The writ­ings inspired by real or imag­i­nary trav­els into exot­ic places have a long and fine tra­di­tion in the Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, which is marked by well-known and cher­ished authors as Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. It is a type of lit­er­a­ture that gives the read­er a new per­spec­tive on humans and their way of liv­ing on oth­er merid­i­ans of the globe, dif­fer­ent from the Euro­pean and the Euro­cen­trist one, as a form of the human­ist multiculturalism.

     The book Libre­tos for the Black Madon­na (White Adder Press, 2011) by Neil Lead­beat­er pro­pos­es as the crit­i­cal ref­er­ence of the blurb sug­gest. The jour­ney is as poet­i­cal, as a under­tak­ing rig­or­ous­ly orga­nized and as a lit­er­ary form. The poet­ic imag­i­na­tion is based on a men­tal pro­jec­tion care­ful­ly applied. In a way it seems to be the reply to the rock album ‘Tales from Topo­graph­ic Oceans’ record­ed by the British band Yes. The South-Amer­i­can jour­ney takes the read­er through places full of colour, quaint­ness or local spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. From a saga­cious point of view, it is not only a plea­sure jour­ney, but one of ini­ti­a­tion as well.

    The vol­ume rep­re­sents a gen­uine tril­o­gy with the first part, ‘Libre­tos for the Black Madon­na’, con­sist­ing of poems ded­i­cat­ed to the Brazil­ian states, the sec­ond part, ‘Morn­ings in Venezuela’ ded­i­cat­ed to this coun­try from the north of the con­ti­nent, and the third one, ‘The Pow­er of Falling Water’, which con­tin­ues the jour­ney through three states from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca – Nicaragua, Cos­ta Rica and Pana­ma. The land­scape is selec­tive­ly evoked, depend­ing on the author’s mood and sen­si­bil­i­ty. In Brazil the jour­ney starts in the south-west region and goes through the fol­low­ing states: Acre, Ama­zonas, Roraima, Amapá, Ceará, Piaui, Alagoas, Per­nam­bu­co, Bahia, Mato Grosso, Rondô­nia, Mat­to Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Espíri­to San­to, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Paraná and San­ta Cata­ri­na (leav­ing oth­er states ‘unmapped’, such as the small state Paraí­ba). The order is not acci­den­tal and the ref­er­ence point is the Basil­i­ca of the Nation­al Shrine of Our Lady of Apare­ci­da from São Paulo, a place of intro­spec­tion and prayer for thou­sands of pil­grims. The coun­ter­point and the tech­nique of the the­mat­ic mosa­ic give beat and rhythm to this Brazil­ian jour­ney. Ele­ments of the Sacred and the Pro­fane, of the Poet­i­cal and the Pro­sa­ic alter­nate in the 31 texts of the first part, and the author express­es poet­i­cal­ly and with great com­pe­tence the things that belong to the dai­ly rou­tine, as well as the ones which belong to leg­end, myth, sur­re­al­ism. Illus­tra­tive of this poet­ic view is actu­al­ly the text that opens the vol­ume, The World on Fire: ‘That morning/when we land­ed in Acre/the air was thick with smoke — / its blank uncom­pre­hend­ing screen / blocked our vision / like shut Venet­ian blinds.’ The libret­tos ded­i­cat­ed to the Black Madon­na are right next to the poet­ry of the con­tem­po­rary street from Let’s Go on the Streets: ‘the dance music of city life / from the cafez­in­ho bars’. The Brazil­ian world is explored both syn­chron­ic and diachron­ic. After a pro­sa­ic moment as the one from Chang­ing Trains at Terez­i­na, skil­ful­ly trans­formed into poet­ry, and the one with the con­tem­po­rary insti­tu­tion UNESCO (which pro­tects a mon­u­ment of baroque art in the Per­nam­bu­co state), the author digress­es – in Arrival in Bahia – the mean­ing of its jour­ney from the present to the times of the Great Geo­graph­i­cal Dis­cov­er­ies and to the fig­ure of the pio­neer Pedro Alvares Cabral, the one who dis­cov­ered by acci­dent the ter­ri­to­ry of today’s Baha state: ‘On East­er Wes­nes­day / in the year 1500 / I, Pedro Alvares Cabral, / born in Bel­monte, / fidal­go to the Roy­al House­hold, / dis­cov­ered by acci­dent / this land” (…) The poet­ic self and the self of the his­tor­i­cal fig­ure evoked blend here, in an inspir­ing way, in an unique lyri­cal voice because every time the Present has to take upon itself the Past.

     The poet­ic view takes on ele­ments from the plas­tic arts and the images full of life and local colour (with hints of pic­turesque) alter­nate in the same com­po­si­tion­al well-bal­anced beat in the series of poems ded­i­cat­ed to Venezuela: ‘In the mid­dle of the day / our daugh­ters return from the mar­ket. / They stand in the door­way in their sailor-girl suits. / Amer­i­can beau­ties / by witch I mean Wash­ing­ton apples’ (…) (San Bernardi­no – Domes­tic Inte­ri­or with Girls Enter­ing a Room). The poem Orinoco Clos­ing dis­tin­guish­es itself by the recall of the great South-Amer­i­can riv­er from mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives: ‘(…)Sta­tis­tic: Orinoco/-the sev­enth largest riv­er in the world.//Myth: In 1498/Columbus declared it flowed direct/from the lush envi­rons of Eden (…)”, etc.

     The poet­i­cal explo­ration of the Latin-Amer­i­can world is com­plet­ed, in the last part of the book, with a series of depic­tions that record three Cen­tral Amer­i­can states  which were not ran­dom­ly cho­sen. Nicaragua is a world full of con­trasts which proud­ly pro­claims itself a con­tem­po­rary Par­nas under the ami­able look of the glo­be­trot­ter – the author: ‘We are a nation of poets”, he said, “poetry/runs in the blood. It wells out / in Cre­ole Eng­lish, Nicaraguan Span­ish, / Sumo, Rama and Miski­to; / is as fecund as the Par­que Las Madres Ocotal,/a par­adise of ros­es (…)”(Oco­tal). The Pana­ma state, with its well-known Canal, it is plas­ti­cal­ly placed between the sym­bol of the ‘falling water’ (The Pow­er of Falling Water) and the sym­bol of a cig­ar fac­to­ry (At the Cig­ar Fac­to­ry, Pana­ma).

     The book ends with a series of a small dic­tio­nary meant to shed a lit­tle light regard­ing the cul­tur­al ref­er­ences from the poems. With inspi­ra­tion and tal­ent, but also with a remark­able rigour when it comes to writ­ing the poems, Neil Lead­beat­er builds, with Libre­tos for the Black Madon­na, a poet­ic mon­u­ment ded­i­cat­ed to South Amer­i­ca as a geo­graph­i­cal land and as a world of cul­ture and civil­i­sa­tion typ­i­cal for humanity.

 

Three poems
NEIL LEADBEATER

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