Carib Lit Plus (Early to Mid February 2023)

A reminder that the process with these Carib Lit Plus Caribbean arts bulletins is to do a front and back half of the month, updating as time allows as new information comes in; so, come back, or, if looking for an earlier installment, use the search window. (in brackets, as much as I can remember, I’ll add a note re how I sourced the information – it is understood that this is the original sourcing and additional research would have been done by me to build the information shared here – credit and link back if you use).

Obits.

The passing of Gordon Rohlehr was noted in the last Carib Lit Plus. This tribute is by Patrick Anthony of St. Lucia.

gordon-rohlehr-1942-2023-tribute-pabaDownload

(Source – JR Lee email)

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Local historian and writer Ivor Ford has died. Ford worked in the public service and in retirement was vocal – primarily on radio – on national issues. He is considered to be someone who has done considerable research in to Antiguan and Barbudan history, and worked on a number of publications in this lane, e.g. a 1984 commemorative magazine on the teacher for whom the T N Kirnon school is now named, and compiling and editing the 2004 posthumous edition of Novelle Richards’ The Struggle and The Conquest. A number of personal dedications to Ford’s life online alerted me to his passing beginning with this one from Senator Shawn Nicholas (a co-editor on The Struggle and The Conquest):

“Today, I lost one of my proudest and loudest cheerleaders, Ivor Bernard Ford. So much I could say about this man. Though diminutive in frame, his stature was larger than life. Rest in peace, my friend.” (Source – Facebook)

Accolades

The Dublin Literary Award longlist 2023 (culled from titles nominated by libraries across the world) has been published and I didn’t note any Caribbean titles (with the exception of An Unusual Grief by Yewande Omoto, listed as a Barbados/Nigeria/South Africa). So I decided to share it because there should be Caribbean titles – put forward even if they don’t make the cut, every time, and I am not convinced that there are. I am not confident that libraries across the Caribbean, including right here in Antigua and Barbuda, are combing through each year’s releases and putting up what they consider to be the best, and if my uncertainty is true then that’s a disservice to a literary community that already has so few opportunities to break through. If I am wrong, I hold that L but I don’t think I’ll have to. That said, congrats tot the titles that did make the list and good luck on March 28th and May 25th the days when the shortlist and winners, respectively, are announced. (Source – Word by Word)

Art and Culture

The Derek Walcott Library has been opened in the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College using a collection of pieces from the St. Lucian Nobel Laureate’s personal collection. The official opening formed part of the country’s Nobel Laureates annual week of activities. (Source – Nature Island Literary Festival on Facebook)

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The Big Issues on Observer Radio Antigua and subsequently the Observer newspaper have been exploring the film development model for Antigua and Barbuda – incentives to international productions to use the islands as locale, investment in indigenous filmmaking, a hybrid model that uses the big Hollywood dollars to finance local film development (e.g. through location fees) – in the wake of reporting on a possible Citizen by Investment backed joint venture initiative between French filmmaker Philippe Martinez and Canada-founded APEX Capital Partners, an advisory firm for CIPs?

‘Howard and Mitzi Allen, alongside Dr Lisa Tomlinson and Dr Alvin Edwards, sat down with host Barbara Arrindell to discuss the film culture in Antigua and Barbuda.

Mitzi Allen, who is best known as the co-founder of HaMa Films, and co-producer of the film ‘The Sweetest Mango,’ said that while it is important for foreign investment, she noted that there was a lack of interest in the development of local filmmakers in the country.

She argued that “bringing in international productions, absolutely yes, but it is not sustainable if we do not have the training on the ground, we do not have a film industry.

“So, when I hear that there is going to be employment for as many as 200 people, I would like to know who those people are, and where they exist, because we are on movie number five and we have had to go outside of Antigua in order to raise the bar in the productions that we do.”

Mitzi Allen argued that a fund needs to be set up to develop the local creative industries for a more sustainable employment market.

Howard Allen also reiterated the need for a local film industry, noting that the jobs the government is touting would be created, once the international filmmaker leaves, many of the locals employed would be again returned to their regular jobs.

“If we really want to build a viable film industry, the government has to take the lead on that, and throughout the islands, the politicians really do not see the value of our stories, and so their real interest is just bringing in international productions here,” he said.

Dr Lisa Tomlinson, who is a lecturer at the UWI Mona Campus in the Institute of Caribbean Studies, teaching Caribbean and African Diaspora Film courses and documentary narratives, spoke about what the region could learn from Jamaica, where the government has invested in developing youth filmmakers.

