Lights, Cameras, and Poetry: On Evolving Cultures in Savannah, Georgia

“Horizon for Moonflowers and Morning Glories Drunk on Light” artwork by Aberjhani for Bright Skylark Literary Productions ©2023

I thought about the poems and creative nonfiction in Patricia A. West’s book, Still Water Words (2020), for quite some time after seeing more and more film crews on different sites in Savannah, Georgia (USA). In 2022, I watched crews at work in the Benjamin Van Clark Neighborhood on the set for director David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends. In early 2023, I observed technicians, actors, and grip trucks on a set for Ava Duvernay’s Origins project (based on Isabel Wilkerson’s book: Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents) not too far from the previous location.
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The proliferation of movies shot in the city strikes me as confirmation of how much change the film industry has brought to the entire state of Georgia. That is particularly notable when observing how the modern high-tech cosmopolitan culture of the industry occasionally bumps against unflattering political and social attitudes and behaviors from the past. 

Outdoor lighting specialists set up night-time floodlights for filming on a set for Halloween Ends in the historic Benjamin Van Clark neighborhood in Savannah, Georgia, USA. (Photo by Aberjhani)

​Such was the case when segments of Wakanda Forever were filmed in the Mary Ross Waterfront Park in Brunswick at the same time (October 2021) the trial of three White men was getting underway for killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, in the same city. It is also a strange kind of irony for visiting actors, directors, or producers who attempt to reconcile their enjoyment of a pleasurable evening in the Plant Riverside District with their confusion over the name of the beautiful bridge shimmering a short distance away. 

​Poetic Considerations

​The writings in West’s Still Water Words, Poems and Stories from Ancestral places, on the other hand, bring us people and locations whose simple existences were major contributors to historic events so many now find useful to their creative and economic purposes. Through a double lens forged of pride in her Gullah Geechee heritage and of finely-honed literary craftsmanship, West delivers captivating portraits and tales of strivers, doers, family anchors, and customs. A retired Assistant Professor of English at Savannah State University, the task is one for which she is well equipped.  For example, we learn in the oral history poem titled “One Day,” how elder cousin Richard West “knew secrets of the woods…”:
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               …If church was held after dark, they would
          Swing a tightened, lighted lantern
               To scare the snakes away.
               Can’t you see him swinging that light high
                to get the ol’ folks by?
            Talking trash to the snakes in the woods?

​In the poem “Stirring Culture in Those Cooking Pots: Savannah’s Alongshore Dinner Women,” she pulls back the curtain of herstory to acknowledge women who played an important role helping African-American longshoremen perform their demanding jobs during days of Jim Crow segregation. Because the men were not welcomed in any nearby White dining establishments, Black women often prepared full meals to sell on the docks:

          The dinner women
          were already stirring
          culture in those
          cooking pots, loading

          food-filled pots, pans,
          and dishes they
          remembered from the
          old people in Parker’s Ferry
          to satisfy the wishes of hungry longshoremen.

          They were men of might and muscles––
          Lifting and carrying cargo along the docks,
          Unloading goods to go onshore,
          Building the shipping industry, boosting a coastal economy,

          yet starving for respect…

Front cover of Still Water Words: Poems and Stories from Ancestral Places, by Patricia Ann West.

​Inevitable change or predatory gentrification?

The erasure of Black history is something African Americans in Savannah have witnessed repeatedly on both large and small scales. One of the most often-cited instances is that of entire neighborhoods which were bulldozed in the early 1960s to make way for Interstate 16 and a flyover ramp (itself now targeted for removal). That decision forced the destruction of the Savannah Union Train Station on West Broad Street (now MLK Boulevard), recognized at the time as a central hub of businesses run by African Americans (primarily) and Jewish Americans in the area.
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In addition to Union Central, entire neighborhoods like the legendary Frogtown and an assortment of once-thriving businesses were obliterated. As native Savannahian and Pulitzer Prize-winner James Alan McPherson recalled in his essay, Going Up to Atlanta: “There is not one house where I lived as a child still standing.”

Such destruction in the name of civic leaders’ definition of “progress” could, in some cases, be considered results of inevitable change. Others might justifiably be described as predatory gentrification. Poems like “13 Dundee” (p. 46) in Still Water Words rescue people and places from both potential fates:

                        Dancin’ down Dundee Lane!
                        Miz Theodosia recitin’ Dunbar on Waters at St. Paul
                        “When Malindy Sings”––
                        “The whole thing!”
                        We used to click-clack,
                        shoot marbles, losing then coming back…

The poet adds in a footnote: “The old Dundee Street home site is now the location of the Tiny House Project serving formerly homeless veterans and has been renamed The Cove at Dundee …”

​Increasing Value of Remembrance

Two short creative nonfiction pieces––“Dear Carolina: A Letter of Memories” and “Mattie’s Time” (pp. 81-96)–– allow the author to “pay homage for days out in the country and across the bridge to South Carolina.” The book concludes with the poem “Come, Day Clean” (p. 102). The poem employs the Gullah declaration to invoke resilience in the face of various forms of injustice. It can, in some ways, be read as a vigorous spiritual response to Billie Holiday’s classic lament, “Strange Fruit,” in which southern trees have: “blood on the leaves and blood at the roots.” In fact, West categorizes her poem as “A Ntata- A Poetic Outcry.” Here are a few lines:

          Come, day clean!
          Over southern trees evergreen,
          Rise up over us with new hopes;
          Leave worry in last night’s dark and low.
          Spread light over us lowly like a balm.
          With laughter and lore, help our spirits calm…

Incorporated within the 102 pages which make up Still Water Words are more than a dozen images of people (including the author’s parents) and documents which enhance the already considerable power of the text. Interestingly enough, it is the well-preserved linguistic authenticity which lends Still Water Words a kind of time-bending cinematic quality possibly on par with the movie-making enriching Savannah’s already fabled story.
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The destruction of cultural legacies witnessed in countries like Ukraine and Syria over the past few years––or even in entire towns destroyed by fires and floods in America––have underscored how unwise it is to take gifts of everyday life and people for granted. West’s extraordinary volume is a great reminder of the increasing value of such remembrance.

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

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