This lecture would not be a success without all of you. So it is my honest and greatest pleasure to be in your presence today. So I'm going to give you a round of applause for all being here. I'm very happy when I see this kind of attendance. I know as normal functions we start to feel from the back, but we have a very nice crowd and I'm sure tonight will be just as warm, just as encouraging and just as thought-provoking. My welcome here is a very short one because the night is, of course, not about me. This is the memorial lecture for Derek, Sir Derek Wolcott. Let's take a moment. As he has touched the world, I'm sure for everyone inside here, there's something of his work, of his life that has touched you. The reading of the poem today is just an example of what the world has experienced. So can we give him a round of applause? So without further ado, let us start the program. It's not about me talking. I'm going to hand you over because tonight we are looking at celebrating, Sir Derek, by looking at what is the poetic traditions and that's what the lecture is going to focus on. It is only natural that we should start with some of our well-known poets and their work, displaying their work. So let's give a round of applause for all of them and they will run one after the other and then we'll applaud them again after. Mr. Robert Lee, Ms. Jane King and Mr. Kendall Hippolett. White Cedar in Memoriam, Derek Wolcott. This poem begins with four lines from Derek's, the prodigal poem and those four lines will recur again within my own poem. And Derek's four lines are these. Make room for the accommodation of the dead, the amounts that multiply by the furrowing sea, not in the torch-lit catacombs of your head, but by the Amonbrite's Pume Blown Cemetery, White Cedar in Memoriam, Derek Wolcott. I thought it was over, the season of lila carpets, along verges on green lawns, petals of paue stepping off currents of soft air, settling with tender ease on earth's lanes. But here they are again, in May, everywhere, with the morning bassoon of wood doves and, yes, indeed, incredibly, to me ignorant of seasons of flora, I see the fragrant Easter spider lily blooming from unexpected corners of my without you days. Make room for the accommodation of the dead, you muttered, in a dark saying that seemed to mute memory, to remove yourself to needle-leaved casurinas of Pigeon Island, out of our too familiar embrace, too smothering adulation, or borrowing eyes searching out your diaries, and the cascading cedar blossoms raise the gray heron to serve chastened ledges of beccune point, the forlorn pool, deserted studio, vacant easel, and their mounds that multiply by the farrowing sea. After gentle curtsies through golden late afternoons, to Lacomet and Martinique and Mazook, past delicate carvings of white cedar figurines in the sculptor's garden and other such benedictions, meantime, autocrats of mammon desecrate your groves and beaches, they set iron beasts to holy roots of the blessed cedar with arrogant pride, they mock the memory of your protests, they will not heed angry alarms of scissor-tailed gulls, stubborn silence of drought, so we want your gray-eyed fierceness here, not in the torchlit catacombs of your head, not entire some fictions of some mythical you, but impossibly, like Atlantic breakers glimpsed through bamboo of violated praline, here, now, heraldic egrets lift your lines from more unfortunate mola chic, with the awkward grace of their perfect symmetry, the flowering mauve of cedar tumbles through green fern around Souffre, and will leaf your last book, not near your beloved bent piton, but by the amonbrite, spume-blown cemetery, white cedar in memoriam Derek Wargold.  This is not a metaphor, it is a true thing I can see from my window, and so what? Outside, marlene is washing. The only time she can boss the house is when her mechanic is out, so then she makes her child cry. She never fails to be rough and unkind to him. Well, it's hot. When Celestina lived there, the blows impacting with her flesh echoed in her lonely patient silence. She could not conceptualize her suffering, tried not to inflict it on us. She did not. An Indian doctor lived here once.  Miss Flo got hot. She said, if you know that man, and the things that woman do him, he joined seven days, and so he marries she. Say he's satisfied. Leave me seven months pregnant with Paul. When he sleep, she tie knot with rope around him. When she pour in, she catch it in a tensile, and give to him for cocoa. Her own child say, if you tie man, he must stay, but you must take what you get. True, is it not? If I go by the rum shop, for Miss Jean to sell me some onion or soap, she will serve me first, and sudden silence loudly cry, you don't live here. I write syllabics. What else have I got? There are a thousand paves where I live.  A thousand people live by me. But my neighbors, they are not. The theme of tonight's lecture is tradition. A vital way in which the tradition gets passed on is coming across reading the works of those I've gone before you, and absorbing that, and paying homage to it by eventually writing your own work. Tradition. Once as a child, I opened books, hoping each was casket, precious, with words, thoughts that had sapphired in the dark, deep underground in a man's mind. I searched for feelings that had cycled into language. A word like lust, winked like a ruby in a navel. Mystery was emerald. Laughter was amethyst. And once I found, and then I lost. A strange word, one without facets. Whole, the word peace. Like a pearl. When I was young, I never wrote a poem. Words flickered, beautiful, and wild in their closed cases, bright with the richness of their maker's minds. And as a child, it was enough. I played, and then returned to them. I don't recall when I became a thief. Or why, perhaps losing that pearl, I made my head a casket, locked up the wealth of meanings that I had not mind.  Now the words rattle in my skull. Loaded dice in a cracked cup. And I'm afraid to throw them. And there is no way to return them, except sometimes as now within a poem. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that these poets need a round of applause. That's resounding, wonderful. Are you feeling the goosebumps? Are you ready? This tonight is great. It has started off on such a wonderful note. It's going to be wonderful. It's going to be something that you would not forget. At this moment, I'd like to invite all of you to focus on our screens, where we would have an introduction to our guest speaker. MacDonald Ernest Dixon was born in Castry, St. Lucia, in 1944. He attended the Cannon Laurie Anglican Primary School and St. Mary's College. And from quite early on, he manifested the multifacetedness which continues to mark his work as an artist. As a student, while he was filling his exercise books with adolescent poetry, he was also covering pages of his drawing books with sketches. After graduating from the St. Mary's College, he joined the Royal Bank of Canada and later the National Commercial Bank of St. Lucia, where he went on over a 30-year period to forge a successful career in banking. During that period, he rose steadily to the highest banking position at the Royal Bank of Canada, becoming its first local manager. And when the National Commercial Bank of St. Lucia was established, he was at the helm there as its first managing director in 1981. Dixon also went on to serve in the capacity of trade and commerce advisor to the government of St. Lucia. MacDonald Dixon is an established and well-known poet, novelist, short story writer, actor, photographer, and painter, who is also actively involved in the world of theater as a playwright, actor, and director. He became interested in the arts at an early age and was just 16 years old when he came across Derek Walcott's 25 poems while exploring the shelves of his school library at the St. Mary's College. In the mid-1960s, Dixon was swept up in the maelstrom of activity by the St. Lucia Arts Guild, which was started by Derek Walcott and his brother, becoming involved in performing and directing. He acted in a range of plays from European classics like Odiepus Rex and Julius Caesar to Caribbean comedies such as One for the Road. In directing also, he ran the gamut, the modernistic, the queen, and the rebels sits comfortably in his directing portfolio alongside the mock doctor, a Caribbean adaptation of Molière's The Doctor in spite of himself. Dixon's first publication was a collection of poems entitled Pebbles, 1973. He then set his hand to writing plays, and his work began to appear in several magazines and anthologies throughout the region. When the Arts Guild ended, he continued to write plays, drawing heavily on his knowledge of folk heritage and local history. His play, The Folk Musical, Tinde, directed by George Fish Alphos and featuring music by Charles Cadet, was St. Lucia's theatrical presentation at Carifesta V in 1992 in Trinidad. In his writings, Dixon seeks to recreate the history of his people's myths and legends to serve as a reference for contemporary and future writers in his country. He also has a short story collection, Kaoum, to his credit, along with three novels, the latest of which, Saints of Little Paradise, takes as its subject the initial contact of two civilizations, that of Europe, with that of the new world, and their capacity to connect with one another and progress towards fusion. An accomplished photographer, Dixon's love of country is continuously transcended through his photography of St. Lucia's landscape and rich cultural heritage. Dixon's biography of works includes and are not limited to novels and short stories, Saints of Little Paradise, Book 1, Eden Defiled, 2012, Miss Begotten, 2009, Kaoum, 2009, Season of Mist, 2007, Poetry, Collected Poems, 2003, The Poet Speaks and Other Poems, 1993, Pebbles, 1973. Plays, The Glass Doll, A Soldier Always, The Chosen, Diablo Terre, Tinde, Calender, The Last Lamp. Dixon continues to guide and bridge the gap to the new generation of writers, directors, and artists. He helped develop and stage One for the Road with Kingsley Powlett, 1972, co-directed Melania Daniels, Jesus of Conway, with Drenia Frederick in 2003. His exploratory theatrical work and readings with St. Mary's College students, St. Lucia's Writers Forum and 2019 Guidance on Jesse Meyers and Monique O'Geese, A Little Folk Tale, St. Lucia's Theatrical Contribution for Carifesta XIV are all part of the mentoring that has marked his continuing artistic journey. Dixon has steadfastly served his country over the years in many important positions, including that of acting governor-general of St. Lucia when required. Though Dixon's character and personality continue to reflect that of a modest man focused on work and not accolades, the societal recognition of his work and contribution to the arts is manifested in him being awarded the St. Lucia National Medal of Merit, 1993, for his long-standing contribution to literature and photography and the Cultural Development Foundation's 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award for his invaluable contribution to the arts in St. Lucia. I present it to you Mr. MacDonald Ernest Dixon, our lecturer for tonight. Your Excellency, sacred, distinguished guests, ladies, gentlemen, Gopichas, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We are all Caribbean people, blessed with an outrageous imagination. So imagine you are floating out to sea, seated and inflated in a tube from a truck tire. You can swim, there is no fear. Imagine at the peak of comfort, you feel a tug on the side of the tube. Suddenly you're being dragged seaward. The water underneath you receding.  