“We have the JAMPRO…and through that, they have a branch called the [Propella Initiative by the Jamaica Film and Television Association] where they take local filmmakers and go through a process of training and developing their films, and once they are finished, they enter national and international film festivals and competitions,” Dr Tomlinson said, although she did note that it was still not to the level of economic sustainability compared to other industries like music.’ – read the article in full. (Source – various)

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Black Panther star Letitia Wright paid a visit to her homeland, Guyana, where she engaged in a number of activities, including urging peace and love while addressing parliament. It was the British actress’ first trip home in 20 years. In addition to playing Shuri, little sister of T’Challa (played by the late Chadwick Boseman, RIP), Letitia has recently appeared in and co-produced Silent Twins, about a pair of sisters of Barbados origin who were institutionalized in Britain after years of silence and teenage rebellion, among other films. (Source – The Daily Observer Newspaper by Newsco)

Books and Other Reading Material

Jamaican writer Alecia McKenzie’s acclaimed A Million Aunties has a new paperback edition with a new cover.

Originally published in 2020 with Akashic in the US and Blue Banyan/Blouse and Skirt in the Caribbean, it has been described as “a compelling novel about unlikely love, friendship, and community, with several surprises along the way. The story takes place against the backdrop of rural Jamaica, New York City, and Paris, France.” It has been shortlisted for the 2020 Caribbean Readers’ Awards (Best Adult Novel) and longlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award. This paperback edition released February 2023 is with Berlin based Dialogue books. (Source – Alecia McKenzie on linkedin)

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Hands across the Sea, a non-profit out of the US, and former Wadadli Pen patron, continues to gift books to schools in the sub-region, including a recent cache to students in Antigua and Barbuda. Read about it here. (Source – Daily Observer Antigua by Newsco)

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Kittitian-British writer Caryl Phillips’s Radio Plays, anthologized and contextualized by Bénédicte Ledent, consists of his collection of plays broadcast by the BBC between 1984 and 2016 including: “The Wasted Years”; “Crossing the River”; “The Prince of Africa”; “Writing Fiction”; “A Kind of Home: James Baldwin in Paris”; “Hotel Cristobel”; “A Long Way from Home”; “Dinner in the Village”; and “Somewhere in England.” Contextualized by a scholarly introduction by Bénédicte Ledent, this volume introduces these works in the published form for the first time, allowing readers a better grasp of Phillips’s narrative techniques, offering fascinating vistas into his imaginary world, which ranges from the history of the African diaspora to the predicament of displaced individuals the world over. (Source – JR Lee email)

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John Robert Lee of St. Lucia writes about two book of essays on Derek Walcott published in 2022. Between Fury and Peace: The Many Arts of Derek Walcott and Tributes to Derek Walcott, 1930-2017: In Various Light are, per John, “among the first reflective reviews of the man and his work since his death in St. Lucia in 2017…They will make valuable additions to libraries and the collections of those who want to better understand the substantial contribution of this Caribbean poet to world literature.” (Source – JRLee email)

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Since the first CREATIVE SPACE of the year, CULTURAL CONNECTION, linkedin the first Carib Lit Plus of the year, there have been two more installments: PARTY DONE: MUSINGS ON THE ART OF CAMPAIGNING and ART HOP; four if you count the digital exclusive The Right to Bare Arms Redux (CREATIVE SPACE Coda).

Also, as teased in the Antiguan Writer Poll post, on the Jhohadli blog this month is a Black History Month one minute reads of journaled stories (28 days, 28 stories). The stories are also saved as audio in a playlist on my Antiguan Writer YouTube channel. (Source – JCH)

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Peepal Tree Press (UK) in January released a poetry collection, Not Quite Without A Moon by Trinbagonian-Guyanese writer with Antiguan roots Ian McDonald.

McDonald, who now resides in Canada, is the author of the classic The Hummingbird Tree. (Source – Peepal Tree Press on Facebook)

Events

The Antigua Dance Academy hosted a student exhibition and bélé launch on Saturday 4th February and it was dope (I was there). The Daily Observer newspaper coverage (written by Orville Williams) agrees. He noted that the presentation “displayed the tenacity, confidence and undeniable talent of the dancers who featured, as well as Yearwood’s brilliant artistic vision.” This was ADA’s first production since before the pandemic “but there was no sign of rust or nerves,” Williams reported.

