Poet Toi Derricotte was on campus last week for a day of workshops and a reading, organized by several of my dear colleagues. The reading kicked off with introductions by Shirley Moody-Turner (who had driven over from her postdoc at Rutgers just for the occasion) and Robin Becker.
One of the poems Toi read was this piece about the El Mina slave fortress, which I had visited on my trip to Ghana:
The Tour
The castle, always on an
outcrop of indifference;
human shells,
the discards on the way.
Where our mothers were held, we walk now
as tourists, looking for cokes, film, the bathroom.
A few steps beyond the brutalization, we
stand in the sun:
This area for tourists only.
Our very presence an ironic
point of interest to our guide.
[This is the "gate of no return" at El Mina.]
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