This, in a peanut shell, is how I felt confronting Walcott's work for the first time as a schoolboy at St. Mary's College in Form 4. I was carefully burrowing like a crab through the fertile soil of English literature, looking on with indifferent eyes, as scans, loving what I read, but uncertain of the purpose why I was reading it. Being the language of the world of work, it was an imposition, a chore, to learn every facet, every phase of its grammar until I can achieve a level of competence to master the Cambridge School Leaving Certificate to get a job. I delved headlong into several texts, immersed in the mysteries of sound, language, and place, acquiring an interest in history along the way. I have related this story so many times in so many interviews, but I think it's worth repeating again here, and I just saw it a while ago on the screen. I think it's very important in the context of the conversation that I'm starting tonight. Browsing through a back shelf at the school library searching for old books on St. Lucia, I stumbled on a dusty pamphlet entitled 25 Poems. The work was by a young St. Lucia writer, Derek Walcott, published about 10 years before. I recognized the name. However, by then, the offer had disappeared from the landscape, but he had a twin brother, Roderick, affectionately called Roddy, who I knew although some 14 years my senior. Their mother, Teacher Alex, had taught my mother in standard two at the Methodist School on Chisler Street, and they remained in touch. My mother credited Teacher Alex with showing her how to sew. Well, it was about 15 or so years after the war, about 10 years after the 48th fire. Things were very hard in St. Lucia. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons, after I arrived on the scene, my mother would visit her beloved teacher to sew a few things for me on her sewing machine. On finding that chapbook, never did I dream it would open my eyes on a new world of discovery that would survive in tandem with reality and set me on a course of study that would occupy an entire lifetime. About the same time, I also discovered Henry H. Spring, St. Lucia Historical, Statistical and Descriptive 1844 at the Central Library, and that book had a similar effect on me. Born at a period when the Walker twins, Dunstan Saint Thomas and Leo Spa St. Helen were in their prime, and through them I came into contact with Harry Simmons, I could not have been more privileged. Under these enormous influences, I learned to look inward, an exercise that was not encouraged by our regular teachers who fed us on diets of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Goldsmith, the Brontes, another father from the pages of the only literature they knew. There was a feeling of inferiority about our own after being told directly and indirectly that as a people, we never produced anything worthwhile to benefit civilization. He was of wood, drawers of water, the implied. This negative philosophy was ridiculed by M.S. Isere in his classic poem, Kaedon with two opium natale, returned to my native land 1938, and I quote from that poem, those who invented neither powder nor compass, those who never subdued steam or electricity, those who never explored sea or sky, but know in their deepest recesses the land of sufferance. It was from this prodigious position I launched forward. Hoping to find an olive branch to keep me afloat while I searched for evidence to disprove the status quo. Already, I had stumbled on a language from the streets separate and distinct from the rigid rhythms of school and there in that lay an aorta of hope. There was longing and dilemma. I longed for the purity, parts of my psyche yearned for the unimaginative. After being brainwashed for generations by priests and teachers into believing we were unoriginal and non-creative, it would take more than a few cutlass blows to hack through my thick skull. On top of this, salesmen in three-piece suits arrived from foreign ports and built markets on these falsehoods. They resold to us our own homegrown cotton as cloth for our clothes. They transformed the brown muscovado into clear sugar for our cakes, jellies, and jams. Tuned our pallets to saltfish, bully beef, flour, cornmeal so that we remain net importers of goods in perpetuity.  It was profitable to them for us to stay poor, distracted from creating things and so remain hewers of wood and drawers of water and do not believe that this situation is not still in existence today. It's under the disguise of the fallacy of foreign direct investment and I can assure you this is a fallacy. But did not a part of me produce sugar to swell the pockets of Europe? Did we not ferment molasses to invent rum? Did we not cure tobacco leaves for the social revolution that strangled the world with bad habits? There's no hate in me recalling this. There's no painful journey back to realism. I only want to establish facts. Let us begin with Gregorian chants, peeling off the veneer of church organs, digest the notes, discard the Latin lyrics and superimpose a creole prosody. Wasn't that what we did? Here is a music born from mimicry, the simple act of superimposing another tongue over an ancient language that lives only within the portals of his church. Preserved of the strong order of Popea oozing from the armpits of old men after high mass, racing down the aisle with the Ita Misaes still hot on their breasts for the nearest rum shop. If the Latin chant is the root, the creole song is its stem. Together they are a whole. I select one from the other is to uproot the tree. A flower bag is held together by its thread. Pull a loose end and the sides, the assembly like a curtain drawn apart to reveal an unset stage. A mark, simplicity becomes the dough waiting to be kneaded into a mastiff loaf. The baker softens it with his sweat. All that is missing, as Walcott said, is the love to transform it into art. On Osmoil Island, before internet and what is today West Indian or Caribbean literature, public libraries were small institutions with a limited hoard of books. This coupled with the awkwardness of learning a foreign language and claiming it as your own did not provide impetus to create a nation of readers. But there were a few of us who in spite of the hardships, regardless of battling tongue twisting phrases, weather conditions and draconian librarians who were very quick to tell you, silence please. We visited these institutions daily after school to exchange books, borrowed the previous day and to meet with the girls of course. The girls for me were an added motivation although the most I did was to wave from a distance. I had little interest in subjects other than literature and history. French as a second language did not inspire me. The closest I came to being enthralled was to recognize its proximity to our local creole, forbidden in school but spoken at home. In four form, I started contemplating writing as a profession. It was necessary to channel all efforts into my essays but alas, a presentation brother who had the dubious distinction of being my English language teacher never understood my subject matter and my marks were ridiculously poor. I wrote about things I knew. The company around me, the space I occupied, the food, farin and pear, rose sardines, acra and bake and everything else that caught my eyes. But poor brother, eccentric as he was, he wanted me to create parodies on my literature texts or commentaries on news items on BBC. I cannot describe what I've never seen, heard, smelled, touched or felt. Nothing on our syllabus covered the 20th century as it was probably last reviewed at some point during the long reign of Queen Victoria 60 years before as we were still a crown colony and a backwater of empire. In St. Lucia, we were yet to hear of the emergence of C. L. R. James, Maze, Hearn, Walcott, Selvon, Nipole. We schoolboys were not aware of BIM magazine although there were whispers from other islands like Barbados and Trinidad that books about us existed. There were rumors of one George Lamming in Barbados and a fellow from BG writing in England who in time would emerge as Edgar Mittelhauser. Mid-Retro of the year came my apotheosis. After trespassing across the first page of 25 poems, I knew I had found the missing link to my reading fair. Haven't taken into account all idiosyncrasies including denials, feeling of inferiority and dispossession, my mother's own colonial upbringing that taught her the fallacy of knowing your place which she tried to pass on to me but with little success. I was reborn.  