Jennifer M. Garnatz

author/spoken-word artist/self-publisher/songwriter

I was born in Lucea, Hanover, Jamaica, West Indies, in September 1953. In 1958, my mother took me to Kingston to live with my single father, a hotelier. (Pls click here for photo of my father). A few days later mommy suddenly disappeared out of my life. I was later told she had migrated to England. Her mother also migrated shortly afterwards. I can still remember grabbing onto my grandmother and crying loudly and fearfully when I saw her with a suitcase, begging her not to leave me the way my mother did. Since daddy also worked late nights, he immediately placed me in Mrs. Smythe's Boarding School on Roosevelt Avenue. Over the years, he constantly placed me in private homes to live. My mother occasionally wrote me letters and sent birthday presents. But, I never saw her again until I was 10 years old. She gave me a photo of her husband, her other four children and my grandparents. Daddy said then that a girl my age needs to live with her mother. However, she again left without me. I never saw her again until, upon my request after he was murdered in 1973, she visited me. We have remained in touch.

After winning a full scholarship to attend a Catholic high school, daddy naturally placed me under the care of the Sisters of Mercy nuns at the Convent of Mercy Alpha Academy High School on South Camp Road. I resided in their boarding accommodation only for the first three years due to its later closure, but remained a student until my graduation.

Even though the nuns were strict, living at Alpha Boarding School was one of the happiest times of my childhood. They were fair in their treatment (unlike in some of the private homes I lived in). The nuns also placed great emphasis on developing our minds — not only intellectually and religiously (lots of school work, lots of praying), but also culturally and socially, allowing us to amuse ourselves during recreation periods by dancing and watching TV briefly after school and for longer periods on weekends; by taking us on picnic excursions to the beaches in the country; to the movies and swimming pools in the city, and occasionally even to dance parties at our neighbouring Catholic boy’s school (only the older girls, naturally). We also did “social work” visiting the elderly and helping them in various ways, for e.g. renovating their homes.

I cried when the boarding section closed in 1969. My father again boarded me out with a family — and sadness crept in again. They were often unkind.

June 1971, I graduated from Alpha. It meant returning home to live permanently, instead of just on vacations when my grandmother came from the country to ‘chaperone’ me in the house. (Pls click here for photo of my paternal grandparents). Out of rebellion against my father for not allowing me to study to become a Spanish teacher (my favourite subject at school), I skipped 6th Form, and the chance of going to university, by refusing to do my A’Levels. My other career options had been personnel management, hotel management or studying international relations to become an overseas ambassador of Jamaica. It had been extremely difficult to concentrate at school and do my best owing to the fact that I was not allowed any chance to relax. Thus, I was extremely overjoyed to have passed my O’Level examinations. A career in writing I’d planned as a sideline.

Daddy only allowed my elder half-brother Patrick and I to go out on public holidays (10:00 a.m. matinees/concerts). In his over-protectiveness — he was afraid of me coming into contact with “the opposite sex” — up until then I’d never had a birthday party, never been out on dates, had never even been to a schoolfriend’s birthday party. Having fathered 5 kids with 4 different women, guess he was protecting me from men like himself. He had been married once long before we were born. His wife died of cancer, childless. She must have been so perfect for him, he never lived with another woman. He simply just took over his financial responsibilities for us all.

He had, in fit of anger, “shipped” Patrick to Canada in 1969. The two following me lived with their mother, so I only saw them during vacations. The last one had been taken to live in the country with my paternal grandmother when he was only 2 yrs old. He was born 6 years before daddy’s death. Thus, I grew up learning to accept this imposed solitude. "Burying“ myself in reading and doing creative writing brought me a certain amount of inner peace. A pen to write, music to compose in my brain, books to read, became my means of solace. I also relaxed having fun climbing mango trees to pick the fruits during my vacations at home.

Hoping to quickly gain my independence by earning my own money (stupid of me to have thought so?), I pursued a 1-yr secretarial course at The College of Arts, Science & Technology.

July 1972, I began working as a legal secretary. Unfortunately, daddy still remained super-strict, saying I had to wait until I was 21 even to go on dates or to birthday parties at the homes of former schoolfriends. Furthermore, he still imposed a curfew: I had to be home within an hour after work — just like during my school days!

During the first 20 years of my life, therefore, I grew up with only God to “talk” to when I needed to confide in someone, reading books to keep me company and pursuing my creative writing (which I even had to hide from him). After all, I was writing love songs lyrics! I’d already filled a few exercise books. The melodies were stored in my brain.

August 11, 1973, six weeks before my 20th birthday, I received a shocking phone call in the night. The person said my father had just been shot. At first, I thought it was someone playing a stupid joke. But, when the man identified himself, I realized it had to be the awful truth. In shock, I rushed out of the house, hailed a passing taxi, and went to my father’s business place.

Forcing my way through the police and a crowd of onlookers on the street and inside his bar, I went inside. He was already lying dead behind the counter. I saw his body lying on his stomach in a pool of blood and broken bottles, his hands braced to raise himself up from the ground. He died a fighter. I also saw the bullet-hole in the temple of his head. I’ll never forget that sight. I was like frozen: I couldn’t cry. My mind was racing. I later heard he had another gunshot in his stomach.

I grew up that night, partly. God gave me the strength not to break down and cry. There was no elder relative or friend around to take charge or to provide a shoulder for me to lean on. After 20 years of an overly-sheltered life, I was brutally thrown out into the world.

I was suddenly all alone in every sense of the word. (I had never even kissed a guy, though daddy thought I’d misbehaved behind his back.) His sudden death meant I had to face the world alone with no one to turn to. After all, apart from going to work, church, and to those 10:00 a.m. matinees on public holidays, I practically lived “under house-arrest” up until his death.

