Volcano Verses

"Volcano Verses is a moving and evocative collection of poems that document the trials and tribulations of the ‘infernal volcano’ from 1995-2001. At the time the eruption started, Howard Fergus had been speaker of the Legislative Council for twenty years, and was an historian, poet and lecturer. His poems cross many of the same themes explored by Yvonne Weekes — the waiting, the uncertainty and the inadequacy of the official response to the slow drowning of the land ‘with fiery avalanches, rocks and coffee mud.’ Howard’s perspective ranges from that of pastor to historian; putting the ‘puffs and blows’ of the Soufrière into the context of the island’s colonial past, and religious and cultural present. One fascinating aspect of this collection is the way that the technical language of volcanologists, broadcast daily in radio bulletins, seeps into the fabric of the poems. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Montserrat has a special significance for me, as it does for many British volcanologists of my generation. In 1998, I spent six weeks on the island on a rotation as staff scientist at the Volcano Observatory. The volcano had just moved into a quiet phase, and the main sign of its existence – behind the cloud cover – was from the occasional dusting of powdery ash that fell to the ground. Fifteen years later, I joined a workshop on Montserrat taking a look back at the eruption and its consequences. It began with an emotional day of stories from those who had lived through the eruption, which made me realise that the narrative of an eruption is not just a timeline of physical events, but the intersection between the live volcano and the people living upon it."