living a fairly peripatetic life for many years. When I was writing this, and I've done quite a lot of traveling, my husband Ted and I went to Italy, we went to Venice. I didn't get. But. And it sort of got Me thinking even more about what I was going to do with this project. But more than that, it was just about the state of being. One being in exile, which I don't like to use that word. Because I can go home to Jamaica anytime I want to. I can get on a flight, I can get there. I think it's poisoning the wells of somebody like me to say I'm in exile. Because there are people in the world, many people in the world right now. Who are truly in exile in that they cannot go back to where they're from because of war. Because of all the terrible things that are plaguing us. People are. So many people are in exile. So I don't want to lose that. But I was wandering up and down quite a bit. And I've had to live outside of my own country for many years. I lived in the United States for a long time. I now live in Canada. And before that I was just here and there doing various things. But. So I was very much taken with this business state of being, quote, unquote, exile, not being home, wandering, the wanderer, the misplaced person. Which, of course, Dante was.

A (14:44)

Yeah, the. The Irish word for exile is. Which means to be in a state of tearfulness. So it speaks about a certain lamentation of. A lament of location.

C (14:57)

Absolutely, absolutely. That I know about. I can truly say I know about. That formed a lot of what I was doing, you know.

A (15:07)

Yeah. I wonder if you'd be able to read from the third canto on page 23.

B (15:14)

Partly.

A (15:15)

I really hope that people who are listening to this at the festival and later on in the poetry and bound broadcast can get a sense of the way within which your translation becomes its own version. With a very particular style of musicality in the words, too, because it's visual and also deeply musical. And you might want to give us an introduction to where the poet and Miss Lou are and what's happening. What stage of the story this is in.

C (15:42)

Oh, well, they're about to. You know. Can I just say very quickly that one of the things I had to deal with was to make a decision as to whether I would try to. To play with or to interfere with immortal lines like abandoned hope. All you enter here. And I elected sort of not to. Because you cannot best that line. They're just lines and dances that I think it would be foolish to try to make. Make them better.

A (16:10)

Yeah.

C (16:10)

So, yeah, I wandered away from it and have let go off of all hope. All you enter in hear so. Which is much longer. But I liked the idea, instead of abandoned, to use the Jamaican phrase, let go of, which means that at some point you were clinging tightly to it. So let go off of all hope, all you enter in here. So. And it begins. I am the way into the city of deep down pressure. I am the way to tribulation and war with no end. I am the way to the I and I and I forsaken. It was truth and right that moved the Creator, the divine, all powerful created the I and I and I when blessed love joined up with the Most High Before I, nothing was but the eternal life force. Creator of what is. Behold, I live forevermore. Let go off of all hope, all who come in here. So, and these words are very much. The language is very much informed by Rastafari.

A (17:13)

Yeah.

C (17:14)

And I was gonna say. I'm glad I have a chance to say that Martin O Plano, who is one of the figures who, who is in here, he was Bob Marley's spiritual teacher. And he had. He was a. I happen to have known him personally, but he once said something which has in some ways guided this. This whole project. He said, I and I worship from the Bible, but I do not worship the Bible. So I think I was taking that approach with the Inferno. I and I worship from the Inferno, but I do not worship the Inferno. So this language is very much Rastafarian language. And the city of deep down pressure, Rastafarian, you know, they felt very much that one. They had to, you know, tackle the English language and in the ways in which a word like oppression is wrong, because if somebody's oppressing you, they're keeping it down. So they will not say oppression. They said down pressure. So I thought this was the way to go into the city of deep oppression and tribulation and war with no end. And, yeah, that's what.

A (18:28)

There's a few stages throughout your translation of Inferno where we hear an echo of the I and I and I. I wonder if you'd be able to say a little bit more about. About the contours of that and the feeling of that as well as the meaning of it as you've put it in.

C (18:42)

Well, again, that is a. You know, we credit Rastafari for that because they say, you know, there's no separation, there's no I, you, one, I. And there everyone is. That's a pronoun. Everyone is I and I and I and I. So whoever they're speaking to, if it's a crowd, that wonderful crowd sitting there, they would say, I, I, I.

A (19:01)

It's a way of creating community.

C (19:03)

Yes.

A (19:04)

Can it be a way, too, of talking about the multiple selves that each of us are, or is it really about interpersonal stuff?

