Anguilla’s Clinical Psychologist, Dr O M Linda Banks, has had the good fortune to have one of her poems – “Heritage” – selected by the BBC to represent poetry from the island at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this summer.
“This was the result of my response to a request from the BBC, itself, and also via the Underground Poetry Club, of which I am a member,” Dr Banks explained. She was interviewed on Tuesday, April 1, by a BBC reporter, Mark Rickards, during which she also read her poem.
The special programme for which she was interviewed is called “BBC Commonwealth Poetry Postcards”.
In a letter to Dr Banks, the BBC said in part: “The interview and reading will be for initial broadcast on all BBC Public Services along with possible broadcast by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Partners during the period surrounding the Commonwealth 2014 Games in Glasgow this summer.
“We would also like to use a text version of the poem on the BBC website and we would also like to print postcards with the poem text on the front of the postcard to be given to visitors of the BBC during the Commonwealth Games. A larger version of these postcards will also be exhibited to visitors as posters of the BBC Scotland headquarters in Glasgow.”
As a Clinical Psychologist, Dr Banks is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Saint James School of Medicine in Anguilla and a private Human Resource Development Consultant. She also owns a private media company, Sunshine Lay Professional Services.
Dr Bank’s poem is published below.
HERITAGE
They will try to denigrate and underestimate
The very essence of what makes you great;
Don’t let them.
They will proselytize and criticize
To immobilize the genius in your eyes
Ignore them.
They will wheel and deal and steal your dreams
With their green backed schemes
Expose them.
They will seductively brainwash with globalized technology
Marginalizing family, traditions and our society
It’s high time that we
Push back against them
Don’t be so oblivious to what’s becoming quite obvious
We’re slipping, sliding slowly without fuss,
to the back of the bus
Our nation needs us
to remind them of plantation days…
Tourism phase can easily take its place
So as we share the space
Our forebears fought to make our base
Without excuses or abuses
But with dignity and grace
Safeguard our heritage always
To honour them.
Oluwakemi M Linda Banks, PhD, 2013
