Last Friday evening, Bobby’s – the Kingstown Sports bar, exploded with poetry giving patrons an event to remember for a very long time. The opening act was local visual artist/poet Tari who set the pace with his usual fiery and satirical pieces.

Jason J’Lyric Brown, one of the organizers of the event did some freestyle rapping, as the audience calls the topics, he rapped, bringing humour and driving the audience wild with his wit, timing and delivery. Not to be outdone was Jamal Delpeche of the Black Seed duo; he dropped some conscious lyrics hip-hop style to the delight of the modest crowd who showed their appreciation with big applause.{{more}}

Annette Nias of Barbados was quite refreshing, her fist piece ‘Mosaic’ charted her country’s independence while her second piece dealt with Crop Over and some of the negatives associated with it.

Open mike was announced by the host ‘JP’ Schwon Peters and members of the audience came up and did their thing: Fidel Neverson read the first poem he has ever written “The original man” while his wife KeKe O’Loun came down with “I am an African”. Tari came back this time reading two pieces by Carden Michael: “Don’t sell out” and “My ass”; both pieces are from Michael’s two books “Vision from a distance” and “GOD, The triumphant Revolutionary”.

The next major act, Adrian Green of Barbados was captivating, a true master at his craft even though he told SEARCHLIGHT that he had only been doing it for five years and it was his first time performing out of his homeland. His lyrics were serious and humourous as he chanted “Sleng it like it hot on D head of D bigger heads and knuckle heads who feel dem run D spot”.

All the way from the United States, Ghanaian born spoken word artist Heru held the audience under his spell with his deliveries about black consciousness, upliftment and redemption. In his singsong style he did “Rotten to the core”, “Hush Hush” this piece was about the Bush Administration, “Goddess of the perfect black” celebrating the divinity of the black woman in her warrior sprit.

At the end of his performance Heru lectured the audience about certain myths about the black race and the achievements of black people throughout time.

When asked about his views on Christianity, he told SEARCHLIGHT “Every group of people need to see divinity in themselves and black people not seeing it by worshipping a white savior.

“This disqualifies us from being taken seriously as a people who believe in themselves”.