‘Twisted Dream: A Poetic Pilgrimage’ Performative Walk with Lisa Williams

Lisa Williams’ Twisted Dream is a poetic pilgrimage that prompts participants to take their minds back to Portobello in 1863. Enslavement in the Caribbean has ended 30 years previously, and Elizabeth Baillie McIntosh wakes from a feverish dream. The Scottish widow of a plantation owner in the tiny island of Carriacou, Elizabeth is now living a life of piety in Portobello. She becomes obsessed by the nightly visions of the cribo, a snake she had killed on the plantation, and begins to walk in her sleep. Drawing on personal family connections and wider historical entwinings, the poems explore our own capacity for self and collective healing. Williams, the founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association, invites participants to join in a poetic pilgrimage around Portobello together.