For more on ADA, see this 2016 post on their milestone anniversary here on Wadadli Pen and, on my Jhohadli blog, CREATIVE SPACE #8 of 2019 – ADA: It’s about Storytelling. (Source – various)

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Bright Hill Press begins a new season of Word on February 23rd 2023 with British Virgin Islands poet laureate Richard Georges and St. Lucian poet MacDonald Dixon. The zoom starts at 7 p.m. Watch live on Zoom or Facebook.

(Source – Nature Island Literary Festival on Facebook)

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The Antigua Girls High School’s Honey Bee Theatre is staging a revival of its award-winning play Whispers in Wallings”, February 11th 2023 at the Dean William Lake Cultural Centre. Per the playwrights and screenwriters page here on the blog, Whispers in Wallings, written and directed by Zahra Airall won eight prizes at the 2015 national secondary schools drama festival. For tickets and information re the February staging, check Woods Pharmacy, the Best of Books bookstore, or contact 779-6634 for more info. (Source – Daily Observer newspaper by Newsco)

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St. Lucia launched its Nobel Laureate Festival in January 2023 –

Activities will continue in to February with the February 7th performance of Kendel Hippolyte’s play Cashpandora, the February 9th National Awards of Excellence, a Night of Poetry on February 11th, and a February 21st Independence Quiz. (Source – Jako Productions email)

As with all content 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, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, and The Jungle Outside). All Rights Reserved. Subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

Reading Room and Gallery 45

Things I read or view or listen to that you might like too. Things will be added – up to about 20 or so – before this installment in the Reading Room and Gallery series is archived. For previous and future installments in this series, use the search feature to the right. Possible warning for adult language and themes.

FICTION

 “A week after my friend went home – three weeks or so after my partner died suddenly of a heart attack – I forgot my house key in the lock. On the outside. I did it again, a few days later. Since then, I keep getting up in the middle of the night, making my way to the corridor that leads to my main door, peering into the dark to check if my key is in the basket, one which also holds loose change, rubber bands, and seed pods collected from walks.” – from “Forgetting” by Bijal Vachharajani in Adda

CREATING

Antiguan and Barbudan June Ambrose shouted out at about 4:51. Janet Jackson discussing her videos.

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Dancers acting out the movements that become the motions of the animated characters in the movie Encanto‘s presentation of “We don’t talk about Bruno?”

MISC.

A colonial era British tourism video showing some of what life was like (through that particular gaze, of course) in 1950s Antigua.

CREATIVES ON THE BUSINESS

 “You’ve put so much effort in to this work, make sure you reap the benefits as well”

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“The rights! Are mine! OMG, that feels so good.” – Trinidad and Tobago writer Liane Spicer on the bumpy publishing journey of a bestselling books

CONVERSATIONS

“You want a middle of the road tightness, a tightness that is comfortable for you because you don’t want a headtie headache.” – Celene Senhouse discussing headwrapping in CREATIVE SPACE.

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“There’s a piece that I did that I call ‘8-8-21’ that I wrote after teargas Sunday last year. I call it ‘Freedom 8-8-21’…it starts by saying, I think, ‘Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. When the youth are protest ready, they become revolutionary’. And it goes on from there and it just kind of encapsulates the entire Sunday, everything that happened that Sunday. Because I happened to be there. That was my personal experience. I was caught up in it. I was gassed as well… that piece means a lot to me not only because it was my experience but also it’s history, it’s chronicling what happened that day.” – Dotsie Isaac, in conversation with Joanne C. Hillhouse for her art and culture column CREATIVE SPACE

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 “I think art has to be able to go to a place that’s messy, a place that’s uncomfortable.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Piton Noire discusses Commonwealth winning short story ‘The Disappearance of Mumma Dell’ by Jamaican writer Roland Watson-Grant.

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“It was really hard to always focus on what was to my immigrant mind like already kind of a luxurious activity…I felt frankly super exposed when we were all in the house and my children realized that my writing was just walking around the house a lot.” – Edwidge Dandicat on Writing Home: American Voices from the Caribbean

POETRY

“as if they were beacons/for the men who leave their self-control, unused, under their mattresses” – from ‘Ole Jezebel‘ by Karolyn Smith in Rebel Women Lit’s online magazine

ESSAYS

‘When she was allowed to write in her own voice, her brief pieces defied simple categorization. Were they short stories? Prose poems? Satires on the American upper-class? Her most lyrical compositions—like “Girl,” my favorite short piece of hers, a stream-of-consciousness dialogue of sorts between a mother and daughter—presaged, and occasionally would appear in, her first story collection. Her short work was sometimes mechanical, functional; at other times, it was like stepping into the luminous pool of a dream’s streetlamp, shadows rippling by at the light’s margins.’ – On the Darkness at the Heart of Jamaica Kincaid’s Children’s Mystery: Gabrielle Bellot considers Party by Gabrielle Bellot in LitHub.

