pam mordecai

ADULT POETRY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CERTIFIABLE  
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Certifiable pushes collective ideas of the human condition — white/black, sane/mad, Canadian/Jamaican — into a matrix of unstereotyped experience where we manoeuvre only by dead reckoning and by the light of the word. In language guided by the Creole soundscape, Mordecai’s poems explore the truths hidden beneath the ideal of love, the fullness of sisterhood, and the intimate knowledge of little and big madnesses.

 

 

 
Goose Lane Editions;
Fredricton,
New Brunswick
2001.
ISBN 0-86492-295-7

“The writing of these powerful, mischievous, haunting poems (including a wonderful writing back to Virginia Woolf) is an aspect of that determination, a turning of that destructive energy into a kind of celebration of the life saved – at least for another day.”– Stewart Brown

“Very rich linguistically, imaginatively, and thematically.”– D.M. Thomas
 
   
de Man  

De Man is an eyewitness account, by two observers who are participants-by extension, of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Naomi, a middle-aged woman and a maid in the service of Pontius Pilate’s wife, has been sent by her to bring back an account of what is being done to “de man”. The second observer, Samuel, old and disabled, was taught carpentry by Joseph, the “father” of Jesus, and has come to witness what has befallen the little boy he knew “running up and down chasing him ball” in Nazareth.


The crucifixion account is powerfully rendered in the everyday language of the people who report it. The immediacy of their reaction to the events provides graphic and moving insights into what is perhaps the best-known story in the world.

 

Sister Vision Press;
Toronto, Canada.
de Man: a performance poem;
1995
ISBN 0-920813-23-2
“....a remarkable job of telling a well known story in the vernacular, bringing it right up to date with topical references...very rich and textured.”– Olive Senior

“This is no ordinary retelling of the familiar story, this is the agony and the ecstasy as seen through the eyes of two old people and recounted in the Jamaican vernacular…She uses the language with exquisite ease and humour, bringing in modern expressions with such expertise that they fit the times of which she writes and don’t appear anachronistic, which they might at the hand of a lesser master of the written word.”– Jeanne Wilson
 
   
JOURNEY POEM   

“Pamela Mordecai’s Journey Poem is the book as a collective (there is no title poem) which takes us with her through various metaphorical journeys or her/(our) one journey…..Journey Poem helps to place her in the very top bracket among female poets in the Caribbean. Although to brand her feminist/womanist might be a non-sequitur, much of the poem’s vitality, moral strength and commanding, sometimes superior tone, develops from what appears to be a woman’s consciousness of what is right, just, wholesome and what is due to her. She celebrates womanhood as producer and protector of life as well as a creature of sensuality as much as she asserts liberating individualitgy, a fulfilling self-discovery and a frank unemotional truth.”
– Al Creighton
Sandberry Press;
Kingston, Jamaica
Journey Poem;
Caribbean Poetry Series No.3;
1989 ISBN 976 8001 17 8

 

“All poems are journeys, recounted spheres of experience with their own landscapes; each line, each stanza, each piece building the passage.Pamela Mordecai lets this collection take its own steps in short, clear lines. She takes us up rivers, through gardens and birthdays, joys, and losses with the directness of someone whose journey has been well-mapped....The voice is direct, the footing sure—even while toeing the worn footpath of genealogical cause and effect”– Carrol B. Fleming (CaribbeanWriter Online)