“Paper Nigrum/Black Pepper” by Shani Mootoo

May 12, 2025

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Paper Nigrum/Black Pepper” by Shani Mootoo, from Oh Witness Dey! (Book*hug Press, 2024), shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Due to its formatting, this poem is only available as an image.

View the 2025 book award shortlists

Paper Nigrum/Black Pepper

By Shani Mootoo

Cook’s Illustrated’s testers assert Is best ground fresh from the whole cherry Native to Kerala’s Malabar Coast Found stuffed in the nostrils of Rameses II Prized in old Rome as bribe and currency Star ingredient in Asia’s cuisines Middle Ages luxury spice Of European aristocracy Pretext for the Old World’s pursuit of sea routes To India, to India To “seek Christians and spices” And, centuries later Back again, back again, For the labourer— Not of now out-moded black pepper, but For the newer rum and Queen Sugar If not for 19th Century Britain’s role CEO in its own clearing house [ ] Senegal to Angola 13,000,000 humans (1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s) The Bights of Benin and Biafra The land that laid the golden guinea (1663-1816) 4,803,000 from there alone (1501-1867) If not for Britain’s 300-year-long [ ] Commerce, Christianity, Civilization Boot on the neck 1/3 of the world Destruction of life Of culture Identity theft Dispersal of humans Seeds it hadn’t imagined Would rise Rise up, rise up If not for the brutish rule of India (1599-1947) From where they [ ] 3.5 million Indians (1845-1917) As if humans were blooms of iron ore Bricks of tea, barrels of salted cod If not for La Isla de la Trinidad (1797) [ ] Would Indra and Romesh have found one another? And I be scratching History, sifting heaven’s dust For Ancestry? Entanglements Accrued Accursed

Copyright © Shani Mootoo

From Oh Witness Dey! (Book*hug Press, 2024), shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland, raised in Trinidad, and has lived in Canada for more than forty years. Her poetry books include Oh Witness Dey!, Cane | Fire, and The Predicament of Or. She is the author of several novels, including Polar Vortex, Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, and Cereus Blooms at Night which is now a Penguin Modern Classic and a Vintage Classics book. Her work has been long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Giller Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, among others. She has been awarded the Doctor of Letters honoris causa degree from Western University, is a recipient of Lambda Literary’s James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award, and The National Library’s Library and Archives Scholar Award. She lives in Southern Ontario, Canada.

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