I did not readily concede but her constant pounding forced me to defer to law which to my surprise she was also adamant. Law, she said, was a sure quick road to hell. You will never see the face of God. With all alternatives, I plotted at two professions simultaneously giving priority to the one that would put food on the table and pay the mortgage. Writing became a serious chore after I started following the St. Lucia Arts Guild and came under the mentorship of Roddy Walcott in 1962. He taught me all I needed to know at the time about writing plays, thus stimulating a long and lasting interest in theater which is overshadowed by the absence of a physical playhouse on this island up to today. A condition which persists and annoys me intensely. Nothing can be more depressing for me to talk about. How could this have occurred in an era of consciousness, rebirth, black power, enlightenment and rejuvenation of the Caribbean persona? If I could relive the past, I would enter the arena of partisan politics. If only to ensure that that dream of a national theater became a reality. But of course, there's no guarantee I would win. And now, it's too late to regret. I accept that a germ, one's own, can remain in hibernation for life without being born. But I refuse to concede that the situation is forever. Why am I telling you all this? I feel like boasting about unfulfilled promises from a past that was once filled with promise. In answer to the why in your minds, I did believe for some time that I was alone from my generation, seriously pursuing the arts. Walcott and Company, 12 to 15 years, my seniors, adults with families of their own or with families on the way. It was natural to feel pigeonholed in a cubicle by myself. Not until I met Robert Lee again about 1969 at Royal Bank of Canada, I knew him as a junior at St. Mary's College while in my senior year, but never realized we shared a common interest. I recall long discussions on new books at the Voice Bookshop on Bridge Street. Those first early offerings of West Indian literature, Robert also gravitated to the arts guild and began writing himself. There were others emerging, and I would like to mention here, Earl Long and the late Arthur Raymond, whose earliest pieces appeared in the college magazines of the decade and showed much promise. You cannot imagine the elation I felt no longer being crucial on these shores, alone in this cultural forest with its abundance of low-hanging fruits. Secretly and independently, each of us were scribbling notes on all surroundings, observing color of saying, finding meter in sentences falling off a fishmonger's scarlet tongue. Robert was regretting lack of knowledge of the countryside manifested in his poem, Lusca. While I decried damage caused by a man named Progress to the dying countryside, we learned of Walcott's entry into the international arena with In a Green Night in 1962, of Garth St. Thomas's success with Ciro and a Room on the Hill, both prose, and of Stanley French as a playwright with Rip of Fahelin, all this happening outside all shores. I recall some years ago while speaking to Dr. Lenox Honeychurch, a well-known Dominican historian, who asked, what you have in St. Lucia making you produce all these great Creole writers? He was not referring to Creole as a language, but more to imagery, customs, people, and place. If we were mobilizing the language to create fields of meaningful expression, it was because we believed the tongue we were forced to learn was inadequate to cover the entire scope of humanism that represents the bricks and mortar of St. Lucia's life. We sometimes take for granted the phenomenon that is Walcott. Without realizing the immense favor he has done us writers by monopolizing the St. Lucia idiom in body, soul, and spirit, with a down-to-earth pragmatism that is his distinct individuality, which in the process provides us if a yard stick longer than an English yard to measure our own work. He has minded every metaphor under the sun, beginning before we knew ourselves and learned to recognize our first scribbles. His poem, 1944, was published in The Voice in October of that year and heralded his entrance on the local stage, giving notice to the world that a 14-year-old had mastered the art of cloning meltonic verse. He has left us now, but not before bequeathing his Adam's task of naming things to succeeding generations with confidence that we can create our own images and varied circumstances, assuming all the tacitly that we accept to continue the monumental show he undertook all on his own without compromise. If there is any collective reasoning among us in the wake of Walcott, it is our understanding of our place, time, and purpose. The unique situation of having to exist in a land of two languages that merge free and independent of the other, each maintaining its viscosity to produce an inflection thick to the air like molasses, yet smooth on the tongue like a tongue of white rum. Speech that is as lyrical as it is musical, providing us with the basic ingredients for poetry, is indeed a rare privilege. It is indeed a rare privilege, Venus and Husha. It is not by happenstance that this island seems to have more poets per square mile than any other place on earth and don't blame it on Walcott. Like any other overflow from river, sink, gutter, pond, Walcott has had an odd way of burrowing into our psyche whether we want to let him in or not, more so for the older heads than the newcomers. In earlier years, most of us were exposed to the same syllabus at school, the same school, of course. Already we were from the same country, either Protestant or Roman Catholic, exposed to the same social conflicts, customs, practices, politics. There was a distinction between what was rural and what was town, and those from town wanted to experience the countryside and its rustic lifestyle, romanticized in some of our early poems like Robert Lee's Luska from his first book, vocation 1975. There was a privilege, nobility in poverty, which ran like a thread through our juvenilia until Kendall came on the scene and dared to call a speed a speed. There was great empathy and understanding for those without a voice and the poets spoke out loud and eloquent to deaf ears in certain circles. If anything, the political directorate who has for generations given lip service to the arts called them Johnny, come laters. Some of you too young to know that. And there were also other demeaning epitaphs like madmen and crazy and things like that, aimed to denigrate the persona but succeeded only in achieving the opposite. People began recognizing the artists as one with them in their camp. Walcott went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature and the mantra changed overnight. But not necessarily for the better, more like Plist on hold. As aptly described by the maestro himself in his homecoming poem, Ansary for Garth's Entoma. What others make of life will pass them by. Like that far silvery freighter threading the horizon like a toy. For once like them, you wanted no career but this sheer light, this clear, infinite, boring, paradisical sea. But hope, it would mean something to declare. Today, I am your poet, yours. All of this you knew, but never guess you'd come to know there are homecomings without hope. It is not ironical to find several of this inclusion writers tackling topics Walcott had already written about, protest, social inequity, and dysfunctional development. Not as mimics, the assonances and rhythms may sound similar but listen well to hear independent thought ringing through the clear distinctive voices. Let us examine three poems on Denry. First by Walcott, then Dixon some 18 years later and Kendall Hippolett, still by 10 years. I cannot read through all of them in detail but I will quote enough for you to evaluate similarities and differences, hoping that you appreciate their treasured individualities. And I quote first from Derek's Return to Denry, Rain, that's from in the Green Night, 1962. Imprisoned in these wires of rain, I watch this village stricken with a single street. Each weathered shark leans on a wooden crutch contented like a cripple in defeat. Five years ago, even poverty seemed sweet so Asia and indifferent was the air, so murmurous of a livian the sea. Any human action seemed a waste. The place seemed born for being buried there. Denry from Peyinatal, Dixon, to 12 volume one, June 1st, 1976. There is no disgrace where poverty heals injustice. Bugles of progress tuned to a north wind go unheard by men four miles away from wind and rain. You cannot change. Divorced the fisherman from his net, the planter from his plot, and purity would die from shock. And third, a village guide if you return, Kendall Hippolyte, bearings, 1986. Return to Denry, you'll find a village like a chronic sore foot. The same one street like a used and worn bandage. Homes clot in the raw flesh of hillsides. Development schemes have quarterized the hillslopes. And they are waiting for us, the zinc ointment, the sterilized white dressing of some industry or other, some light manufacturing, some fly by night concern of factory, hotel, can't tell yet such slings go by appointment. What is it? In the solution earth, the water, the air, that makes some of us gravitate to poetry, why go through the exercise of sweat and tears, sculpting lines to fit a page? The answer is not simplistic. Those of us who labor at the craft know this. Wolcott pointed to a direction. He bolstered our confidence in the use of the people's language, metaphor and place. But he cannot be blamed for this torture. There is a force far greater than his omnipresent stature, greater than the fluted music he weaved on the back of words. It is this inanimate being, difficult to pinpoint at a glance, but can be spotted showing its face through our humble lines. Or philosophies may differ, or themes far apart, but all our horizons remain constant. In preparing this paper, I went back to read Confluence, nine Saint Lucian poets, 1988, among a list of others. Having not read Confluence for several years, I was able to rediscover its freshness. I delved into previously undiscovered regions, led by lines which on the surface seemed obvious, but were deeply rooted in my subconscious. For those who do not remember, Confluence is a 1988 anthology edited by Kendall Hippolyd. Highlighting, of course, the work of nine Saint Lucian writers, all of whom were born after Walcott, except for me. When I say after, well, I was born, and I'm not talking about Walcott now as Derrick Walcott, but Walcott the writer. It so happens by a remarkable coincidence. 