Back to black
Posted: July 26th, 2011 | Author: lise | Filed under: Column, Poetry | Tags: Amy Winehouse, Back to Black, Caribbean, elegy, Grenada, Lisa Allen-Agostini, literature, poem, Trinidad & Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago | 3 Comments »
Amy Winehouse. Photo by nuflicks/Flickr Creative Commons License
On Saturday I was in a sailing boat in St George’s, Grenada, getting ready to cast off when the skipper announced that Amy Winehouse had been found dead.
I’ve never met Amy Winehouse. I’m not a musician. I’m not British or anything even remotely connected to her. I only discovered her music about three years ago and, honestly, there were people who were more ardent fans. I do know, however, that hearing the news of her death made me deeply sad. She was an epic talent, writing songs that cut sharply into the pain of love and loving and singing them in a voice that wrung each drop of that pain from the poignant lyrics, the voice that her friend Russell Brand described as having “rolling, wondrous resonance”. I often put what I consider to be her best song, “Back to Black”, on repeat, feeling the music just probing my own pain the way a tongue will probe an aching tooth, flinching from the agony but going back for more and more of it.
I was in Grenada on assignment –I might not be able to make rent every month, so to speak, but I do have a fantastic career that lets me do things like that sometimes. My assignment called for me to experience Grenada’s beauty, and I had my morning tea on a balcony overlooking the two-mile stretch of white sand that is Grand Anse Beach. I had woken up Sunday morning with Amy on my mind and I wrote this poem in her memory.
Back to black
Sunspills on Grand Anse
White sand, white surf
Sad for her
Drunken life and death
Foreseen in black songs
Drowning in sorrows
Sunspills on Grand Anse
The surf washes over me
My heart beats
In tune to white
Black songs unsung
I go snorkeling
But there are nights, o Amy
I am you
Scarred and scared
Learning from Mr Hathaway