Carnival is, of course, an art form consisting of and celebrating many art forms in its own right, but I’m calling this post Carnival in to Arts because it announces the Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters 13th issue Carnival Suite. The Anu Lakhan edited issue sees Carnival through the perspective of the literary and visual arts with poetry, fiction, essays, sculpture, gaming, mas, painting from creatives across the Caribbean.
The Antigua Carnival pre-season has already opened up (meanwhile, Caribana in Barbuda was recently cancelled due to the slow recovery from last September’s hurricane Irma and no doubt the fact that most Barbudans are still not home). So you can go ahead and add this Moko issue to your reading to get in to the spirit of things. I’m in the issue with A Life in Mas, an essay on, well, my life in mas, leading up to my experience of bringing a character from my children’s picture book With Grace to the road last Carnival 
– being a mas leader, which is a very generous way of putting it considering that we were the micro-est of mas, was a one-and-done experience though I did receive a registration reminder this year from the Carnival office. I will never be done with Carnival though. In fact, as I type this I realize this is my third time being published in Moko which previously published my poem Children Melee and my short story Game Changer, both of which are also Carnival themed. So, let this be a reminder, whatever your passions, write them and seize the opportunities to insert them in to the conversation. Moko is an opportunity to do just that as not just another market (albeit a non-paying one) but one of the few Caribbean-specific markets for creative work – a platform that allows you to occupy a small space in the Caribbean literary canon (Antigua and Barbuda, why not us?) and a journal that helps your writing to evolve by putting you through the rigor of selection and editing. So, challenge yourself. Get out there.
Shout out to Moko’s founding editors, the British Virgin Islands’ Richard Georges and David Knight Jr. who didn’t let their own hurricane lashing disrupt their agenda to create pan-Caribbean connections through the arts. I’m looking forward to reading this issue – the writers whose work I already know (like St. Lucia’s John Robert Lee, Bermuda’s Nancy Anne Miller, and Trinidad & Tobago’s Lisa Allen-Agostini and Barbara Jenkins; and the writers and artists whose work I have yet to discover. Check it out.
As with all content (words, images, other) on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Musical Youth, With Grace, and Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure). All Rights Reserved. You can also subscribe to and/or follow the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks. And remember while linking and sharing the links, referencing and excerpting, with credit, are okay, lifting whole content (articles, images, other) from the site without asking is not cool. Respect copyright.
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