Dr. Do-Diddily and the Dee-Dot's : Caribbean Cola

Dr. Do-Diddily and the Dee-Dot's : Caribbean Cola: "I have been looking through a book my sister gavAnd we will seek the quiet hill.e me which she had been given when she was married to Lionel. It came from Jamaica and inside there was contributions by Festus Claude McKay, (1889 - 1948)

He was Born in James Hill, Clarendon, Jamaica, and was the youngest in the family. His father, Thomas Francis McKay, and his mother, Hannah Ann Elizabeth Edwards, were well-to-do peasant farmers, and had enough property to qualify to vote.

This is a poem that I really love and I hope you all like it too.

AFTER THE WINTER

By Clyde MaKay (1898 - 1948) Jamaica.


Some day, when trees have shed their leaves

And against the morning's white

The shivering birds beneath the eaves

Have sheltered for the night,

We'll turn our faces southward, love,

Toward the summer isle

Where bamboo spire to shafted grove

And wide-mouthed orchids smile.


And we will seek the quiet hill

Where towers the cotton tree,

And leaps the laughing crystal rill

And works the droning bee,

And we will build a cottage there

Beside an open glade,

With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near

And ferns that never fade.

The little Cotton Fairy

Claude McKay (1889 -1948)At age four, Claude started school at M.D at the church he attended. At age seven, McKay was sent to live with his oldest brother, a school teacher, to be given the best education available. While living with his oldest brother, Uriah Theodore, Claude became an avid reader and started writing poetry at the age of 10.

While under his brother's teachings, he studied classical and British literary figures and philosophers as well as science and theology. In 1906, he became an apprentice to a carriage and cabinet maker known as Old Brenga. He stayed in his apprenticeship for about two years. During that time, in 1907, McKay met a man named Walter Jekyll who became a mentor and an inspiration for him. He encouraged Clyde to concentrate on his writing especially in his native dialect and even later he set some of Clyde's verses to music. Jekyll also helped Clyde to publish his first book of poems, Songs of Jamaica, in 1912. These were the first poems published in Patois (dialect of mainly English words with a strong African structure)."