Level Vibes spotlights the relationship between Scotland and Jamaica through the creativity of Jamaican poets. The poetry library reached out to Jamaican artist Fabian Thomas to curate the commissions, and to also contribute a poem of his own. Further down this page you will find links to the individual poems, which also include video recordings.
Level Vibes is welcomed by Angus Robertson MSP, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture:
Our celebrated national poet Robert Burns had bought passage to work on a Jamaican plantation on three occasions but did not travel. This topic has been explored in recent times by visual artists Graham Fagen (The Slave’s Lament) and Douglas Gordon (Black Burns), and by poet Shara McCallum in her collection No Ruined Stone.
To provide further context to Level Vibes, we invited scholars to examine Burns’s attitudes to slavery and Scotland’s connections with Jamaica during the lifetime of the poet – a time of revolutions in France and the American colonies, and the birth of the abolition of slavery campaign. You can read these articles by Dr Clark McGinn, Dr Stephen Mullen and Professor Gerard Caruthers below.
Jamaica is recovering from the damage wrought by Hurricane Melissa . You can donate to the relief campaign at Hurricane Melissa Relief: Rebuilding Lives. Restoring Hope.
