The Dreaming

THE COVER IS GRACED BY AN INTRICATE drawing of birds, branches and leaves, with a large, arching floral font declaring the title: The Dreaming, by the prize-winning Trinidadian poet and writer Andre Bagoo. This Art Deco celebration of flora and fauna in green and blue was originally drawn by the German doctor, zoologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel and published in his Art Forms in Nature (orig. Kunstformen der Natur) in the year 1904.1 Haeckel’s drawings served to capture the beauty, diversity and specificity of exotic birds in their natural habitat. Created in the historical period of Art Deco, the drawings also reveal a fascination with fleetingness, surfaces and decorations. It may appear unusual, to say the least, to adorn the book cover of a Caribbean writer’s short stories with the drawing of a German natural scientist created during the height of European colonisation. Yet a closer look reveals that this collection offers an intricate play with covers, cloaks and masks. The idea of revealing as hiding, of insight as projection, is part and parcel of its playful prose. The Dreaming presents twelve short stories, many of which have never been published before. These stories are set mostly in contemporary Trinidad, while the story “1960” plays in the year described by the title and “Preludes” describes the protagonist’s temporary sojourn in London, England, before his eventual return to Trinidad. Migration is a common experience in Caribbean societies. Most stories, in fact, include important contemporary challenges, such as the struggle of Venezuelans escaping dictatorship and hoping for refugee status in Trinidad in “Haircuts”, the global COVID-19 pandemic in “Hunger” among others, pollution of nature in “The Forest Ranger”, single-parent households in “Belmont”, and questions of desire and safety of LGBTQI-identified people in several stories including “Not Looking”. These elements are not just mentioned in passing like the news ticker of popular TV channels, but instead presented as fundamental challenges that