C (19:11)

It could be, but it's also about the eye, about the seeing. You know, very often it turns back on, you know, the eye and my eye. And you know, what I see.

A (19:20)

Yeah, Dante, through the whole way throughout the Inferno, like, it's fairly brutal. Dante is upfront about who he sees to be punishable. What's it like to be working with these categories? Because sometimes, you know, sometimes you can look at Dante's Inferno and think it's very modern. And other times you look at it and you think, oh, my God, that's terrible that people thought that that category of people should be punished. What's it like to engage with that?

C (19:49)

Very often it was awful. I mean, just. And, you know, certainly, I just know that it reminds. Okay, the approach I took sometimes when it became almost unbearable because you can't be drowning people in excrement and blood and terrible, terrible things. And it does have some sort of effect on you. But I began to think of it some days as a version of my mother's cautionary tales. People of a certain generation, certainly when I was growing up and my mother was one, would sort of say, well, yeah, well, go ahead and do that terrible thing. You know, it's fine, you know, and you'd kind of figure out, well, you know, they're scaring his traits or something.

A (20:28)

I see. Yeah.

C (20:29)

And I. I think that is one of the reasons why I think this. Everybody should have access to this book. Every single person who can, if there's a chance, I think about people in cars who are incarcerated, and apparently in the States, you know, apparently, you know, they've been placed, put on by people who are incarcerated. They understand what the Inferno would be like. And there are people who are in exile. There are people now in war zones. Well, I'm sure they will be able to understand exactly what he was on about. And so my thing is, I think this book is vital. I think it has medicine, carminative, bitter, necessary medicine for now. Because what the things that are. Everybody can relate to some of the sins, those things that have brought people into the state. And I don't know, I will never think about fraud in the same way again, having read what Dante says about effects of fraud.

A (21:32)

Also, I mean, you mentioned earlier on about refugee camps and people who are forced into exile because of war. The Seventh Circle of Hell has punishments amongst others. But for People who are engaging in violence. I wonder if you could read some of that. It's on page 94, canto 14.

C (21:51)

We reach the place in the woodland that separates the second from the third round. And it is there I see how God's own mighty justice system operates. Now I ask you to picture things you have never yet heard of. We reached where we faced a stretch of open land where no dirt came near to the roots of any plant. A few nereals forest circles like a wreath entwined round it. A river of blood sealed off the boundaries and is there. So we stopped right at the bloody borderline. The wasteland was a sere ground that stretched wide with hot sand packed tight. No different from where they buried Sam Sharp after they took his life. Oh, divine retribution. How awesome. Anyone wise and who reads these things are right must fear when they see what you reveal unto my eyesight. I saw packs and herds of stark naked souls, all of them bawling their hearts out. And it seemed that every group had been meted out a different form of punishment. Some souls lay down stretched flat on their backs, another set bent over double in a crouch, and others just wandering around and around nonstop. There were way more of those who roamed the sand than those who were stretched out flat to suffer ones. But those tongues were loose, for they were in more pain.

A (23:16)

It makes sense what you're saying about, you know, your mother's cautionary tales with kind of hyperbole and that this is kind of something that you'd hope that people who were causing violence would listen to for fear of the violence that might come back.

C (23:32)

Exactly, exactly.

A (23:35)

I was curious about whether your mother was a figure in this, because every now and then a dressmaker is mentioned. And I know from reading your memoir that your mother was a dressmaker. And so I was curious whether that was whether she has a presence in the back of this or in any places.

C (23:51)

One thing that Louise Bennett and I had in common is that our mothers were dressmakers. And we both agreed that we learned the art of storytelling by sitting around the sewing room listening to women who would come for their clothes. You know, my mother, like on a Saturday evening when people would come to collect their clothes, they'll. They're just sort of sitting or standing around waiting on your mother to deliver the garment. And they're talking and they're telling stories and they're doing and saying things to. You know, we didn't grow up in a system where he had psychologists or therapists or. That was the therapy. You would come in. And you would. While you're waiting, you'd say what bothered you, and then people would give you advice or they'd tell you a cautionary tale or so both Louise Bennett and I agreed. And she. We said this before she died. She would say that to me, that she and I had that in common in that our mothers were dressmakers and we learned to love ordinary people from being in that sewing room. Louise Bennett said that the reason she defended the Jamaican language so fiercely was because when she sat in that sewing room and she listened to those people telling their stories in Jamaican language, in the way they spoke, she said to herself, these are good people. They're very good people. They're wonderful, loving good people. That's a conclusion she came to in her mind when she was like a little girl, a child. So when people told her that, oh, that's bad, talking the way they talk is bad, is good, she didn't believe them. She said, they're good people. They can't talk bad. Just as simple as that.

