Suriname Deserves Its Own Poet

Photographs by Patrick M Dransfield
Scroll

The nearest I can find is Derek Walcott of the West Indies’ island of Saint Lucia not too far away: “I know when dark-haired evening put on her bright silk at sunset and, folding the sea sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there’d be no rest, there’d be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back.”


There are over twenty languages spoken in Suriname. Its capital, Paramaribo, home of my wife Carmen’s parents, remained pretty much unchanged from its Dutch colonial days to when we visited it as a family in the late summer of 2008. We were delayed by three days by one of Hong Kong’s biggest ever typhoons (everyone wore badges that said “I will not complain!”). A weird mixture of Vermeer streets and Amazonian tropics, Suriname is a gift to a photographer. I hope at least a couple of these images does it justice…

01Cathedral Inside 1 built by the Dutch East India Company ships’ carpenters the cathedral feels like being inside the hull of a wooden ship turned upside down.
02Cola Creekwater the colour of cola due to the jungle vegetation, every bubble of water is illuminated.
03Sunburstafter Constable
04Outside the cathedral
05The family’s plastics shop
06Street scene with mother and child
07Ferry ride to Edgar’s late father’s plantation grocery store (now long gone)
08Rare bird
09Suriname artist
10House of Lightwith dog
11Wooden wall street scene
12Cathedral inside 2 – the long view 
Patrick M Dransfield · Suriname Deserves Its Own Poet