Nevertheless, as naive and immature for my age as I understandably was, I had to immediately take over dealing with the police and his employees. I slept in his hotel room that night. Early next morning, I took a taxi and delivered the news to my younger siblings and their mother, then drove to the country with one of his friends to break the devastating news to our grandmother and to bring her to Kingston to prepare her to attend the funeral of her beloved son. Two days later, I met his lawyers to arrange his funeral, etc.

Again, God gave me the strength to return to work within two weeks to face the world without my father.

The tears came sporadically weeks, months and years later, flowing with such intensity rivalled only by my brain simultaneously “shooting out“ heavy poems accompanying them (See for e.g. “Reflections“ on the Poetry page and read “Happiness”, “Soliloquy I”, in my book. The latter poem deals with his treatment of all his children and what I felt are our feelings for him.). My feelings towards him can be described as love-fear.

Full of Love: because he worked extremely hard, seldom taking vacations. He succeeded in doing his best to give us a good education, decent places to live, lots of sound advices. He was indeed super-strict and abusive, but he had otherwise been a good father wanting only the best for all of his children. He just did not have a good woman around to “soften him up”. Daddy was just too macho and mistrustful to have married the woman we all wanted to become our stepmother. She later migrated to the USA.

Full of Fear: because I got lots of unjustified beatings up until I reached the age of 12 (he stopped only out of fear he could kill or cripple me), lots of unjustified loud-mouthed cursings even though I was extremely obedient up until he died (too great was my fear of him to have done anything “bad” behind his back). There were times I wished he’d beat me instead of cursing: The beatings were horrible, but they stopped after a few minutes; the cursings over the years were extremely embarrassing as they went on for days and all the neighbours could hear.

Today, many decades since his death, I am still living by lots of his words of wisdom which have opened, and are still opening, many doors for me in all the countries I’ve been to. I shall always be indebted and grateful to him for his good points.

More than 14 poems about him have emerged from my heart. It took me 27 years to present any of them in public, because I sometimes still break into tears when I envision that night.

To this day, whenever I see a film with someone being shot in the head, or even someone pointing a gun at someone, the scene of my father’s body in his pool of blood still rushes to the fore of my mind. I have to switch the channel or, if I am in the cinema, I close my eyes.

December 1979, I migrated to Germany to learn the language with the intention of returning to Jamaica to work in the foreign service or in tourism after 18 months. It was a spontaneous decision. I had been working at the Trelawny Beach Hotel as assistant sales & PR manager and noticed it was overrun with German tourists who had started coming to the island on charter planes. However, none of us spoke their language. I returned to Kingston and applied at the German Embassy for a visa. In Germany, I realized I no longer felt tormented by my father’s murder, I no longer felt afraid I could be murdered at night just as daddy was; so, I stayed longer than planned. Then the years quickly flew by. I am still residing there. However, Jamaica will always be my home. I do go home regularly on vacations so as not to become a stranger to the land of my birth. Maybe one day I’ll return permanently.

In 1999, I finally decided it was time to actively begin another phase of my life —my creative-writing sideline. God blessed me with a few talents. It was time to put another one into action. In Jamaica I had co-written a song with the talented Harald Butler. In Hamburg, I had already taken part in a poetry event in the past. To test the public’s response to my poetry, I now began participating in poetry slams and various other literary events, presenting my poems in both the English and German languages. The audiences responded positively to my poems. I even won a few prizes. This encouraged me to self-publish a poetry volume. That same year the organizers invited me to represent Hamburg at the National Poetry Slam Team Competition being held in Weimar, the famous city in which Germany’s most popular poet and author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe resided and later died.

In April 2001, I self-published my first poetry volume in a limited edition titled “romanctically erotic, deadly religious”. In 2009 via Xlibris, a books-on-demand Online publishing company in the USA, I had it reprinted under the title “romanctically erotic, deadly spiritual society” in order to make it also available to international audiences. In 2021, upon request, the 3rd edition was republished by Great Writers Media in the USA. This contains minor changes.

Left to right: 2005: Relaxing on the balcony of my hotel room in Luzern, Switzerland - 2010: Featuring as poet in Berlin, Germany, at event hosted by C.E.U.S. at Ya-Man Restaurant owned by Barbara Saltmann. - 2001: Presenting poems at St. Nick’s Pub, Harlem, New York, USA.

My sources of inspiration come from my vivid imagination, personal experiences, from seeing a word/words on paper, hearing a word or phrase, and from observations of happenings in the world. Due to my past time-consuming office jobs and my great desire to avoid as much stress privately as possible, I’ve never really had the time to complete my other manuscripts. Now that I am free of any obligations, I do intend to continue working on them at my own pace.

Apart from poetry, my hobbies include writing plays, short stories, song lyrics and composing/arranging music. I cannot play an instrument or write music notes. However, it’s a fact that a melody is born in one’s mind and not in one’s fingers. The fingers only play or write whatever the brain dictates. I record my melodies on tape or sing them to a professional arranger who records & writes down the notes for me. My other hobbies include dancing, swimming, travelling, meeting people of all ages/races/spiritual backgrounds, creating food & cake recipes, learning various foreign languages, playing the strategic games dominoes & risk, planting fruits and vegetables, above all diverse tomato varieties. I adore children and cherish giving them the love and showing them the kind of understanding I never experienced as a child; thus, babysitting kids of friends is also one of my hobbies which brings me as much joy as the kids.

I am divorced and since mid-2019 retired from my full-time profession as a bilingual management assistant. My goals are simply to live a stress-free, spiritual life, assisting those in need within my means and to continue my creative writing.