A (25:29)

I love that. That's kind of the. That's the. The origin story of an extraordinary literary linguistic defense that is part of her legacy. You write, too, about how your mother's sewing room was a place of psychology, a place of defense as well, where, you know, groups of women would kind of find out who here needs to have a different circumstances, and they'd have arranged for somebody to move to safety, and all kinds of things were arranged under the guise and with the companionship of that industry as well as the community that gathered around in that dressmaking room.

C (26:04)

Absolutely. And my mother was a sort of Harriet Taubman nurse. She was a heroic figure. She did that. She sent women out of, you know, she was abusive situation. She'd arranged for them to move somewhere else and, you know, hide them or, you know, move them on. And I saw that. I saw her doing that.

A (26:23)

Yeah. Dante includes a whole lot of people who he clearly respected in the circles of hell, which seems ironic, but he does it anyway, and you were forced to do the same. So could you talk a little bit about. Because you mentioned Harriet Tubman. She's. She's there in the circles of hell, not as a punishment, but because of your respect.

C (26:42)

I just don't know why, and I can't figure it out, and I. Maybe one day I will, but for now, I just had to have a disclaimer and say, I'm putting these people here, but I have no idea where. They don't deserve to be in here. But the thing is I have so much respect for this work. There were just times, honestly, when I was in tears, I would just. At the might and the majesty and the power of it, that I was just often just. Just overwhelmed by this achievement. There are no words to describe what a great achievement this is. So I. I had to respect the project and what it is he was doing. But every now and again, I had to grumble. I had to say, well, I really can't figure out why you would do this. Why do we put these people in here? Yeah, why you would, you know, cut the Prophet Muhammad from his, you know, terrible. So to split him into. I know it's about schism, but that's not a way to treat another human being. And then I wonder, is that one of the things that influences how people view other, you know, black and brown bodies or other kind of people, People from different religions? You know, all of that was going on all the time I was doing it over.

A (27:59)

You said three years, every day. You were in. In hell.

C (28:03)

Yes, sir. But the project started many, many years before that. Yeah. But it sustained. Bringing this to a. Conclude. Bring it to. To. To what this became.

A (28:13)

Yeah.

C (28:14)

Took solid years of just sitting there every day and just working away at it. Working away.

A (28:20)

I wonder if you could read one of the passages where you. You mentioned a whole load of people who you clearly have deep respect and love for on page 34 about Grandy Nanny and aunt from there.

C (28:35)

And right there before us in the lush green space, the mighty Dopies. Well, I don't know. Can I stop to say that Jamaicans call unlaid spirits Dopies.

A (28:44)

Okay.

C (28:45)

U P P I E. So you will have you know, and they also refer to them as deads are dead. You know, when you say that, when I write, you know, on a dead, it means a ghost. An unlaid spirit. A ghost. And right near before us in the lush green space, the mighty duppies were identified to me. My heart was lifted up when I look upon their faces. There was Grandy nanny who stand up with a band of maroon warriors like Kojo and Taki with musket and cutlass in his hand. I saw the first mother of Jamaican art who carved images of our children sold away from her. I saw Edna, who was the other mother of her art. I observed the figure of the noble Sam Sharp. I saw our bold hero, Deacon Paul Bogle. I saw our first Rastafarians brutalized by a police force. And when I lifted up my eyes higher, I saw the great elder Marcus Garvey, prophet And the wisest man to ever walk this land, surrounded by his followers, all looking wonder at him, all give him respect due. And then I saw Nettleford and Chavan standing closer to him than any other of the followers do. Russ Mortimer, planner who taught Marley Rester, Peter Tosh, Bonnie Whaler, the Burning Spear, singers and players of instruments were all there. I saw bush doctors who identified our medicinal flora. I saw Mother Penny heal the sick for couple and Mother Banner calling on the spirits of Pocumania. So I don't know, there's a lot, quite a catalog there. But some of them are people who have disappeared from history or were never included in history, like somebody. Like Mother Penny, for example, was a traditional hero healer and she only healed for copper money. She never took. She took, you know, coins.