1944 was published in the same month I was born. And I have reason to believe I was born on the first and it was published a week after. I was amazed by the variety of themes, right to us, hopelessly in love with love, with their country, landscape, people, light themes, variations of themes on race, class, creed, religion, romance, politics. Some of the poets like Irvin Desi are not known in local circles outside his group of friends, but display a marked dexterity in handling a multiplicity of situations, infusing them with local color, reasoning, and metaphor. For those of you who are here that do not know of his work, permit me to introduce him by reading one of his short poems. And I quote from Islander Nine as a gray, gray villager. As a gray, gray villager worn by this world, her head is swayed with scars, her waist bound with bandanas, her pale balances on her head, or carrying this as she comes rarely spills her sorrow. You are an ocean murmuring as it moves. You fill this cluttered room with a handful of clothes. You say scores of friends have swept past like fish scales. Modern mechanisms have slowed the paths of wood dogs. Recall the live scene, the chorus, the shrill chanson, or being solemn. You fill this cluttered room like a handful of clothes. Perfect example of a similarly rooted in time and place. Any writing on the work of St. Lucian poets in the aftermath of that great tsunami that was walkered would be woefully incomplete without special mention of the contributions of John Robert Lee and Kendall Hippolyd, formidable representatives from the first generation after the laureate. Or was it? Let me begin with Robert Lee. Actually, I jumped ahead already. John Robert Lee. John Robert Lee represents one man's spiritual journey, meandering through thorny labyrinths of faith, which began long before 1975, when a young Robert witnessed his father, Alan, relishing a dessert of fresh ripe mangoes on a Sunday afternoon, and began to contemplate seriously his romance with the written word. Engulfed by greenery in his little harbor at La Caillère on the outskirts of castries where he lived. Intoxicated by night sounds from crickets and a distant high-fi, it was easy to observe and dream. Or was it? With Robert, one is never certain. I would like to believe it was a combined attack by all the senses on an inquisitive persona aroused by such things as the stale or lady's scent of righteousness that crawls from under French sotans. Or images, as he describes later in a city affair, soft candlelight settling from Mont Pleasant to Mont-de-Donne, to Mont-Fortune. Sudden scattering of fine drizzle, remembrances of yards, rooms, first loves, and evenings coming down to town. I'm acquainted with most, if not all, of Robert's earliest will, as he is, of course, of mine, in particularly poems in vocation, 1975, as we shared and critique each other in those giddy-headed days. Lines still ring in my ears with a nostalgic clarity, transporting the spirit back to a happier time when everything was pleasant, young, vibrant, and carefree. And I quote from Robert, that ritual of word and gesture, wrists uplifted, fingers plucking outwards, scratching at this altar, daring faith and hope, changing them into some clarity, again from vocation. We spent many a Saturday afternoon discussing this. Robert's journey may not be as historic as his humoric counterpart, but is a journey no less filled with its own sagas recorded at every milestone along the route, sorrowful as 14 stations of the cross, yet joyful as joyful mysteries of the Holy Rosary in Roman Catholicism. One common yet profound misstatement is to assume that Robert is just another simple Christian poet whose sole aim is to win souls for his maker. Nothing is further from the truth. Robert's faith is subsumed within his being and becomes one with his poetics. He does not expound on his faith in a loud, canonical voice like our modern-day televangelists, nor like El McGantry from Sinclair's novel of the 1920s who transformed his God into a business of extortion by proxy. Robert's tone is soft and resonant. You may accept or reject. There is no project. In his poem, Prodigal, we hear rumblings of that deep-rooted truth struggling to be whole in a world surrounded by irony, good or bad. He leaves it to us to speak for ourselves and I quote, laborer, man of earth, teach me the divining certainty within your palms that I may even now plunge down soft hands into this heart of dirt and stone to cup them firmly full around the darkening root of soil. Kendall Hippoly. Now as a writer, I approach the work of other writers, especially my contemporaries with humility and respect. This is brought with it a certain amount of reluctance to review my peers as I do not wish to ever give an air of aloofness or snobbery. It may be a personal fetish, but it has kept me away from writing objective criticism which I find necessary for the development of artists in origin and elsewhere. But this is not meant as an apology, but to explain an innate shyness that has dug me from birth. One, I am still unable to shake off. Regardless, sometimes a work emerges which allows me to summon willpower to proclaim its virtues. Here I have chosen to look at Kendall's poetry through the lens of the last work of his that I've really read over and over, Fault Lines, People Tree 2012. I have browsed through his latest collection which I had planned to publish last year by the same publisher, People Tree, but I have not read it closely enough to comment fairly. Kendall is a rare poet with the ability to stimulate all your senses at once in a single line. Like some named Comet that appears once in a lifetime, he dazzles, not with the overwhelming flair and luminescence, but with a deliberate muted brilliance that burns deep into the shadow of your soul. Kendall professes not to glorify the banalities of life around him or to adulate God's wretched of the earth to a point where living conditions is vaporized into the cosmos of synthetic metaphors and cosmetic beauty. His work, however, peeps into a world of harsh reality that acknowledges a tacit acceptance of fate.  This is what the lines shout back to me. Not knowing what to expect when you first approach poems in Fault Lines and in his other work like Islands in the Sun, Versailles II, 1980, Bearings 1986, and Night Vision 2005, you stumble on a thread stitching through the poetry, binding poems together into a cohesive hold, armed with purposeful resolve like a William Blake. Kendall stitches the spiritual and natural together in a firm bond that brings clarity to a world sometimes dazzled by shifting smoke and mirrors. I see parallels between Blake's imagery and Kendall's talk realism. These motifs have lodged in my subconscious since reading poems like Your Main Street Ends in Soweto, History, Islands, and Castries, which of course is dedicated to John Robert Lee. I want to go beyond the obvious, beyond what visuals the written line conveys to images that leapfrog into other dimensions as inner layers of thought unravel. For this, we need to be bold to stomach a sense of forbidden juxtapose against an unbridled acceptance of fate. In Blake's New Jerusalem, images of the creator's face shining on a city built on clouded hills of an English countryside among the great hogs of industry is an example of the coming together of the darkness that morphs into the light of hope and ultimately realism. This interesting amalgam is also captured by Kendall in four lines. And I quote, a place where days and days and days you only see in people you rarely know and you are ready starting to accept, believe that's how it is, that's how life goes. Well, if a city is a place just so, then this plenty shack with couple condo, jalapé, SUV, spin fast, pace low, so it comes, so it goes. The poem is the poet's medium of communicating, sometimes biographical, fictional, most times reportage. In Kendall's work, there is no crassness, no rass sayings to draw the reader, only a calm flowing melody that forces heads to nod, to nod in agreement. Our quest to harness the moment and ride into a future full of hope and promise inspires us to write. An urge to color the collective effort is our inspiration. We create with passion and poetic force that match the morbid patriotism of the colonizer. There's a timeless surge when it strikes, transforms a simple work of art into a vain component of classic dimension. It is seldom direct and often manifests in the subconscious, as would an indirect reflection in a mirror. In this abstraction, which can be considered the heart and soul of our poetry, I move into the next generation, which is the generation after, and I move on to Adrian Auger, who is quite possible, the generation bridge between writers like Dickson, Robert and Kendall, coming immediately after Walcott, and those emerging in the 90s and the new century. Adrian writes in the tradition of the Grand Line, echoes of Walcott's tale of the islands, but here the simile begins and ends in Adrian's distinctive voice. And for example, I quote from Cowan's People, Naval Spring, Naval String People Street. Sometime, something finally broke the chain of decades of feeling out of place at London's finest, of homesickness at Brixton Market, and living the illusion of West End shopping, West End window shopping, sorry. While Adrian explores the same landscape, visit the same homes met by the same people like the writers before, he does it placing his distinctive hallmark on his lines. They may read off the page like grand gestures, but cannot be denied a sense of place. And now I walk the beaches of a man in the afternoon gaze, and the pools are still clear, yet with the vacancy of lifeless eyes, the amon bears her age, her roots now in detestation of rough times. There is also modest downs, somewhat of a late bloomer, a kinder, softer son. Although from the generation immediately after Walcott, his work did not begin appearing in print until the 80s, but important enough to note here if only an account of his recording of life in his beloved South viewport. Modest poetry runs the full gamut of culture, politics, religion, place, with patriotic zeal that is indelible in Lucian, with lens focused on the Southern consciousness, unearthing the same shards Walcott plowed through two generations ago. And I quote as a sample of what modest is worth, the American rash. Without ever crossing or river banks, they young can speak like American. They down-cork and KFC, purchase