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Great Art Explained – Jean-Michel Basquiat

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“The text opens with, ‘On the balcony of vigilance I sit’ which Lewis makes into ‘I sit on the balcony, alert.’ Two lines later, the poem reads ‘my lips are cracked like the trunk of a palm tree overlooking the river’ which Lewis turns into ‘like the roots of the palm tree.’ The latter image makes no sense, it fails to capture his contrast of the texture of cracked lips to the harsh trunk of a palm tree.” – from ‘Western Poets kidnap Your Poems and call them Translations’ by Mona Kareem in PoetryBirmingham.com

PRESENTATIONS

Mac Donald Dixon reading from his novel A Scream in the Shadows.

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 “No matter what you are, what you do in life, if you have a dream, stick to your dream, pursue your dream…and just be you, be original, and someone will relate to it, and it will take you very far in your life.” – Andre Leon Talley

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Kendel Hippolyte delivers the Sir Derek Walcott lecture during Nobel Laureate Week in St. Lucia. “I don’t want you to come away from this word journey thinking of the poets. What they feeling and expressing is not particular to them. Is not because they’re poets that they feel all this. What they’re experiencing is what all of us have experienced; some days more, some days less intensely. But these experiences are common to all of us who live here. That’s why we recognize them so immediately. Poets have the gift of finding and weaving together the words that describe it but what they’re describing is ours; spontaneously, intrinsically ours, each one of us.” – Kendel Hippolyte

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Jail Me Quickly is a sequence of five poems written by Martin Carter and published in New World Fortnightly in 1964 and again in 1966.
The poems are:
Black Friday 1962
After One Year
What Can a Man Do More
Where are Free Men?
Childhood of A Voice
Dr Gemma Robinson offers insights into this period of Martin Carter’s writing with a general overview of the sequence and a detailed look at aspects of each poem. Readers are Konyo Addo, Jasper Adams, Stephanie Bowry, Stanley Greaves and Lloyd Marshall.

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 “I thought I had died and gone to heaven because they were what I imagined publishers to be respectful thoughtful helpful with a terrific marketing team…” – 2019 Margaret Laurence Lecture with Olive Senior

As with all content 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, Musical Youth, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, The Jungle Outside, and Oh Gad!). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

Carib Lit Plus (Mid to Late December 2021)

A reminder that the process with these Carib Lit Plus Caribbean arts bulletins is to do a front and back half of the month, updating as time allows as new information comes in; so, come back, or, if looking for an earlier installment, use the search window. (in brackets, as much as I can remember, I’ll add a note re how I sourced the information – it is understood that this is the original sourcing and additional research would have been done by me to build the information shared here).

Christmas

The latest CREATIVE SPACE is the story of Christmas in the Caribbean. Read it here and share. And check out the CREATIVE SPACE Christmas playlist here.

(Source – me)

Accolades

The Caribbean Writer award winners for volume 35 have been announced. St. Lucian Cecilia Valasse was the Cecile de Jongh literary prize winner for a writer whose work best expresses the spirit of the Caribbean for ‘Castor Oils Seeds’. Antigua-born, Virgin Islands-raised Elaine Jacobs won the Marvin E Williams prize for an emerging writer for ‘Going away without Shoes’. St. Lucian McDonald Dixon, ‘Beloved Country’, Virgin Islander Clarissa Gillard, ‘A Muted Conversation between Races and Social Injustice’, David O’keefe, ‘Caribbean Blues’, and Jamaican Rohan Facey, ‘Not Ordinary Days’ were all short listed for this prize. Short listed for the Canute A. Brodhurst prize for best short fiction were Dominica’s Yakima Cuffy, ‘Truths about Coconuts’, and Canada-based Trinidadian Priya Ramsingh, ‘Pies for Lunch’. The winner is Grenadian Claude C. Allick for ‘The Replacement’. The Vincent Cooper literary prize to a Caribbean writer for exemplary writing in nation language goes to Sherese Francis, who is Dominican and Barbadian American, for ‘SomNuh/Mbulist (Patois Possession). Shortlisted was Eassah Cortez Diaz for ‘No Soy de Aqui; Ni de Alla’. (Source – press release)

