Exploring Personal and Collective Paradises in Poetry

How do you hold onto hope? And who helped you find it? 

This poem is about holding onto paradise in the midst of an environment that seeks to steal or quash it. Roger Robinson praises his grandmother who told him to “carry it always / on my person, concealed.” His deft language helps us understand that paradise is a quality of life; and, even deeper than that, paradise is your life.

Roger Robinson is a writer and performer who lives between London and Trinidad. His first full poetry collection, The Butterfly Hotel, was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize, and his latest book is A Portable Paradise. He is a co-founder of both Spoke Lab and the international writing collective Malika’s Kitchen.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.