My name is Podrigotuma and one of the things I love about poetry is summed up with a line

from Emily Dickinson who speaks of telling the truth but telling it slant.

And sometimes a poet, if they want to make a serious point about politics, will enter

into that serious point through the side door and they might describe something of landscape

or something of memory or something of joy, but there's a line in it that strikes home

because that line is telling a deep political truth around which everything else gathers.

A portable paradise by Roger Robinson. And if I speak of paradise, then I'm speaking

of my grandmother who told me to carry it always on my person concealed so no one else would

know but me. That way they can't steal it, she'd say. And if life puts you under pressure,

trace its ridges in your pocket, smell its piny scent on your handkerchief, hum its

anthem under your breath. And if your stresses are sustained and daily, get yourself to an empty

room, be at hotel, hostel or hovel, find a lamp and empty your paradise onto a desk,

for white sands, green hills and fresh fish. Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope

of mourning and keep staring at it till you sleep.

This is the title poem of a book by Roger Robinson, a portable paradise. He's a Trinidadian poet

who lives between Trinidad and London. And so his book pays attention to Trinidad, which

is always with him, but as well as being black British. The book is a phenomenally contemporary

one, honoring the struggle to survive in the face of institutional racism and classism

in Britain. And it's a book that honors family with tenderness and a book about art and

the importance and value of art. And there is reference to place, place as a great nurture,

as well as then place as a place of threat. And I loved that this final poem, the title poem,

seems to gather all of those themes together. The book is a long reflection on paradise.

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