A (30:42)

Copper, not silver. Yeah.

C (30:44)

Yes. And the colonial authorities tried to arrest her for, you know, I guess they thought she was practicing some sort of some bad craft, but she simply was a healer and, you know, anyway, so she became known on Mother Penny because that's just how much it would take a coin. And people like that are not in any, you know, in history that I know about. I like to think I'm doing history from below when I do.

A (31:12)

I mean, there's so many layers in this, one of which is it's an anti colonial retelling and maybe anti colonial needs to be corrected, but it's resistance of colonial ideas and telling something from the ground up and honoring those characters, honoring the named characters, but also bush doctors who identified our medicinal flora. That's about knowing the land and living and nurturing and caring for each other on the land. Did you find many ways the whole way throughout the inferno to be able to re establish a vernacular both in language, but also in terms of power and resistance to colonialism as much as.

C (31:52)

I could, because, you know, in a way, you know, my husband, Ted Chamberlain, who was saying to me that in a way, that was Dante's project, he wrote this in his people's vernacular. So he, he wanted to illuminate his people, to show the world his people and how they spoke and how they were and, you know, so it's not much different from what I'm doing or what everybody else does is in keeping with his project and is in keeping what he wanted done. I think I don't agree with that, you know, Yes, I did. The answer to your question, though, is that yes, I did as many. I. I never forced it. That's the thing with this. Maybe that's why it took so long if it seemed forced, I would not go through with it. But if there was some sort of harmony that occurred between, like the sound of the Italian name or the circum, and it corresponded in some way with the Jamaican, I would think it was a good fit and I would go with that.

A (32:54)

So interesting. Like a free association with the name to hear where that showed up in the Jamaican ear.

C (33:00)

Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Every time I tried, anytime I did something like that, it was because it just worked. It chimed, it rhymed, it felt right. I had to just go with my feelings a lot. Well, all the time.

A (33:14)

Yeah. You mentioned right at the start, you know, about the. Midway through life's journey and the fact that all of us at various times have felt lost and that in many ways, Dante's Inferno is an invitation for everybody. Rather than thinking of it as a way to think about who's in hell and who's being punished, it's really a thing to say. At some point in all of our lives, something has happened and we felt lost and have needed a companion.

C (33:39)

Many times I don't think you get through this life and you live to be as old as I am without going through. Many several times you will go through that dark wood and. Yes, absolutely. And that's a gift he has given us. That. He gave us that gift that, you know.

B (33:56)

Yeah.

C (33:56)

That died, that. That. That. That virgin. That. Ms. Lou, that whoever is going to take it through that dark wood, you know, you. And there is wonderfully tender moments. Okay, let me just say this. What is one. One of the. The gifts I received from that is because I sometimes teach nothing. I mean, I retired. But you realize what. What an important role the guide is, the teachery. Because very often, Virgil, and In my case, Ms. Lou, will just say something. It's just a. Words in hell. What I noticed that was so appalling was that there's no. There are no flowers. There's no Very. No light. There's no. There's no clean water. There's no mute. The sounds are horrible and discordant and clashing and violent and awful. There's no. None of the things which soothe and calm us. And as Jamaicans would say, bio, you are in evidence in the inferno. And any kind of consolation or hope or lifting up comes from the words. Very often that the guide says, you know, that she just says the right word. And it just made me realize how important the right words are. You know, even in our daily lives between our. Each. Each other, I'm more and more conscious of just how Important it is to just present the right word, you know, and how that can sometimes make or break somebody or give you a reason to hold on.

A (35:29)

Yeah, there's something very moving in the Inferno where, you know, they go into a new circle of hell and it's being described. But still Dante will say, what am I seeing? And Virgil, or Miss Lou in your case, will simply give a landscape for what's already been seen, but in a certain sense, give. Give a location or a meaning, just as you say, the right kind of description to locate you in the occurrence.

C (35:53)

Absolutely, absolutely. And she will give some sort of prescription as to what you need. Now, you're going to need all the courage you have in your life to go through this one. You know, these are some rude, terrible people. I've met them before. So, you know, so she. It's important. And I guess what I'm saying here is that we need all the guides, all the Miss Loos and the Virgils to forward up themselves. As Jamaicans say, no is the time for us to forward up ourselves or themselves, because the world is in need of people to lift, to carry through this. These are some dread times, as Rastafarians say. And the word dread is used often in the poem because they talk about dread as an encounter with the divine, you know, and it kind of like the wrestling with the divine is like Jacob, you know, is even more. You know that. And it leaves you change, you get. You're going to walk with a limp after. I'm just saying. It's just that you need to know that these are times where if you have any kind of gifts as a guide, you need to use him.