ships and spaghetti like American. They shoot at each other like bales of trash. They rob banks now when they run out of cash, like American. Which brings me to the new boy on the block, Vladimir Lucian. Sound in Ground, People Tree 2014, is Vladimir's first published collection, which won him the Boca's Prize. The name Sound in Ground at first glance, evokes enigma, a mystery within a mystery, but as I read, I discover revelations. The work is not in the peppery voice of 25 poems, which was also a first collection, but it is seasoned with the same brand of spices. Once inhaled, the aroma is forever imprinted like a relic on the mind. From early, I learned to separate with a knuckle of church and school from the street, attempting to find a correlation which most times was too subtle for my tender heirs, which led me to the imagery of spices. This I discovered while waiting to board a plane at Palisades, a port in Jamaica, listening to a higgler hustle on the airline clerk about exuberant overweight prices leveled on poor people who travel aboard to make a living. Images danced in my head, all Caribbean, all spice. St. Lucia became clove. Garth, St. Thomas, Siwo came to mind. Jamaica, Pimento, sipping through the work of Roger Mayes, three novels, Barbados, Chive and Time, from Lamming in a Castle of My Skin, and in quick succession, Ghani's Pepper Pot with Wilson's Harris Palace of the Pica, all steaming together in a bouillon. These books formed the nucleus of my renaissance and built the conflict inside. On one hand, there was English literature with its high-pitched flutes and drummers, everything regimental. On the other hand, there were clean, clear voices recognizable like a mat on my doorstep. Like I hear in the work of Adrian, Modest, and Vladimir singing to me a new kind of testament. They evoke fresh feelings, the good kind. Civilizations clash, still begging to reject one and accept the other, both pulling hard, saying both, they belong, accept, accept. But there's also a third language that comes parceled with folk tales and tribal trappings. One that is not easy to shunt. In its distinctive sound, I hear in sounding ground. Between lines, it compels me to pause. Vladimir is a cross observer of his surroundings with his air to the ground, likewise Adrian and Modest. They center back and forth across between land, people, and light, which in St. Lucia creates that interesting dynamic in the language when the lambushwi erupts on tasting seawater for the first time. But back to Vladimir, unlike Walcott in his first collection 66 years before, before everything, adult suffrage, internal self-government, independence, black power, West Indian literature, and internet. When he struggled to keep the line straight, knowing in his heart, it was not his own. And remember, he had no yardstick. The only thing he had was English literature. And he came up with such lines as these. All harped hills, waves, walking like a minstrel that lied to me of joy. All leaves that were school to a learning boy. What is that any man saves? A broken blossom or a ruined rhyme. Vladimir has already acquired the freedom thanks to those who have gone before, that the young Walcott fought so valiantly to attain in order to confront his muses. And here is a line from Vladimir, a quote from Vladimir. Here somewhere near the dark pond that dons its hat of water lilies past the parcel jar. A plant waits in the patience of its stem for a man who will pay to use its leaf. Suffice it to say for now, the journey continues. Tradition lives on. And I would have ended here, quite frankly, and be quite happy. But I cannot leave out a women poets. Or women poets, although their output may seem modest in relation to the work in the public domain, they stand shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts, visiting regions of self where men were dread to go. Their understanding of relationships, landscape, and place present a unique vision that even Walcott seemed reluctant to capture with such intensity in his lifelong dissertation on people and country. Through Jane King's unique voice, one stumbles across discovery of a place through landscape locked in another country, and in so doing discovers the real self. In Intercity Dub for Jean from Performance Anxiety, People Tree, 2013, I found myself sitting next to Jane on a London train around the city. A fascinating journey with a twist. On arriving at the right destination, I realized I was in the wrong place. There is a factory blowing smoke rings across the railway line. You knew it took me time to learn that this country wasn't mine. After reading Fellow Traveler 1994, I relived all the quizziness of coming off a ferris wheel at Coney Island in George V Park around 1964 when it visited here. Weakening, lightheaded, stomach rumbling, as the poems plastered my mind with a plethora of sensations. Jane confronts us with the alternate thoughts that either we are afraid to dream or are not within the ambit of the male perspective in relation to poetry. Knuckled to the ground by such rare pieces as yellow girls, couplets, neighbors, home am I, Sahara spell, and transitions, I rise again only to double over on such pieces as stepmother and cliches for an unfaithful husband, and I don't think she's talking about Kendall, I hope not, which I feel duty bound to quote in its entirety if only to show the profundity of the poem, although brief. So, the game was worth the candle, was the candle worth the cake, now you have it and you eat it. Does it make your belly ache? In the poetry of Monica Casely, I find a softer love, maternal instincts, laid there as only a mother knows, and I'm quoting from her, my unborn child. I tried to tell you that I was coming, but you had no time to listen. Even when I knocked at your door, it was to my father you opened, and when in the aftermath of love, I held on to you, it was to my father that you clung. Hazel Simmons McDonnell, in her own homecoming, sets the stage to dispel Walcott's earlier pessimism, and I quote, that one small rock as this, one infinitesimal speck on the sea's face can spark a heart to flame with joy. In the poetry of Melania Daniel, I found intense personal moving passages where the poet bears her soul to the world, where a languorous sea wishes, washes up sympathy, offering rifts of seaweed to comfort me, where waves roll over in dying agony, groaning requins for our friendship, lost in love, drifting like flotsam, I mirrored you. Loving in an idyllic landscape that morphs into the object of her desire or rejection, and if allowed to run wild, can become a tragic obsession who storms the gates of my fantasies, who invades the territories of my dreams, saddled on my emotions, who comes riding my thoughts as Melania, mystery lover, mind-free. Patricia Turnbull is a solution writer who lives in the Virgin Islands. Her work reflects the loss of home, nostalgia, and hope for meaningful change. There is, one hopes, still standing there, a landmark that was never in this plan, left over from a simpler time wiped out, right after sea beds were exhumed to reclaim land for schemes that scattered squatters, lodging there too long. There are others, like Kamaya Lisette in the UK, and Kanissa Lubren, the latter making a name for herself in Canada. All men poets show that they approach the craft with the same dedication and zeal as their male counterparts, unperturbed by obstacles, real, or imagined. They have nothing to prove to the world, but their own unique genius, which they continue to wrap in the mantra of love of country. In them, the future is assured, though diverse, but relevant as a continuance to the dream which started on these shores in 1944. Poets writing in cruel and other forms, special mention must be made of our dub poets, like Russ Eisley, who fuse new sounds, new beats to music. Those poets who seek to return the poem to its origins, the spoken word, or through the medium of calypso, reggae, or rap, performance poetry, or spoken word poetry, which is very popular and more attractive to those who do not want to read. Many poets are dedicated to writing in cruel or mother tongue. Walscott work reflects his own obsession with cruel, and I refer to poets like George Fischalfons, Marcine Jean-Pierre, Moussa Jean-Pâtisse, Alsace Ismeral, and others. They need their own space for full attention, and for which I do not think I have the necessary competence. There's George Goverd, contemporary of Kendall-Hipplett, who only recently published his first collection in 2016. He's a talented poet, and in the walk of fame, writing both in English and Creole, and of course, the long-awaited conclusion. Oberlise are replete of stories involving the clash of creeds, and our faith has been enriched by seemingly unblemished cultures mutating into more fickle customs. But in so doing, we create new dimensions, richer and more diverse than those that have gone before, providing platforms for the innovative imagery. Perhaps it was this same sentiment which came to Walscott, and which he expressed so eloquently in his Nobel lecture, brick of ours, and the love that resembles the fragments is stronger than that love, which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. Time does not permit me latitude to delve into other labyrinths like St. Lucien prose and plays, but I make one promise to visit the scene some of the time in another manuscript, and of course, I would like then to talk very generously of the Walscott brothers as playwrights. There is hope, of course, for all of us, in the symbolism of silence, the blankness in the storm, the opacity of tropical nights. Those of us cursed with the graceful poetry must learn to wrestle with the muse, take it when she gives and follow where she leads. There is no light brighter on the page than the line that breathes. I have said a lot. Let us resolve to part in good graces by living the lion in the tall grass of the savannah, sweating flies with his tail as he peeps into the mirror of our past. The visions will not go away, just leave them alone. And I end with a few lines from Edward Braffitt's Islands, which I think is very symbolic of my lecture tonight or my talk tonight. So my island drifts, plundered by butterflies. The dog lifts his morning to heaven. Let's see up here. Thank you very much for your patience.


