Review of BURDEN OF SOLACE, Poems by Teneice Durrant
Delgado, chapbook, Cervena Barva Press, PO Box 440357, W. Somerville,
MA 02144,
www.cervenabarvapress.com,
2012, $7.
Review by Barbara Bialick, author of TIME LEAVES
Like Cervena Barva Press is often known for, Teneice Durrant
Delgado’s new chapbook, BURDEN OF SOLACE, is a disturbing eye-opener at yet
another human miscarriage of justice—the slavery trade in young Irish women, on
the same boat with the black slave trade, all used to harvest sugar and breed
mulatto slaves in Barbados,
in the Caribbean. She quotes a statement paper from London in
1742 which called it, “…a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who
desired men and boys for their bondsmen and women and Irish girls…to solace
them…”
In the compressed space of 10 poems, Delgado gives us an
ugly picture of “forced emigration to hell or Barbados…” (“Mary Margaret”) In the poem about “Anne Glover”, the girl is
told “…If you stop bleeding, she said, in Irish, forbidden, don’t ever let
yourself love that child./Don’t/you ever think that child yours…” In the turmoil, “her work-bent fingers worry
over imaginary rosaries for three/long days…”
Teniece Durant Delgado, of Dayton, Ohio
has published in literary magazines and has published two other chapbooks: FLAME ABOVE FLAME and THE GOLDILOCKS
COMPLEX. She is pursuing a degree in
Community Counseling at the University
of Dayton. She is also
co-founder and poetry editor for BLOOD LOTUS: AN ONLINE LITERARY JOURNAL and
publisher and managing editor for Winged City Press Chapbooks and is on the
editorial board for New Sins Press. She has an MFA from Spalding University’s
Low Residency program.
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