A (37:08)

You know, when you're talking there, I remember half my life ago, When I was 25, I was in a time of real confusion. I wrote to a woman I'd known from church camps. And I was saying, I'm 25 and I still haven't got it figured out. And I felt like a fool, you know. And she wrote back and she said, nobody knows who they are until they're at least 30. And now I think 30, I still didn't know. But there was such relief hearing from her. It took pressure off and I felt like I might be a bit okay, rather than feeling like a complete failure. So what immediately occurs to me is that she was like a poet companion in that email. I'd always took such comfort and consolation from that. She just died a year ago. And when I heard that she died, I thought, my God, I'll be in gratitude Forever for the kindness. And that just came over an email.

C (38:00)

Just a good word.

A (38:02)

A good word. What are the translations in English that you value? Because each translation does something different, obviously. I want everybody to read your magnificent version. It's published in the UK by Carcanet, so it's very easy to get. For anybody who's in the uk, it's published in Canada, so your version should be number one. But what are the other versions that you think are interesting to read alongside?

C (38:28)

I think I read most of them. You know, I. I think I tried. Is it Longfellow that early? I. I didn't. It just left me so confused. I just didn't. I just went through all of them. But Mark Moose. Mark Musa's is. Is really wonderful. Is really brilliant. And Mary Joe Banks is a really, really brave and interesting. On grid.

A (38:47)

Yeah.

C (38:47)

And I also had a version which I picked up long before I knew I was gonna do this project. One day, I just picked up a version by A.S. klein, which is a prose version. He just simply. Just procifies it. And it. I. I relied on that sometimes just to let me know exactly what was happening with. Okay, you know, it wasn't. There's no point. He's just like, it's as flat as it can be, but it just tells you what's happening there. I would recommend if you could get a hold of one. If you get confused, you can just read the Klein one. That tells you what's where they are. No one was happening anymore.

A (39:21)

Okay. That's the companion guide to the companion guide.

C (39:25)

Yes, something like that. But I read lots of them.

A (39:31)

You trained as a painter, as I mentioned in the introduction. And I'd like to go into the very last Canto to hear the way you describe what's so interesting in this dread place, the nine circles of Hell. It's petrifying and some of the punishments are gruesome and atrocious. But what's so interesting is that in most of it, there's no devil until you get to the very last part. And so I wonder if you could read some maybe to leave us in a little bit of a cliffhanger from Canto 34.

C (40:05)

Okay. See the bloody banners of the King of Hell advancing, my guide chanted, drawing nearer, nearer, Blessed Lord, look upon him in the distance. See if he seen like a ginormous windmill far away spinning its blades. When bug walk, fog drops and veils the place. Or when nighttime in its crepe souls takes itself away. That is what I thought I saw appearing on the horizon and the gusts of breeze it lifted up made me pull back behind my guide, my trusted source of protection down. Years ago I stood on top of souls on the ice and Eldridge Cleaver would know of what I write. To me they look like straws freezing inside a glass. Some fling down flat, some slant sideways. So with either head or foot pushed up, some bent their heads touching their toes like a bow. And so we go along the way a good enough distance on so that my teacher considered that the time had come to point out that monster was once the most handsome. She moved over to one side, stood still, and then said to me, is him that here so named? This is. This, this place is. And here you're going to need all the courage you have in you.

A (41:29)

What an introduction and a cliffhanger that leads us in. I'm not going to do it because I want people to read it to. For your description of, you know, it's an extraordinary translation. Point out that monster who once was the most handsome. What a way to render those lines.

C (41:46)

Oh, I was, I would. I must say I was relieved to get to that point because I just thought, let's just get it, get over it and then leave. I needed to leave hell, people. I needed to leave hell.

A (42:05)

I mean, what you do so well in this is that it's narrative in the sense of that. Like when I was reading that page, I was feeling too, and I know what happens. I was feeling like I wanted to get beyond it. But you slow down time as well as increase anxiety in a certain sense with that. But it's also very visual. And I wonder whether your training as a painter and your visual imagination contributed a lot to. Contributed a lot to what you were doing as translation here.

