Review of BURDEN OF SOLACE, Poems by Teneice Durrant Delgado

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.