Days and Nights of the Blue Iguana

Though they traverse the wider Caribbean and beyond, Heather Royes’ centre of gravity is always Jamaica (‘No exile - small sabbaticals’) which arouses in her both love and exasperation. Ancestors - a nomadic family ‘wandering up and down the islands’, family and place are described with a painterly, compassionate eye for telling detail. As the noted Caribbean critic Professor Kenneth Ramchand writes: ‘Ms. Royes is a considerable poet and an important interpreter of modern Jamaican experience. 'Her poems are laden with multiple meanings or levels. They move backwards, forwards and sideways through [the Caribbean’s] linguistic, cultural and historical continuums.’ The collection contains a generous selection from her first, now out of print book of poems, The Caribbean Raj.