EVEN before we see it, we learn of it. It is endless, we are...
EVEN before we see it, we learn of it. It is endless, we are told. The largest asphalt lake on the planet, its pitch goes all over the world. Some say it has been used to pave the road in front of Buckingham Palace; others the tarmac at La Guardia Airport in New York. What better symbol was available to me when the time came to title my third book of poems, a book that places Trinidad at the rim of a bristling world? Everybody in Trinidad learns about the Pitch Lake in school. But few Trinis actually set foot on its strange surface; see its swathes of tar, water and mud; bathe among the lilies in its sulphur ponds; witness its effulgent discharges. Somehow we don’t need to. We have an idea of it in our mind, just as things we have never experienced can inhabit us powerfully.
- from an essay on the Pitch Lake and the genesis of my third book of poems, published in the Sunday Newsday of April 9th, 2017. http://www.newsday.co.tt/features/0,242125.html
