Cooke

Don't be fooled by his topknot hairstyle. Mel Cooke is a man of no small order. His mind is as powerful as his build, but his pen is even mightier. Love him or loathe him, he's not going to mince words. And he's not going to go into a diatribe. Cooke says what he has to say, sometimes with cynicism and sarcasm, but without pretension.

So when Cooke, a freelance writer for The Gleaner, performed for the first time at Poetry in Motion last week Sunday at Merv's Villa Garden in Mandeville, it was vintage Mel Cooke. Having covered the event a few times, he had to come good. In retrospect, he must be satisfied, for he went, stood tall and blew the audience away with a presentation you get only from seasoned performers.

Cool demeanour

With a demeanour as cool as the Mandeville temperature, his only concern was that he didn't stutter. Onstage, he went right into his act, no disclaimer, no caveats, no small talk. He addressed the United States of America and former president George Bush first - and he dragged them through the mire of criticism. There was no letting up. Poor George Bush. You would have thought that he would get some rest in retirement.

In a subtle reference to the end of Bush's reign and the rise of President Barack Obama, Cooke poured scorn upon the United States' hegemonism, while highlighting the resistance shown to it abroad. He said, "For there is no victorious foreign clothes for the emperor's naked wardrobe."

Being 'big on politics', he commented on the United States' intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his first piece, 'Afghanistan and Iraq vote First', he said although "a one man fling, nuff a wi say shoe George, shoe", an allusion to the 2008 incident in which an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at Bush.

Word Terrorist

From 11/9, his recently published book, he said in 'Word Terrorist', "A walk with two sticks of HB stick (pencils) a dandemite/trii sheet a white paper/when ah done write off/dat son of a Bush/ a mek trii plane/an tek careful aim ... Ah feel like strap a double load/round mi wais/go up a Liguanea/a de visa place/ease mi finger/an jus/blow some poem inna dem face."

The murder of Peter Tosh on September 11, 1987, and the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina on September 11, 2005, are the excerpts he read from the title poem. "Dogs and cat reunite/Broken black families still wait to get home/White find food, while blacks loot/ When the levee moves/In the land of the free/Evacuee turns refugee/Black is still Category Three/Forgets."

In closing

He ended his set with 'State', a work in progress to be released on CD first, and then in book form. In speaking with The Sunday Gleaner, he explained that State was "Jamaican history as it happens". It's a political and social commentary on the 'States' operating within the State. For example, "Dem nuh have no flag, DJs chat dem bad man anthem. Dem soljie noh have no batch ... Dem need no one to represent, dem have dem owna president ..."

Cooke, a Munro College and University of the West Indies graduate, has issues, like all of us, but he's in a good place. His concerns are not petty, and though not professing to be an intellectual, his work is informative, insightful and provocative, underscored by his sharp wit. It was a forceful, yet unemotional presentation.

See a full report of Poetry in Motion in tomorrow's Gleaner.