Charge your VR headset and get ready for some Medal of Honor above and beyond So over the top this video is sponsored by Oculus as well as Medal of Honor above and beyond We're gonna be playing some Medal of Honor above and beyond on the Oculus Quest 2 Fantastic VR system only takes a few minutes to set up and play no lighthouses or anything like that the sensors built into the headset Fantastic resolution and very very cost-effective when it comes to VR There's a link in the description if you want to check out the Oculus Quest 2 for yourself But yeah, we're gonna jump in and play some Medal of Honor the game looks amazing Honestly, it looks so wacky and I just really really love games that kind of don't limit you and what you can do and let you kind of mess Around a little bit and this looks like one of them. So yeah, let's jump in and play Let's swap out my hat for a VR headset. Oh god. We're jumping right into this I can't believe you came back for us. You saved our lives. No problem. It was a pleasure. How do you feel? Not good. Hold on. Let me reset my view It's terrifying Watch out. There's the bad guy. I give him a thumbs up. Are you guys gonna do anything or oh my god? He's in shock.  Oh here he comes. All right. Hold on one second. Hold on. Oh god. Oh my leg Oh, yeah, the german There we go. Got him. No problem Sorry Oh my god That wound looks bad. Where am I wounded? I seem fine. I think I'm faking right quick drop Oh, I can't get them both. Oh, thank you I gave him a little thumbs up there at the end. All right. Let's do this for real. Otherwise. I'm never gonna pass the intro All right. Here I go.  This is gonna super impress them like that 12 Yeah, that's right. I've given him the finger guns. Oh, I'm good at what I do, aren't I? What are you shooting at? Where did he come from? Don't point that at me. I'm sorry I'm sorry for shooting you. I surrender. Please don't hurt me. Stop it, dude.  Are you gonna operate on me? Oh my god. This is so cool. I'm ready operate.  I think I have some problems Look, I'm like a t-rex. I got little arms. Wait, it gives the thumbs up down to proceed. Uh, I understand lieutenant What did I just say no to? If the credits roll, I'm gonna be angry. I think I just quit to the main menu Yeah, I think that was just like do you want to be a hero? Do you want to go to the main menu and I said I want to go to the main menu by giving him a thumbs down? Okay, I'm back. I've changed my mind. Look He's nominated you for the medal of honor. What you did a dude fist bump. Honestly That is such a bro move and now you leave me hanging. All right. You ruined a report just like that Oh, this is the one I didn't pay attention to. Oh, yes. I'd love to yep Just doesn't say a word. That's the application process. Just yeah, I'd like to welcome to the os s sir. Yes, sir I'm ready to fight. Well, not now, but like soon Immediately just going for the gun Ah, I know you're having some trouble speaking after what happened in tunisia So let's just use hand gestures. Hey sounds good interactive exam or skip the firing range. I think I want an exam Actually, I'm curious. Can I pick up this gun to do my exam? I can hit the check boxes by shooting them Are you left or right-handed? I'm right-handed as in the right hand, which is left. I'm left-handed doctor, which is right. Yeah left is the right answer He's just like I think we should just put him to sleep splendid Now the one guy I can't kill on to the next question doc These are great questions and all but I just wanted to clarify with you I can't feel my legs like there's nothing going on down there Should I be worried? This is honestly a really cool way of setting up VR, but I'm gonna skip my check up Like any stubborn Irishman. I refuse to speak to a doctor. Everything will work out. Good luck and tally ho tally ho to you Too doc. I'm ready for a firing range. I just got a pop-up saying that I got a clean bill of health I just went in and said I'm right-handed and then left Potato I just smashed wine for no reason. Oh, I bet I could juggle in this game. Hold on It was a good try I can hear lots of people having fun. Let me find the people who are having fun. Can I use your gun sir? Jesus Christ, man Careful with that now. Now. I know what it feels like to be on the other side of that. Let me check if that's loaded for you Yeah, I think you're good Okay, they're carefully aim. Oh just slight miss There we go now. I'm getting good. I'm practicing for a maneuver. I call the human shield I'll be using this a lot. I think I love it too, but you know why it's for the ping it makes. Watch this Yeah, you hear that he loves the ping too now grab a new girl on clip. Oh, I thought he was handing it to me Okay, sorry. I thought he was being nice pretend to hurt yourself by smashing your hand on these rusty nails Pretend to hurt yourself rusty nails. What is this? Oh, I don't like this All right fine I didn't like that This is the fun part is it okay straight into the eye I want to get out of service. I'm just gonna keep doing this until you discharge me Okay, it turns out you can't die from it, but I tried my best There we go all better This is like a horrible idea But I just keep going I'm gonna end up being like a super soldier like captain america or something. Okay. I'm ready doc. I'm ready to fight Oh, yeah I forgot that part Oh, that was a bit close. What's this are these targets or people should I try and shoot them? Oh, they are targets This guy's like my god. What have you done a scoped weapon? Oh my god. I'm so nervous I missed them. All right, you live to see another day.   I'm 16. You're 16. He probably shouldn't be here I have every right to be here. He probably has more right to be here than me to be fair I killed like seven people and training alone, but he shouldn't be here. He's too young They destroyed my home. They burned my entire life to the ground. All right, harry. You're in. Okay. That's fine I I won't oppose you anymore. Don't don't use your magic on me He's a bit worried pretty sure the lieutenant isn't gonna say anything Because I can't I have some vocal cord injury from getting shot in tunisia I won't disappoint you. You've already disappointed me, but don't look at me. I'm the king of disappointment So no judgment here, buddy. All right gentlemen and milady. What's the plan? We're attacking lighthouses. It's about time They do no good for us. They're trouble. I tell you they're up to something. Look at it It just sits there menacingly.  Okay? Her first then the lighthouse starting to sound like a person who plays random lobbies among us Okay, first vote out her then lighthouses. Oh, I can pick up the lighthouse.  I'm telling you That is a bouncy lighthouse dismissed wait. He just said dismissed. I was really paying attention Do you mean I'm dismissed from like the whole army because I understand good evening? I'm the lighthouse man from before remember. Do you remember me? I sorry? I don't really know anything about personal space I'm just trying my best to get dismissed honestly just by being the most flawed human to ever exist. What's this? Oh, that is so cool. I can go Oh That is amazing This one's cool, too Everyone in there. I hope this is soundproof If your knife ever gets uh-oh I wanted the knife I found the lighthouse again the knife can be twirled and tossed between hands Wait, it can be twirled and tossed between hands Oh I'm good at this. Okay. I'm taking the knife for sure. I would like the knife. You've sold me lever action repeater Oh, yes. I feel like a cowboy with this. This is mine. Apparently it's a family heirloom family heirloom Well, it's mine now. What's this type with explosives Is a small bomb Oh my god, that was way too close. Am I pointing this the right way or hold on Oh, that is cool. I want that too. I want everything. Oh my god. This is awesome I'm so glad these people were drafted to be targets. It really really prepares you for what's to come I appreciate that you dress them up as germans, too.  I'll continue the campaign. I've got this glow of red Do you any syringes for me to use? Just just to feel a little better. I just need my fix. Oh, what is this? I found cool thing. Oh, it's not hooked up. Oh, wait. It's for the light. Okay. At least I know how to use it now I found a lighter. Awesome. I love fire. Okay. I'm ready. I'm ready for the campaign. Let's do this Oh, just the boys, huh out on a trip on the open sea Oh, I spotted the enemy gentlemen. Take him out. Keep an eye on the lighthouse. Yeah, I'm watching it If it moves I'm taking it out. Ah, it's attacking it. Oh, wait. We've won. Yes, America It must be so pissed off with me. It was worth it to take out that lighthouse sarge Oh, no. Oh, no. No, I don't want to check myself. Yes. Die. You will never build this lighthouse again I'll stay here till the end of time if I have to I found a jug to fight with Oh my god Take that germans That's right. I'm a super soldier. I've injected myself like 20 times. You will never beat me. Okay.  I'm coming To be terrified. You wonder the americano. Did you? There you go.   They must have shot at their teammates a lot too. Is there someone out here? I think there is. Yeah, there is hold on. I'll be right with you Did I get you?  Oh, no, hold on. Hold on. No.   Wait. Oh god. I've got no ammo.  I think we're good. Are we I don't see any germans or lighthouses in sight Great job, lieutenant. Thank you and the lighthouse is gone too. The no says the nazis have a code book in there Okay, I'll look for some codes. Oh There were some melee weapons I could have used. Oh god. I can't read It's not the fact that it's in german. I'm just like I can't read Secret base. Okay. Well, luckily we had someone on the team who could figure out those weird symbols All right, I'm hoping that says something about their their hideout or something as I said I can't read But hopefully they figured out those codes from that book. You look so sad sarge. What's wrong? What's the matter with you? Is it the war that's got you down sarge? Is that it? I understand It's been heard on all of us sarge. Does anyone want to eat those potatoes by the way? Is it? Okay, we can all right. That's fine. I just said I'd ask like I didn't want to go to waste Why are you all staring at me? Why are you waiting for me to make decisions? Oh, this is so uncomfortable. I'm sorry But do I have my gun? No, I'll for f*** sake stop looking at me. I'm anxious Would you stop take increase in the radio? I saw you look in there You're staring at me until I looked at you and then you looked away. Is he a high ranking german worse He's french. Oh no Oh Sorry, I'm not really up to speed on your uh cultural norms. This man is the praveti incarnate What was on that picture?  