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Antigua and Barbuda’s Jamaica Kincaid has been named an inaugural fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The RSL International Writers programme was announced last year as part of RSL 200, a five-year festival launched in 2020 with a series of major new initiatives and 60 new appointments championing the great diversity of writing and writers in the UK. The programme is a new award recognising the contribution of writers across the globe to literature in English, and the power of literature to transcend borders to bring people together. At a time of rising nationalism, RSL International Writers celebrates the many ways in which literature can shape a future world. A life-long honour, new writers will be invited to join the RSL’s International Writers each year forming an ever-expanding global community of authors. While the RSL is the UK’s charity for the advancement of literature, we recognise and seek to celebrate the power of literature to bring us together, beyond borders and across cultures. They invited public recommendations of writers (I actually made a nomination) and the inaugural 12 RSL International writers are: Don Mee Choi, Annie Ernaux, David Grossman, Jamaica Kincaid, Yan Lianke, Amin Maalouf, Alain Mabanckou, Javier Marías, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Claudia Rankine, Olga Tokarczuk and Dubravka Ugrešić. They’re now inviting new nominations of witers not resident in nor citizens of the UK, who have published at least two works of outstanding literary merit. submit by 29th April 2022 here.

Events

Some CREATIVE SPACE news. Antiguan and Barbudan artist Heather Doram had her first full art show since 2006 on December 18th 2021 at Henre Designs Studios in Belmont – a small, fully vaxxed event.

More images and context in this CREATIVE SPACE Coda. It’s been added as a web exclusive to CREATIVE SPACE 2021. And, heads up, you can still catch the interview with mental health advocate Chaneil Imhoff which was the previous full CREATIVE SPACE and check back next Wednesday for the last CREATIVE SPACE of 2021 here. (Source – me)

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Anderson Reynolds book signing in St. Lucia for December 17th and 18th. The books include No Man’s Land, My Father is No Longer Here, The Stall Keeper, The Struggle for Survival, and Death by Fire – all published by St. Lucian publisher, Jako Books. (Source – Jako Productions email)

Opportunities

This is the 2022 schedule for my Jhohadli Writing Project creative writing workshops. Email antiguanwriter@gmail.com if you’d like to be added to the mailing list or have questions. (Source – me)

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There is a call for submission of fiction and poetry on gender based violence in the Caribbean for a forthcoming Peepal Tree publication. Details here. This and other opportunities are listed in Opportunities Too here on the Wadadli Pen blog. (Source – Twitter)

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Did you catch Caribbean Books Foundation celebration of Caribbean Folklore all October? How about their author of the month series? Well, that’s just some of what they’re doing that might be of interest to the Caribbean literary community. “In our continued efforts to promote Caribbean literature, Caribbean writers, and Authors, we’re beefing up our book launch section with a monthly list of books coming out the following month from Caribbean writers.” So add them to your mailing list if you are a Caribbean writer with a book coming out. The list posts the 15th of every month and will include both self-published and traditionally published books. “We will also follow the book launch and post the actual launch on our Social Media networks and Weekly Blog.” They also do author interviews (I have one of these forthcoming with Dance on the Moon author Floree Williams Whyte for my CREATIVE SPACE art and culture series) and book reviews (as do I btw in my Blogger on Books series). To get your forthcoming book listed by the Caribbean Books Foundation, email caribbeanbooksfoundation@gmail.com, your country, book cover, book name (if it’s a part of a series, publisher information, genre, target age group), author name or pen name, blurb or short book summary of 200-250 characters, release date, and pre-order links (max. 2). Caribbean Books Foundation is a registered non-profit in Trinidad and Tobago founded by Marsha Gomes-McKie. (Source – CBF email)