C (42:33)

Absolutely. You know, I see things like that, you know, I, I hear something and then a picture comes into my mind. Recently I've. I mentioned at the beginning that Henry Holiday painting Dante and Beatrice. But recently I came across a poem, an image of. By Jean Leon Jerome. He's a 19th century French painter and the image is called Dante. He had seen hell. Are you familiar with this picture?

A (43:04)

No, I'm going to look it up after.

C (43:05)

Look it up. And that's how I was feeling. If you, if you, if you go, if you find it, you will see exactly how I was feeling. He said Dante going through a, a public area and they're like groups of people pointing them out, like, you know, that guy has seen hell, but he looks so like he's seen hell, you know, like, oh, God, that's so terrible. But, you know, anyway, I think I'm past that.

A (43:29)

Okay. And one of the things that I came across in your memoir that I found so interesting is that, you know, your family had resigned themselves, that they had an artist among them, an artist who was a painter. And then, you know, your vocation and call and skill and training as a painter wasn't enough. You were being pushed into poetry. Was that a shock for your family to go, not only is she not a painter, she's a poet.

C (43:53)

She's a. A useless person? When I was growing up in Jamaica, I mean, that was not like a high calling that you were going to be a painter or poet. It. I was like, oh, that means you don't really want to go get a real job, you know. But, yeah, I think it was a little. My sister's a journalist, and I. I owe her a lot because she's a. She's quite brilliant and a great reader. But I think there was a problem when I started to write poetry, which is not journalism. You know, I kind of thought that job was taken the job of writer. But I honestly can't say this with all. I just can't say this. I. I didn't choose to be a poet. I didn't think, oh, isn't this lovely to be a poet? I just found myself writing these poems, and no matter what I did, they kept coming. So what happened?

A (44:46)

You have included some images the whole way throughout your translation here, images that you've done that are scattered throughout the book. Did you choose those to be a summary of each of the different circles, or did you just go with where your imagination took you?

C (44:59)

I went with where my imagination took me. But mostly, you know what happens. And this has always happened because I would sometimes do a painting, but I'd find I'd not exhausted that idea. So it kind of keep going into a poem. And that's. This is what happened with a lot of this. You know, I complete a canto, but I'd find the images still turning around and running my mind. And those became the, you know, the drawings you see, there's no way of exhausting and expelling and, you know, enough, I don't want to think about you anymore.

A (45:36)

Yeah. One of the things that I found so interesting reading the Inferno, which hadn't occurred to me before reading your Inferno, is how conversational it is between these characters. And maybe especially because you have included such reverence and respect and love and exchange between the character, you know, the poet, and Ms. Lu I found myself thinking about how so many of your poems, especially Mother Muse, your most recent book before this, has so much dialogue. Is that something that interests you? Like the art of everyday dialogue in general? Maybe Back from the Dressmaker's Floor would well be good.

C (46:17)

But also because I love interesting language wherever I go. I love listening to people saying things that I just thought, what a wonderful way to say that, you know, And I love any writing that does that, you know, so. Yeah, I. Yeah, I think. Yeah, that's. Yes.

A (46:38)

That's a definite yes. Yeah.

C (46:40)

Yes.

A (46:41)

Yeah.

C (46:41)

For example, in the New Testament, I love when, you know, those passages that are sometimes outlined in red where, you know. And then Jesus said. And then he says something. And I wonder, is that how we would really speak? But it kind of gives you an idea of maybe what his speech was like. And I like. Or any. Any sort of, you know, quotations from great teachers. Yeah, I. I kind of work with that. And is that what he'd really say? Like, when he gets. Our Lord gets angry, you know, and he will use really strong language. Generation. Generation of vipers. And I thought, God, did he really say that?

A (47:20)

Throughout your work, there's often a hymnotic quality to some of the titling and. And to some of the poems, too. I remember you and I spoke before about the kind of hymn quality of. And you've got great reverence for Anglicanism and Christianity, Rastafarianism, Islam. Many of these traditions occur going in and out of hell over these last, you know, long time. But then particularly intensely over these last few years, did anything of that give you some new ideas or some new images or some new feelings regarding the way it is that you approach spirituality or prayer or religion?

