Drisana Deborah Jack is at the articulate edge of a small and exciting batch of young St. Martiners who are, sometimes simultaneously, busy in literature, art, dance, song, and music, lighting an unprecedented crop of creative fires. Their energy is becoming the essential fuel for the nation’s cultural launch, or leap, into the twentyfirst century. These cultural workers come at a time when they are urgently needed at home. Their vanguard is earning critcal attention throughout the Caribbean and beyond from noted artists and institutions. When Drisana – also busy in art and theater – was granted a Fellow by the Caribbean Writers Institute, University of Miami, 1996, she was already being called a leader and ‘a most promising poet’ among St. Martin’s cultural brat pack in Newsday and Guardian. Her recitals have been at functions ranging from a ‘book party’ for scholar George Lamming to a protest against the proposed ‘ Franko-Dutch’ colonial treaty. Befor graduating from Marist College (B.A., 1993), she had been published in MC’s Collection of Non-Fiction Student Writings, listed in Who’s Who of Students in American Colleges and Universaties, and picked up the National Collegiate Cummunications Award. The Rainy Season is Drisana’s first published volume of poems.
“Here is a strong new voice which has come to join the chorus of inspired chanting of Caribbean women poets. Drisana Deborah Jack speaks her truth fearlessly, with passion and compassion and gentle irony. In these poems Africa and Europe, the old world and the new, all come together to inform the twenty-first century vision of this powerful young poet from St. Martin.”
Lorna Goodison, author of To US, All Flowers are Roses Universy of Michigan-Ann Arbor