He's just gonna get picture flashbacks to that thing He looks so uncomfortable. Okay. This is not ambush, but I need to clear out the checkpoint Um, can I come up behind them and like karate chop them both or something? Uh-oh Please explode. Oh my god. He kicked it away.  All right precision this time I missed missed again got him got him. There we go Oh, no, like they're really good back in business not quite Okay, so far so good. I don't know why I attacked him without any cover, but there you go That's me in a nutshell not thinking Okay, well, that's not that wasn't too bad. There wasn't many of them. It was just tough But I kind of like that. What are we playing guys character soul? What is this game? Is it your own creation? It better not be stacked in your favor. I got this little fella I'll end the game pretty quick Okay, that's fine. Anyway back to the game monopoly kind of game. Is it let me win hand over the dark blue squares All right. All right, you win you win. Where do you want the dynamite me? I'll hold the dynamite All right, I have to decide where to put it the bridge, of course Excellent choice. It is it's never blow up the bridge. The supply line will be ruined before we know it The whole town will be out of supplies of board games and this will be the only option place ollie Oh, this is you. Hold on. I'm gonna place you over here I'm on it. Yeah, good luck Uh juliet, you're gonna go right here. You're gonna be like right next to the bomb You're gonna stop them.  I'm thinking we fix up this farm start little ranch and go from there Wait, I just realized that's the tractor. Where did he run to? All right, you know what? I'm gonna put you On the bridge. We're gonna explode. There you go. Good work. Thank you very much. Okay.  She's where I told her he's by the tractor ollie's off in the woodland somewhere Very good everyone you listen to me. Trust me when I say that's a big mistake. All right. I got my grade How did you hear that? Oh Did I do it? I think I did it was that little old me Of course, I picked the treehouse for my own place. Wait. Oh, that's my teammate. I think sorry. Sorry But yeah, of course, I picked the treehouse for myself Looks amazing up here convoy defeated. Good job everyone Oh my god, how many bottles did you have in there? Dude, you're not supposed to be here You're supposed to be way up in the mountains get out of here Shankolabo. Dude, it's okay. We're playing good cop bad cop. I'm the good cop believe it or not So be careful with these people. He doesn't know anything See this buddy. It's a truth serum. It doesn't work as intended.    I'm sorry I just I try my best sometimes but it doesn't always work out and honestly makes me feel a little bad Oh god, this truth serum did work after all Oh, he wanted another drink Oh, are we sure this guy's german and not irish train sabotage. We're gonna blow up a train Oh, I want that lever action rifle now. It would have been so cool. We would have been like cowboys I need to look like I bravely escaped. Oh, I'll punch you. Can I do it?  Absolutely terrified. That is so scary when I got that close. All right, you ready? I'm gonna walk what? Oh, I didn't get to punch him. I gave him a little tap. I gave him a little tickle on the cheek Okay, let's fall back. I want to see I want to see the explosion too late Oh Okay, all right, nothing to see here everyone. Good lord. Okay, nothing to see Everyone just go back to your houses. Do you think anyone heard us? Okay, now we got to defeat the surviving nazis.   Yeah, he's dead. None of you better be faking. You all better be actually dead What's this? What were you reading propaganda? I'll keep that for later Ah, I found you. I knew there'd be some of you cowering back here. You know why?  Where's the scout tank? Oh Jesus the scout tank found me Oh, this is the thing that raced ahead earlier. I'm just confused. Oh god, please hit. I think I missed. Oh jesus Did I get it? Oh jesus great shot. Did I get it? Yes? Just in time. Oh my god. Oh hit me direct on I Got it.  Do I need to get another one? Oh god, dammit. Okay, that was close. I can do it this time. Is that a hat could I wear this hat? I'm wearing the hat. Okay. Now I'm safe. Okay in between shots Did I get it? Thank you Oh god, I don't know if I have more hits. I think I've won Yes, we did it. Yes America I am a liability, but you know what? I think I'll give myself a promotion. Can I take off the hat? Okay, how do I take off the hat? I want a new hat. I've earned this. Yes. Now. I'm the train driver Hey guys, I really threw a spanner into the mix there, didn't I? Just a little war humor You see my hat. By the way, I promoted myself. Oh, I see someone else punched you in the meantime Probably a good idea since I just gave him a little tickle We need more resistance members, but that's much easier said than done I know who we could get. What? Don't say me. They're crazy. Oh god, they are talking about me, aren't they? The vino brothers The vino brothers Wait the vino brothers. Okay. They're not talking about me. All right Well, if you're gonna use the vino brothers and you're not making me the center of attention, I'm leaving I just leave the country. Good day to you. All right, that's it. I'm out. I'm out of the army I hope you enjoyed the video. I know I did a really really fun game has my seal of approval Thank you again, Oculus for the sponsor. Genuinely love the headset I didn't use any other VR headset after I got my quest and I still have two other ones But since I got this, this is my one of choice for sure. I highly recommend it Thank you so much Oculus for the sponsor link in the description if you want to check out the headset And that's about it folks. Thank you very much for watching. I hope you enjoyed and I hope to see you next time Bye for now


This paper presents a technique for assessing the predictive uncertainty of rainfall runoff and hydraulic forecasts. It uses quantile regression to condition forecast uncertainty on the forecasted value itself, based on retrospective hind casts of water level forecasts and forecast errors. This allows us to estimate the probability distribution of forecast errors given the forecasted water levels. We tested this technique with data from various catchments in England and Wales and found it to be effective and robust.


We love you.  I mean, I don't either. This is another review! we watched Oh, the boon job. Oh, the boon job, so I'm gonna get into it again. Which has been very requested for us to watch. Directed by, say, his name for me please. Abhishek Charlie. He was the associate director on the McBool and the Othello one. He helped with those. Yeah, he helped with both of those. Which we have yet to see, but we're gonna see there at the top of the list, like anything else. Yes. Shahid Kapoor. Shahid. We're trying to make sure we pronounce it right, because we don't want mispronunciation, like... What's the other word? Shahid or Shahid. Or Shahid or Shahid. Sincerely, the accentuation and if it's Shahid or Shahid, so... Yes, please. Please, it's important to us. And obviously... We are Karina Kapoor as well. And Karina Kapoor, who we were first introduced to in Three Idiots. Yes. And so this film, you wanna read these? Sure. Sorry for me. It's a story that revolves around drug abuse. My son's son. I never got that. I know. Well, and I say it's a story that revolves around drug abuse. Fun for the whole family. I'm gonna read it that way. A story that revolves around drug abuse and the affluent North Indian state of Punjab and how the youth there have succumbed to it en masse, resulting in a socio-economic decline. It's way too uplifting. Exactly. Good times. So, yeah, this film, spoiler, obviously we're not doing a non-spoiler review. Our reviews are almost always gonna be spoilers, so if you haven't seen this, go watch it, then come back. Goodbye. This had one of my favorite openings of any film, honestly, I think, ever. Yeah, it was great. I loved the opening of this movie. It was epic. Because it just... It was like... It was just introduced to Tommy. Yeah. And he's just doing his thing on stage. Yeah. And it really helped. I'm glad we got to see this after we'd seen Hater. Yes. Because there's a level of insanity that we saw him in and edginess and unpredictability that you don't get whatsoever in Padmabat. Oh, no, no. I mean, he is just chill and so composed, which is very similar to the way... Like, that's how we were first introduced to him, was in Padmabat. And the same way we got Ran Veer in Gully Boy. And both these guys are crazy. And his support was in Gully Boy. No, no, no. Veer was in Gully Boy. That's what we were introduced to him. Exactly. You've been confused before. Exactly. Because we said Ran Veer and Ran Veer, and you're like, you guys don't know who you're talking about. But we were introduced to this actor as a really mellow, stoic dude. But we've now gotten to know him like we did Ran Veer. These two guys are firecrackers who are maniacs. The opening was, it was so good. Tommy was just doing his thing on stage. And the song they were trying to create in this dude, something about his cock.  Oh, I was dying. I was too. And then like anytime something bad happened, his girlfriend started laughing. Yeah, she was great. Like it just cracked me up so much. The amount, because I had no idea how funny this film would be. Me too. Like no clue. Especially with the dark subject matter. Which it needed to lighten it up. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's an awful subject matter. It's awful subject matter. And it, but I... A tragic subject matter. Yes. Yeah. On multiple levels. Especially starting with our second lead in Alia Bhatt. Her story, so freaking heartbreaking. Yeah. It just made me mad. Hard to watch man. Yeah. Hard to watch. It's hard to watch any film where they do that to a girl. Any film. But because I've got such an emotional attachment to Alia now after having seen her in different things. I was literally having a visceral moment of don't do that to Alia. You know? And it added to the level of impact of watching this character go through what she was going through. The fact that she's this innocent person and she was poor and then she was like, I'm gonna just sell this and then she gets... Like when they abduct her for the first time?  Bastards. Bastards. So it was just incredibly difficult. But Alia played it was amazing. The way she played it was so...  