Homage to Camus: Sarah Beckett finds inspiration in writings of French laureate

Less than four months after publishing her first book of poetry, artist and poet Sarah Beckett is publishing her second, I Wrote My Heart Across an Unknown Sky, Homage to Camus.

The first, Iere: Living in the Land of the Humming Bird was about Trinidad, a place she said cradled her as both a poet and an artist.

I Wrote My Heart Across an Unknown Sky was her love letter to French philosopher, author, journalist and political activist Albert Camus.

Camus, born in French Algeria in 1913, was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at 44.

Beckett studied Camus in France in 1962, when, she said, she was too young to fully appreciate or understand his intellect. Ten years later, she came across one of his books and was so engaged by his writing she started reading them all.

Then, in 2014, she discovered his Notebooks, his diaries filled with letters he wrote to himself pondering the people and places he visited and things that had happened to him.

“What is so interesting about the man is that he is like all of us now: he was concerned about the world, he suffered unhappiness, he got angry about things and felt despair.

“At the same time he had this enormous capacity for joie de vivre. He loved beautiful women. He loved the sea. All the way through his notebooks he talks about flowers everywhere. It’s gorgeous.”

As she read the notebooks, she pondered them, wrote ideas for poems and this year, she brought them together. She wrote all the poems except one in the first person, as though she were Camus or Camus were in her.

The book is divided into three parts. The first was about Camus’ roots in Algeria and his travels in Europe, and has the same name as the book title. This part was published in the UK in 2014. The second part, My Ballad of Hopeless Love, covers his time in Italy, and was previously published in England in 2014. The third part, Return to Oran, is about his return to Algeria and how he felt about it.

At the end of the book she wrote a coda, In the Café of Fallen Stars. In music, a coda is a passage that brings a sonata or a concerto to an end. She wrote it as if she were seeing him in a French café writing about what was happening around him.

“I have been asked quite often, ‘Why Camus? Is it relevant to Trinidad?’

"The thing is, our thoughts don’t need passports. We all travel a lot now. And thoughts are not limited by our race, our creed or our class. And the things that concerned him are very much what still concern us all.”

She explained Camus experienced World War II, which left many philosophers, poets and artists “shattered” and disillusioned. Yet people were driven to find happiness.

She said the world was experiencing wars now, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Europe and elsewhere. People were overwhelmed by the reports on traditional and social media, and felt helpless and deeply unhappy.

She said war was about hatred and death, while love and kindness were its antithesis. So her work was usually inspired by the idea of love, because that was what really mattered in the end.

Camus’ thoughts and writings showed the contradictions in people. He also dealt with the ideas of human existence and freedom. What is it? What does it mean in terms of the personal life of an individual? What were the responsibilities of an individual within a society? To what point could a person exercise their own desires?

“In his novels, he put into words things that I couldn’t express coherently. But what brought it home to me, and triggered this response of writing and painting, was his personal writings, his notebooks.”

Poetry inspired art

Beckett, 78, has been constantly writing since the 1980s. She never thought she would publish a collection of her work, although individual poems had been published in TT, Australia and the UK.

By the time she had published Iere, she had already written the poems in I Wrote My Heart Across an Unknown Sky. She had not intended to publish another book, but said she got excited and decided to do it.

“At my age, I can’t sit around on my a-- doing nothing. And I had sent some of the poems to poets all over the world for some feedback and it’s all been really positive. That was encouraging and I thought, ‘If other poets think the work’s all right, I might as well have a go.’”

Since Marie Abdulah translated the collection into French, Beckett and her team approached the Alliance Francaise to collaborate in the book launch, since the French translation opened the possibility of using the book as an educational tool.

Over the months, a book launch expanded into a two-week series of events including a film night, poetry reading, a gourmet market and a showing.

She hesitated to call the showing of the collection of drawings that developed from the poems an exhibition, instead referring to it as a “love letter to my hero.”

“The word ‘exhibition’ implies a sense of completion – that at this stage of my journey, this is where I am and this is what I want to say about our world. This show is not definite. It’s asking the viewer to ride on this train of discovery with me.”

She said the 20-25 pieces were very intimate, small drawings in pencil, pen and ink wash. She took references to physical things from the poems and drew them, and each piece included part of a poem to show how they related to each other.

“It started off as me extrapolating little practical, realistic things and very gradually, they took on their own life. And I moved into doing something I have never done before, which is these very soft pencil drawings.

“And then I allowed myself to go further into colour, so there’s a series that are ink wash, very recognisably my kind of work, but they are very figurative.

Beckett started painting when she was 11 or 12 and did several art courses in London and France, including drawing, fine art and graphic design.

She came to Trinidad from England in her early 20's with her Trinidadian husband and three children, and began her career as an artist here, mentored by local artists like Pat Chu Foon, Isaiah James Boodhoo, Sonnilal Ramkissoon and Boscoe Holder.

When her children were in secondary school she went to England and worked several jobs to support them including waitress, model, and art and English teacher. She returned to TT full time when her children were in university, but has lived in England, Colombia, Singapore and Spain over the years.

She had numerous exhibitions in TT, the UK, Holland, Serbia, Spain, Italy and the US. She won several awards and prizes in TT and Europe, and had her art work featured in local and international magazines.

She also produced and co-directed two films with documentary filmmaker and poet Alex de Verteuil, who will be giving the opening address at her book launch.

She is currently doing a master’s in poetry with the aim to refine her already substantial skills.

Beckett said while she was not thinking about another book, she may decide to put another collection together in the future.

The launch of I Wrote My Heart Across an Unknown Sky, Homage to Camus will take place on November 12 at the Alliance Francaise, St Clair.