Between the long title poem and the other poems in the collection, Michael Gilkes sets up a dialogue about the nature of memory and the meaning of experience across time. "Joanstown" is the re-creation, in the voice of a younger self speaking with all the intensity of first love, of the interweaving of person and place (the more elegant gracious Georgetown of the 1940s, with its "cross-stitching" of avenues, bridges, canals), and of a marriage whose seeming perfection leads to hubris. The very concreteness of the re-creation of a time when happiness came so easily is made the more moving for the reader by the framing awareness of its evanescence. The other poems in the collection, in the voice of maturity with all the consciousness of loss as a constant of life, explore the nature of memory as consolation.
Author Biography: Michael Gilkes is a distinguished Caribbean critic, dramatist, and lecturer who has lectured widely in the Caribbean and the United States, and his first collection of poetry will arouse interest among the many followers of his critical writing. His work includes books on Wilson Harris and the Caribbean novel and a play,
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. Born in Guyana in 1935, he taught at the University of Guyana and the University of the West Indies in Barbados for many years. He has recently been a Quillian visiting professor at Randolph-Macon Women's College. He currently lives in Bermuda.