Looking for Cazabon By Lawrence Scott

Papillote People’s Press announces the forthcoming publication of Lawrence Scott’s first poetry collection, Looking for Cazabon. Lawrence Scott returns in his reflections to the watercolours and the sites of the 19th-century Trinidadian artist Michel Jean Cazabon, the subject of his novel, Light Falling on Bamboo. Beautifully crafted, these highly regarded poems, mostly sonnets, celebrate the landscape of Trinidad and revisit loves and friendships while evoking both the historical and contemporary violence of its society.

“A very rich, evocative collection, full of wonderment, relishing landscape and language, and really well ordered and structured. I particularly love the more personal poems of love and friendship.” Mimi Khalvati, co-founder of The Poetry School. Awarded the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, 2023, her latest collection is Afterwardness.

“Lawrence Scott succeeds in the very difficult task of extending ekphrasis into the realm of artistic fabulation. In doing so he presents these poems which are as mystical, intimate and fragile as any Cazabon painting. A joy to read.” Roger Robinson, winner of the T.S Eliot Prize, 2019, for A Portable Paradise.

“An exquisite gathering of poems fostered alike by extravagant beauty and sudden violence. Poet Lawrence Scott deftly, skilfully brings Trinidad’s great 19th-century painter’s world and works to life in these fine sonnets and one long poem of praise and lament. Beautiful.” Lorna Goodison was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, 2019; her latest collection is From Harvey River.

“Looking for Cazabon offers, in scrupulously crafted verse – sonnets, mostly – a geography of the painter’s journeys, overlaid with the poet’s own concerns, including temporary separation from his love. Most of the poems in this engaging collection reflect attempts to see like Cazabon – landscapes, interiors, people – in Trinidad and elsewhere. Often registering subtle changes in light, they explore connections between ‘a watercolourist’s palette’ and ‘a poet’s metaphor’.” Mervyn Morris, poet laureate of Jamaica, 2014-17. His latest collection is I Been There, Sort Of: New and Selected Poems.

Looking for Cazabon by Lawrence Scott