Public Reading "Kumina Queen" (Jamaica)

This event will be held in English / Cette lecture-rencontre se tiendra en anglais.

Award-Winning Jamaican Poet Monica Minott shares from her latest collection ‘Kumina Queen’

Monica Minott’s host of witnesses are women who are collectively grounded in ritual and spiritual understanding, practical, sensible – though, like all of us, flawed in their humanity.

Monica Minott will be reading from her recently launched full length collection of Poetry titled ‘Kumina Queen’. This is Monica Minott’s first reading in Europe and we are pleased to have the Jamaican Poet exploring concepts such as Womanhood, the retention of African Heritage in the Caribbean, and Caribbean Life through her poetry here in Brussels, Belgium. Join us for what promises to be a fun, though provoking and meaningful cultural experience!

Praise for this Collection ‘Kumina Queen’

“One of the striking areas of interest is the poet’s imaginative projection of the African heritage of Jamaicans, and, in this regard, her subtle use of folk beliefs and idiom.” - Edward Baugh, author of Black Sand: New and Selected Poems

“Monica Minott’s Kumina Queen carries forward personal and ancestral memories line by line, song after song; here are poems that define and celebrate the contours of a life and the force of a people joyously bound together between earth and sky.” - Major Jackson, author of Holding Company and Roll Deep.

“Cultural inheritance is a recurrent feature in this rich collection. The title poem presents a persona “schooled in containment” who wishes to skip over generations keeping her in, and “dance the dance” of an earlier ancestor. Celebrating the range of Jamaican language (English, patois and various combinations), the poems explore “an ache coded / in the bloodline”; they often refer to family and female figures in African Jamaican history or legend (such as Nanny and River Mumma) who have confronted challenges. - Mervyn Morris, author of I been there, sort of: New and Selected Poems

A participation of 3 euros will be asked at the entrance. Free access with our membership card*.

*Membership card of Mondocultures Association is purchasable at the entrance of each event. For the cost of 10 euros per year, it offers many discounts and free entrances to our events. More info : [email protected]