C (47:57)

Absolutely. You know, even in that last canto, what I read, where I said, you know, the image of drawing nearer, nearer, blessed Lord Those are words of a hymn. Draw nearer, nearer, blessed love. And I thought, when I was. I made that choice was to see something as horrifying and as dangerous as that approaching. You kind of wrap yourself in words that you. You think about the power of something like a hymn like that, you know. You know, sort of a song, a charm, a charm. Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord So it's describing what is happening, but it's also kind of protecting you, you know, because I'm a great singer of hymns to myself. I love the words of Reverend George Herbert, and I went to Anglican school in Jamaica. So every morning began with a singing, the singing of one of those hymns. And I. I just think his his poems that are set are just the most beautiful, beautiful things ever. You know, something like King of Glory, King of Peace. I love that. You know.

A (49:07)

I wonder.

C (49:08)

I think I answered the question, you know, but.

A (49:10)

Yeah, well, I mean, what, what, what I'm associating to is years ago I had a colleague, Paul Aleni Dao, who was from South Sudan, and he had been one of the last boys of Sudan. And he had been forcibly moved between a whole variety of camps on one side of a border or another, and then they'd be taken over by a militia. And he said it was during that time he started to go to church services because he said there was such consolation in the hymns. In my mind, I was thinking, but they didn't solve anything. And he was going, well, he wasn't looking for anything to be solved. He was looking for an experience. And then of course, he was looking for something to be changed and solved also. But that the consolation from a hymn was enough at the time.

C (49:52)

Exactly. I agree, absolutely.

A (49:57)

As we come to the end. I'll thank you in a sec. But I'm curious, is there any one last thing that you want to leave us with from Dante's Inferno to convince us again? Anybody who isn't convinced, and I'm sure everybody is, to spend some time in the companionship of it. Is there something that you want to say? Here's, here's something that it could offer you.

C (50:17)

I, I don't, I'm not sure. I, I think, I think I just want to say that I. What? I. Oh, okay. No, that's true. That's not true. I. Every now and again recently, I find myself sort of being caught up or reminded of something in, in it that helps me. Something. That's it. And there's just this wonderful passage where she, the, the. The poet is listening to these two people going, really, you know, forcing each other out. And Ms. Lou, the guide says, look, you just, you know, she is. That's where the cautionary tale comes in, where she sort of says, okay, go ahead, listen to it. That's good because it's bad for you. And I'm saying it's not good for you to listen to all of that terrible back and forth stuff. And I was, I'm trying to not be a doom scroller, but I get online and I read faithfully all these terrible sort of things that people are. Terrible things that people are saying about each other. And I remember just getting up one day and reading it and thinking, yeah, that's true. It's not good to listen to too much of that stuff. So I'm finding help from the text in ways that I never imagined. You know, I don't know if that makes any sense to me.

A (51:47)

It makes complete sense. Yeah, it makes complete sense about the effect of listening to what's poisonous.

C (51:52)

Yes, exactly.

A (51:54)

Well, thank you for your dedication over decades and years to this work.

C (51:58)

And thanks to you. Thanks so much again. Thank you so much for having me.

A (52:04)

And once again, Lorna Goodison, thank you so very, very much.

B (52:16)

Lorna Goodison's translation of the Inferno was published in 2025 by Vehicul Press in Canada and the United States and by Carcanet Books in the United Kingdom. She is the author of 15 other books of poetry and has won many awards including the Wyndham Campbell literature prize in 2018 and the Queen's gold medal for poetry in 2019. Lorna Goodison was the Jamaican poet laureate for three years from 2017 deep. Thanks to everyone at the Greenbelt Festival and Stream 7 and Christian Aid for hosting this conversation. Thanks also to Ethan How At Digital Island Studios, Poetry Unbound is Andrea Prevot, Carla Zanoni, Daryl Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Heagle, Bill Siegmund and me, Padre Gotuma. Our music is composed and provided by Gautam Srikishan and Blue Dot Sessions. These episodes were made in New York City on unceded Lenape land. Special thanks to Wilson Salwin, Niamh Yan and Adam Morell at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan. Thanks as well to Frederick Courtright of the Permissions Company. Poetry Unbound is an independent non profit production of the On Being Project founded and led by Krista Tippett. This season of Poetry Unbound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Our other funding partners include the Liana foundation, the Bidale foundation and and engaging the Census Foundation. Poetry Unbound would be nothing without the listening community. Thanks to all who listen, who read and give through our weekly Poetry Unbound substack or directly to On Being.

A (53:55)

For links to the substack and to.

B (53:57)

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