Promoting Our Heritage

Catering for African Caribbean cultural Heritage through supporting authors and their work. Book seller turn author and events host. From my website. By now you might have figured that POH Books is the first letter of each word; I decided to go for a shorter website name. Having trained as a teacher and completing my first degree in business, in 2010 on the third attempt, I have written quite a few research papers. However, my desire to become an author became very strong in 2001 when my wife was recruited from Kingston, Jamaica to teach in London, England. As we said our goodbyes to our many relatives, it was one of her aunts who said” You are just like the rest/ Seeking Bread out of Desolate places”. I had planned to write about what life was like in Jamaica and then our new life in England. I remember one day my son at about 6 years said “I don’t like this Jamaica” referring to some uncomfortable situation in England. So, my first book should have been Seeking Bread out of desolate places, but it was not to be, not yet. So, we got stuck in with work to pay the bills and send something back home for relatives. That was until one of the teachers who had also been recruited felt she was learning the British cultural heritage from her students and wanted to turn thanks with some Miss Lou poetry to give them a taste of her Jamaican culture. I found some Miss Lou and Joan Andrea Hutchinson audio cassettes at the Weekly Gleaner office (left over from the days of being an outlet for Kingston Bookshop in London). I sold some cassettes to the teacher (Dawn Darby) and some to homesick parents/grandparents at school. This was the birth of my bookselling business, Promoting Our Heritage. Following on from the interest of persons I spoke with, I took a stall at a Black History month event at 336 Brixton Road on the first week of October 2002 ( a year after coming to this country). I had jumped around asking questions and putting together a selection of book.....