NEGRIL, Westmoreland — Poet and author Sunday Jones officially launched her five-day Jamaica tour, Ink Breath and Bars: Pain 2 Power, on Monday, July 20, bringing a message of healing, reflection, and creative empowerment to audiences across Jamaica.

Rooted in the mission of transforming personal pain into purpose through spoken word, the July tour blends live poetry performances, youth engagement, and community building.

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Sunday Jones is a poet, author, and community leader known for founding Sunday Jones Productions and the Prison Brat Foundation. She functions as an ordained minister, certified life coach, event curator, and radio personality dedicated to giving a voice to the unheard and unseen. Her work focuses on healing from childhood trauma, faith, and personal evolution.

Poet Yasus Afari highlights the vital role the spoken word plays in community upliftment and personal transformation as a vehicle for emotional wellness and youth empowerment. (Photo: Rosalee Wood Condell)

“Ink Breath and Bars is the ink of our soul, of our journeys, our writings, our poetry, our life.” Jones explained to the
Jamaica Observer. “The breath is the breath that we take, through word sound, through healing, through all of the things. It’s the breath that we need to take sometimes. All the time we breathe, but we sometimes need to take breaths. And the bars are the lyrical word sound that come from the ink and the breath. The tour is about community, culture, love, and liberation. It is to bring people together, to pull light from people who don’t understand that they have the light, or to elevate those that do have the light and want to go further. That is Ink Breath & Bars, to sum it up shortly.”

The tour features a line-up of community showcases, school visits, and curated intimate gatherings designed to inspire, connect, and celebrate. The journey began on July 21 at Kingston Night Market, followed by a visit to Haile Selassie High School on July 23. On July 25 the tour headed to Sador’s Ethiopian Restaurant in Negril for a special community gathering. It concludes on July 30 with an exclusive healing experience and Jones’ Solar Return Celebration.

The Ink Breath and Bars tour has gained significant backing from internationally renowned Jamaican dub poet and performance artist Yasus Afari. He highlighted the vital role poetry plays in community upliftment and personal transformation, endorsing Jones’ vision to use creative expression as a vehicle for emotional wellness and youth empowerment.

Elaine Allen-Bradley, former president of Negril Chamber of Commerce and founder of The Elaine Allen-Bradley Paediatric Orthotic Foundation Clinic, endorses the work by Sunday Jones. (Photo: Rosalee Wood Condell)

“Let us use the language and the arts to heal and to redeem our people from what I described earlier as neurolinguistic sorcery, and so bring neurolinguistic healing, so that we can heal in a wholesome and full-some way. So that even our tongue can be an instrument of life. We don’t have to have so much dissing and cussing and quarrelling as a small country who have been through such great tribulation,” he stated.

The poet seized the opportunity to issue a charge: “So we are calling on our fellow so-called entertainers, which I prefer to call edutainers, let us rise to that occasion. We are a great country, unprecedented in human recorded history. We are a talented and great set of people. Let us use this gift of art, music, poetry, film, dance, comedy, literature, photography, videography to empower our people, to uplift our people, to heal our people, and to help fulfil Jamaica’s sacred, national pledge to advance the entire welfare of the entire human race. Honour, love, and prosperity. Rastafari blessings.”

In addition to live performances, the tour serves as a promotional platform for Jones’ latest book, The Art of Rising: A Love Letter to My Becoming, allowing readers and lovers of dub and spoken word poetry to connect deeply with her published works.

With stops spanning from the vibrant creative spaces of Kingston to the west coast in Negril, Ink Breath and Bars: Pain 2 Power promises an uplifting cultural journey celebrating resilience, truth, and the transformative power of the Jamaican voice.

(Video: Rosalee Wood Condell)