Heirloom: Catherine-Esther Cowie
Catherine-Esther Cowie on heritage and history in her new collection
I wanted to write a collection of poems that explored more than just the role of violence (slavery and colonialism) in shaping Saint Lucia’s national and cultural context. I was interested in the familial setting. I was interested in the women. How did they resist, navigate and negotiate the troubling environments they lived in? How were they also perpetrators of violence? How did the effects of a violent act(s) of the past travel forward through multiple generations? How did the women seek to rectify the mistakes of the past and how did they fail?
When I think of these four generations of women featured in the collection, I think of a long song. Each woman carrying the song of the past forward but adding her own turn, suffusing the song with her own blues, her own “victory sweet.” In the first section of the poem “Catherine”, Catiche discards the name Catherine after the abolishment of slavery. This renaming is symbolic, marking a different way (physically, legally, psychologically) of being in the world. But Catiche is a diminutive, a shortened version of Catherine. Meaning some of the past is carried forward. Even the first syllabic sound is like that of Catherine. But Catiche does not sound the same as Catherine—she’s an altered sound. A variation of a song.
On Repetition
Give me Sunday afternoons my front porch
my child right here by my side banging
some toy into its broken parts Hear my tongue
winged and repeating the same blues
a woman shuttered and struck I ruffle my daughter’s hair
sing I touch the woman bruised cheek
touch my face stinging my mother said she never
touch my face in that song the man hit the woman
in that song my mother said she never
Catherine
St. Lucia, 1848 When slavery ended, Catherine mashed up her name, became Catiche, discarding the sound of breeze rifling through the cane, discarding the sound of massa (master) between her thighs. * St. Lucia, 1986 Because she did not have your colouring, because of your own affliction— you name her after your likeness. Then you thought of your errant climb up the rain tree. A midnight dare: tied your school ribbon to a branch. How it is still there. Blue. Tattered and flailing. Gave her a second name. A hyphen, I walk the plank between the two names —call me Esther. The Hebrew three-root letters mean to hide, hidden. She is her father’s daughter. You teach her hands your quiet ways— A plate, an open mouth. The gift of white shatter: never having to say, I hate you. * Chicago, 2018 These days I wear my blood-hemmed name, write Catherine on every application, every journal, every poem, sound of my mother, name I once detested, sound of an image that is not me. Sound of my fear. Repetition. Sunday afternoons, she sprawls on the couch, her white legs peeking from under her skirts. Her voice singing, dou-dou darling stay sweet. Am I then, memory or prophecy— swell of her hurt. Her sweetness. Unscrew my skull, dislodge the tape, strew her sound through the trees. I wear my name like my hair, the way it screams of a different sun, of makola blue, of the great odoum, I will not knife the French and English out of my tongue, this heirloom, cruel and sweet. My white ancestors roll, roll, roll— I’ve been sewn into their line.
This week's article is by Catherine-Esther Cowie, author of Heirloom, which is published this month! Remember to use the code APRILBOOKS for 10% off and free UK P&P.
Please join us online at 7pm on Wednesday 30th April to celebrate the launch of Heirloom! The reading will be hosted by Victoria Kennefick. The event will feature readings and discussion, and audience members will have the opportunity to ask their own questions. We will show the text during readings so that you can read along. Book your place here.