Love of, and respect for, words inspire 60-year-old poet

…launches new “Midnight Musing” collection

By Shane Marks

William Wordsworth once said, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.” A poet lays all of their emotions on paper, and some of them let them out into the world for all to see.

Published Guyanese poet, Bonita Germain Reynolds, popularly known by her writer’s name – B. Germain Reynolds, is one of those poets who has done wonders with her pen by not only publishing one book of poems but two, with a third on the way.
Reynolds, who turns 60 years old today, experienced emotions like no other at a very young age, being the fifth child among six – happiness, love, sadness, and grief. In an interview, she recalled her father dying in a car accident when she was only four years old. Her father was a principal in the interior at Kabakaburi, a village in Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam).
“I was raised as the 5th of 6 siblings by a mother who was prematurely widowed in 1967 when I was 4 years old. My father, Brassington Granville Reynolds Snr, was a principal in the interior at Kabakaburi and was in a fatal car accident in May 1967 which robbed us of our amazing father,” Reynolds told Guyana Times.
However, Reynolds paid a thought to the childhood that she described as an experience that was rich in family time, love, laughter, worship, education, literature, and dreams, which many of her poems reflect.
Reynolds, who has an active repository of 300 poems, has early memories of wanting to write poetry during her time at St Ambrose Primary School. It was frightening, according to Reynolds, since she wasn’t very proficient. According to her, it was her mother and other teachers at the school who fostered in her a love of and respect for words and their power and potential impact.
She said, “Earliest memory – at St Ambrose – frightening since I had low proficiency. My mother and other primary school teachers fostered in me a love of and respect for words and their power and potential impact. These lessons empower me afresh each poem I write.”
But Reynolds was not exactly ready to give up her education.
In 1983 she left her homeland for the United States of America to seek higher education. She studied at Lehman College – a city university undergraduate institution in the Bronx, New York.
She expressed that the move was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying; New York City was a completely different landscape and nothing like Guyana. Fitting in was the challenge.
“The feeling was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying, but as always, God was gracious and love and all things good. NYC was unlike growing up in Guyana, I was anonymous and the community was indifferent. The effort to fit in and to acclimate was quite challenging. Again, God’s blessings prevailed and I survived.”
Reynolds is now a regulatory professional, delivering regulatory compliance solutions to companies in the US, where she resides.
But there is no overlapping between her professional life and her writing life. “No, my professional life is very different to my writing life, except I employ the same principle – that “words matter” and that my communication should be intentional and effective,” she said.
In 2014, Reynolds published (through Rosedog Pr) her first poetry collection, “Midnight Musings”, which has been described as a work of true self-expression and reflection by many of her readers, and it has solidified her as an endearing poet, leaving readers wanting more after every poem.
“I finished Midnight Musing because I am a big procrastinator. So, I wanted to actually come to a place where I actually delivered a project and so Midnight Musings was that first delivery of a project and I’m very thankful for it.”
She followed up this act, years later, with “Songs I Sing,” a much longer publication compared to her previous one. It was published in 2020 by Fulton Books, Inc.
“Songs I Sing” is the raised curtain to Reynolds, who is a wife, mother, and leader who writes poetry because she must. The book is described as a one-hundred-plus collection of poems – simple, sweet, sacred, serious, silly, and sensual — that seeks to upturn every stone in the reader’s hearts, resonate in the reader’s minds, and coax a repartee that reflects the impact of the poet’s thoughts, her experiences, her aspirations, her principles.
In celebration of Reynolds and her works in the artistry of poetry, on Thursday, an “Afternoon of Poetry” was hosted at the Herdmanston Lodge.
Reynolds herself took to the podium that afternoon and recited some of her best pieces to family and friends and persons who came out to purchase a copy of her books.
She recited poems from her collections, like “Midnight Musings” from her first collection, and poems like “Loss,” “Who Gets Me,” and “Shake and Roll” from her latest Collection, “Songs I Sing”. She debuted, “Singing for Supper” from her upcoming collection, “A Pocket Book of Wry,” which will be published later this year.
Persons from the audience were given the chance to recite their favourite poem or a piece of their own, a way of enabling a culture of poetry recitation.
Poets Carlene Gill-Kerr, and Keon Haywood graced the stage and recited their pieces.
The evening ended with the signing of Reynolds’ collections.