Sarah Beckett, British-born, European-educated, Caribbean artist, poet and film-maker, belongs to a tribe I privately think of as the cascadura set—named after the fable told by Sam Selvon in one of his short stories when a woman feeds her foreign lover local cascadura fish which prevents him from ever leaving these islands.
We, I, every immigrant who has arrived here and simply never left, are more lover than family to these islands. The idea of going back becomes a nostalgia we live with. But small things shoot into our bloodstream, stay in our hearts—the line of immortelle trees, the heart-stopping poui, the nuances of the language—a biting, affectionate humour, the picong which makes no one a stranger.
A man, love, her Trinidadian husband brought Sarah here as a bride. He is back in Europe but she’s still here digging foundations—teaching at UWI, exhibiting at Carifesta, designing for the Notting Hill Carnival, exhibiting her experience of the Caribbean—from the walls of the Trinidad Oval cricket grounds and the Hyatt Hotel to the US, Europe, the Far East.