Yeah. First we're the kind of woman that's honest. Yes. She just was honest. She didn't try to play a druggy. She just... Which those are hard things to do because most actors I know yours truly included. If I had to play somebody who strung out on heroin no way I'm gonna take heroin to figure that out. So you've got to leave it to the imagination. You've got to study and you have to use whatever you can to try and replicate that. I'm sure she did a lot of homework. It shows. I mean, she did a lot of homework to be a realistic junkie. And the same thing with him.  Yeah. That's not an easy... Those are some things that are hard to portray realistically especially my thought would be as an actor I've got to do this well enough that anybody who's ever been strung out on heroin or coke has to believe me all the time or I blew it. So I've never been strung out on heroin or coke. Thank God. I thought they were beautiful. Both of them. They for me actually were better than the film and I liked the film but I felt that their performances stood out even above the story. What did you like about the film? There were a couple of times and again, I liked the film. There were a couple of times where the message of the film became a little bit heavy handed in the proselytizing in the social message it was trying to send a little bit in a couple of spots for me. Where? The specificity would be in moments in the first half of the film really. In the first half of the film, particularly when we were with Karina and the guy who plays another cop named Sartaj. Yes. Right? Yeah. There were moments of wanting the viewer to recognize the tragedy almost like a don't say no to drugs thing and that for me kind of pulled me away. I wanted to stick strictly to the personal storylines. I know what the filmmaker had to do to try to convey to us that this is a legit problem in this location in the same way that Mexico has its issues. It just told it to me more than it showed it to me at times and that that's my only critique of the film that I didn't like. As a whole of the film, I thought the film was extremely good. I didn't love the film. This wasn't one of those that I'm like putting it way at the top of my list.  Did it in India? Well, one thing that was clearly obvious when he's on stage and he whips it out was clearly they had to... They held back on that. I mean they didn't even show him from the waist up. That was just at his head. Yeah, and so a lot of people said that they had to taunt this movie to be able to watch it. So a lot of people said that messaged me on Instagram when I showed them that I was watching it. They said, yeah, we had to watch this through the taunts because it got so many... It had such controversy. Interesting. I don't know what the controversy would be. Would this be on the level for... Because I know India's censorship for their films is way stricter than the rating system here. Oh, yeah. And would this be on the same level of say, like, Wolf of Wall Street got a lot of buzz for how graphic and raw it was. That it was almost NC17. If you're not familiar with that rating, that's one that people don't even make NC17s anymore. But it's above rated R. And I wonder if it was that kind of controversy where it was like borderline, this film can't even be seen based on the rating system and the censorship board? I don't know, maybe. But that's what a lot of them called us. But I thought this film was absolutely... I loved every second of it. I was in it. And I love this character of Tommy. The two of them for me, taking nothing away from Karina's character, who's the actor who plays Sartaj? Oh. Because they were both extremely solid. Dejit. Is that it? Dejit. D'Sanji. Yeah. I'm close, I hope. Very solid. I knew it was coming, by the way. When she arrived and his little brother's freaking out after she had said let's have coffee, the minute she showed up, I said out loud, she's dead. Yeah. Yeah. I figured they would do something like that. She's dead. But the Shahid... Yeah, Shahid could work. I don't know if that's how you say it. I'm just questioning whether that's how you say it. I know. I thought his performance was amazing. I loved every second of it. And it was so interesting and different and I thought he played it really well. And I thought the director did really well in terms of... So many funny scenes. Just laugh out loud because when him and Aliya are locking eyes and they're about to... and then people just start coming and beating him. Yeah. They're looking at him. Yeah. Just shots like that make me laugh so much. You're so macabre. I am. The only issue I had with this film and it wasn't right away. When the end happened, I was like, yes. Yeah, all the shooting and the murder and the death. Yeah, and then it was just... The end was Shahid Kapoor running and he's like, at least give me your name. Right. And then it was, I think, his nephew crying or something like that. No, it was Sartaj's little brother. They're looking at each other. They're looking at each other. Yeah. And it just ends with him crying. It sounds like he's crying. I was like, yes. Yeah, because he didn't wrap it up in a bow. It is amazing. I agree. But then if you kept the screen on, it finished it. At the end of the credits? Not in the mid-credit. Oh. Really? Yeah. I missed that. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't up in a bow or anything like that, but you saw Shahid Kapoor and Ali Bhatt in Goa Goa down the beach. Oh. And so it's basically like they're dating now. Oh.  I would prefer to not know whether they actually thought together. Me too. She just ran away. Yeah, give me three billboards ending. Yeah, I prefer those types of things, but that's the only critique really. Every other part of this film I really enjoyed. Yeah, and my only critique was the moments where it felt like a just say no campaign. And there was only a few of them. Yeah. And it was at the first half. But still, I think, and I've watched, it's hard not to watch a film like this and compare it to other films we've seen with people who are strung out. Like Robert Downey Jr., early in his career, forgot the name of the film, but he plays a druggy. And there's been a lot of films here that we're exposed to in America Cinema that tell you the story of people who have been strung out. And they're pretty, I mean, some of them are just downright hard to watch.  There was a bit of that, you know, don't do drugs kind of thing that was just too much for me. And I felt their performances, those two, were, that's the reason to watch the film for me, not necessarily the story. Although I will say it did evoke in me a desire to want to know. We had no idea about anything going on with, like when we started watching sacred games, we were like, is there really, if there's got to be this corruption element in politics connected to the mafia and everything else, same thing with Gangs of Wasiper, didn't know there was this big of a problem of drugs in this region comparable to Mexico. And that they didn't want to become a Mexico, because Mexico is rough, lots of parts to say the least. But yeah, if you haven't seen Sicario, that'll give you a taste of what things were like in Mexico. Yeah, and also I want to talk about the makeup. I thought the makeup was really good. I'm glad you brought that up. They made Alia look so different.  The makeup on her to make her look like that girl who's been working outside and just make her look so different and her journey through the drugs, as well as his, some baggy-eyed moments and some other.  Awesome. And then the other person, the guy who gets shot and then the blood just starts to flow out, those are hard to make realistic. I thought the makeup in this was top notch. Top notch. I love the ending where everybody just kind of... Oh, it was Tarantino asked. I know, I loved it. It made me so happy. I did too. But also, one last thing I want to say is that this is one of my favorite scores for any film. Absolutely agree. This was an amazing score. A fantastic score. Mostly songs you could put on your place and work out to. Yeah, fantastic score. And believable the whole time, except for those moments for me where it got kind of, don't do drugs, messaging, it was very believable. Alia has the capacity to portray cathartic moments emotionally. She had to have been exhausted doing this. Oh, yeah. The amount she cried. Yeah.  It's like... I'd love to hear them talk about portrayals and what it just did to them emotionally. Tough heads physically. Tough heads face to be in. To be in. But, yeah, his character, this is probably the character I'm most suited to play. If, like, if you could say, what could you play? Oh, yeah. This is probably the character I could play. 100%. Almost right now. You could step into it. Like, if someone wanted to do a version of this, and just, like, make an American... And I would love to do it. Because this is an amazing character. Yup, I love it so much. And I love Shahid Kapoor. Yup. He is quickly becoming one of my favorites. And the great thing about him is his acting, like most everybody that we've seen that we like, this is an easy role to screw up. Oh, yeah. Really easy role to screw up. Because you could step into this role and just show people what this is. He had to personalize this stuff. And he did. I believed him 100... That was one of my favorite moments for him was when he can't go on stage. Because he's not... He's not up on anything, right? And he's like, I'm gonna have to go perform not high for the first time. And I don't want to, like, do this. And it's a brother, as it were, who throws on the... And he's having great direction in that scene, too. The little flashback of him shooting and then looking in the toilet. And he has that revelation. First it's the shooting and he throws the cocaine away. And then he... I am the... What is it? A goo... Dang it. It means, like, Mr. Father. Yeah, I'm the man. That's basically what he's saying. I'm the man.  Yeah, that was... I was inexecuted. I was like, what? Yeah. They're just both such honest... The scenes, especially with Alia and Shade, are so good. I want to see more of their work together. Like, when they were... When they were met each other, wherever they were, when he was running away from the concert. Right. And he met Alia for the first time. Yup, for the first time. He said, let me hide. Yeah. That whole scene was brilliant. Brilliant. Up to... Especially when they started coming and beating them and she was beating up on them. Yeah. But they knocked her away. And then... Yeah. I loved this movie. Beautiful work. I thought it was an amazing movie. Beautiful work. Thank you so much. Yeah. Any recommendations? Yep. And let us know what we should watch from here next.