In her first ever collection of essays, writer & poet Lorna Goodison interweaves the personal and political to explore themes that have occupied her working life: her love of poetry and the arts, colonialism and its legacy, racism and social justice, authenticity and the enduring power of friendship.

Taking her title from one of Kingston's oldest markets, a historic meeting place that was almost destroyed by fire, she introduces us to a vivid cast of characters and remembers moments of epihany - ina cinema in Jamaica, at New York's Bottom Line club and as she searched for a black hairdresser in Paris and drank tea on London's Marylebone High Street.