VETERAN dub poet Malachi Smith’s latest album Hail Jamaka, celebrates the Jamaican culture to the point where his undying passion for

his beloved island is comparable with poet laureates Claude McKay and Louise Bennett-Coverley.

The title and cover design, not to mention the themes on the 18 tracks of Smith’s nationalistic set, launched at the Bella Oasis Spa in St Andrew on Wednesday, mirror with intense emotion and enthusiasm his love for country, people and history.

“The second poem I wrote, at age ten, ended with the lines — ‘When I consider the great world you see Jamaica is just

a beautiful baby,'” he remembers. “My passion for Jamaica remains as true today as it was then. No longer a beautiful baby in my mind. However, I am so adoring of her, so much so, that I often fantasise in my writing about loving and marrying her.” This profound love is powerfully captured in my award-winning poem Change of Heart,” is Smith’s amorous reflection written in the liner notes of Hail To Jamaka.

After his introduction by attorney-at-law Delano Franklyn, the pioneer spoken word performer decked out in a vest with the national colours stood to attention as he recited the National Anthem which was being sung by the Florida Jamaica Folk Revue in the background.

Opening his stint with the poem Queen Nanny : “I come to you on the shoulders of Marcus Mosiah Garvey. I come to you on the shoulders of Sir Alexander Bustamante. I come to you on the shoulders of Paul Bogle and Sam Sharpe, of George William Gordon. I come to you on the shoulders of Miss Lou. I come you on the shoulders of Peter Tosh, Bob Marley. I come to you on the shoulders of Mildred Sankey and Hambert Smith. Is because of their broad shoulders why I am here tonight and for that reason I give thanks.”

When the applause was over Smith, now living in Florida for a number years, appealed for audience participation while chanting — “Everytime I remember sweet sweet Jamaica, wata come a mi eye.” Before performing other tracks from his latest project, the former member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force held up a copy of the funeral programme of one his peers, the late dub poet Mikey Smith (no relations, except in poetry) who was stoned to death in Stony Hill in 1983.

Then he segued into poems like Pioneers, Miss Jamaican Jamaican Christmas, Going Home for Christmas, My Jamaican Tongue — from which declared “My Jamaican tongue to sweet for me to throw it away.”

With a cursory glance at Malachi Smith’s biography it is clear that his trod in certain respects is similar to that of Claude McKay in other ways besides poetry. Born in Westmoreland, Smith would spend time during his formative years in Clarendon the parish in which McKay was born.

Smith, once a corporal in the police force lived for most of his adult life in Central Village near Spanish Town where McKay served as a member of the police force also.

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet who was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

His book of poetry, Harlem Shadows (1922) was among the first books published during the Harlem Renaissance. His book, Selected Poems (1953), was published posthumously.

Malachi Smith began writing poetry at the age of eight, and recorded his first poem Kimbo to Kimbo in 1979. His other CDs are Blacker the Berry — The Sweeter The Cherry, Throw Two Punch, Middle Passage and Luv Dub Fever.

Hail to Jamaka, is a collection featuring most of his award-winning poems about Jamaica. Malachi won the 2009 most outstanding writer award for the Jamaica Development Commission’s Creative Writing Competition and recently a gold award in the same competition.