In search of the sea
No Back Door by Mervyn Taylor, 2010, Shearsman Books, pp. 90 Hew Locke, 'For those in peril on the sea'. Photo by Sam Millen. "SEA have no back door,” warns the father-figure in the titular poem of Trinidadian Mervyn Taylor’s latest book No Back Door . The closing lines of the poem, with their complex comparative analysis of two lives and generations, are a haunting invocation of loss, memory and even bittersweet joy: Sea have no back door, he said, putting on his pyjamas and going to bed. All night I could feel the waves coming in. Taylor’s book, which was awarded the 2011 Paterson Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, is a continuation of many of the themes of the poet’s earlier work (which includes Gone Away and The Goat ). It is a potent examination of contemporary Trinidad life, of migration and of the spaces in between and beyond. Death, loss, aging and illness ...