Film

Caribbean Loop recently did an article entitled ‘Antiguan Films that should be added to Your Must-See List’ that led off with the country’s first feature length film, HAMAfilms’ The Sweetest Mango, on which I served as associate producer. Written by D. Gisele Isaac, the romantic dramedy is also “the first indigenous film for the Eastern Caribbean”. There are three other HAMA films (No Seed, on which I was production manager, also written by Isaac; Diablesse, co-written by Allen and Jermilla Kirwan who starred in this and The Sweetest Mango; and The Skin, written by Howard and Mitzi Allen) on the list; all produced by the husband (Howard, also the director) and wife (Mitzi) that make up HAMA. Nigel Trellis’ Working Girl makes the short list. He was writer, producer, and director of the film about a teenage girl struggling with multiple problems including a dying mother. Short film Dadli by rising star Shabier Kirchner (featured earlier this year in my art and culture column CREATIVE SPACE), award winning for his cinematography on Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series and tapped to make his directorial debut with Kei Miller’s Augustown. Read the article and find out where and how you can view the films. See also my CREATIVE SPACE on Antigua and Barbuda films from 2020 and the Antigua and Barbuda film data base on this site. (Source – facebook)

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Poetry is an Island, a film about the poetry of Derek Walcott, Nobel Laureate from the Caribbean, and specifically St. Lucia, is actually a few years old but I’m only learning of it after news of an online screening (during an event called Curfew Cinema). While I missed the viewing window, I looked up the movie anyway and you can see the trailer below, and this is the link to the website. The director (and producer with Aruban Rebecca Roos) is Ida Does out of Suriname.

(Source – JRLee email)

Books

Jamaica’s Poet Laureate Olive Senior has a newish collection, Hurricane Watch, dropping in January 2022. It is collected (previously published) and new works.

(Source – Twitter)

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In case you missed it, Floree Williams Whyte’s latest Dance on the Moon is in the marketplace.

And here’s a preview of my interview with her for the first installment of CREATIVE SPACE for 2022.

(Source – me)

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Rohan Bullkin and the Shadows is the latest from Jamaican writer Juleus Ghunta (Tata and the Big Bad Bull), once again with Caribbean Reads Publishing. The illustrator is Rachel Moss. “Rohan Bullkin is haunted by sinister Shadows that fuel his fear of reading. He hates books so much that he often rips their pages. But when the Shadows become intolerable, Rohan accepts an offer of friendship from a special book. This marks the beginning of a remarkable journey during which he not only learns how to conquer Shadows but also develops a love of books and life.” (synopsis) (Source – Caribbean Reads email)

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‘Willow’, a story earmarked for my short story collection in progress has been previewed in new publication The Perito Prize’s 2021 anthology. Find information on it on my updated Books page. (Source – me)

As with all content 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, Musical Youth, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, The Jungle Outside, and Oh Gad!). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

Reading Room and Gallery 25

The Reading Room and Gallery is a space where I share things I come across that I think you might like too  – some are things of beauty, some just bowl me over with their brilliance, some are things I think we could all learn from, some are artistes I want to support by spreading the word, and some just because. Let’s continue to support the arts and the artistes by rippling the water together. For earlier installments of the Reading Room and Gallery, use the search feature to the right. This is the 25th one which means there are 24 earlier ones (can’t link them all). Remember to keep checking back, this list will grow as I make new finds until it outgrows this page and I move on to the next one. – JCH

MISC.
– re storytelling lessons from the screenplay.

ON BEING A WRITER

“A lot has to happen from the time you finish your book until it is published. ” – from 10 Things I learned as a New Author by Phyllis Piano

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“If I had been deterred or demoralized by the initial rejections, if I had given up then, the manuscript would still be sitting in some drawer.” – Leonard Chang

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‘Thick Skin. I wish you the covering of the cascadura, since you must endure many disappointments and discouragements. Rejection slips are never welcome, and, unless you are very lucky, you will get many of these. Harder, though, may be the tossing-aside of people who dismiss your work, or folks, some of whom you may count as supporters or friends, who pigeonhole you. “A genre writer! Good at fantasy!” “Not bad at children’s stories.” “Good at travel writing — not much else.”’ – Pamela Mordecai

INTERVIEWS

“Most poems begin for me with the very basic, almost physical need to write. Then comes the process of finding the right words, finding images that are both unexpected and easy to relate to. I write, then roll the words around in my mouth a bit, make sure that the texture is right. Read, edit, re-read and repeat!” – Danielle Boodoo Fortune. The post includes three of her poems.

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“This was one of the things I learned about creativity. You have to let go of self-consciousness. When I started thinking about this book, I knew that if I felt self-conscious while writing, it would probably come out bit by bit and it would not be as honest.” – Amy Tan

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“We were just in an atmosphere …that said it was okay to write…there was no separation for me from the West Indian street outside and the work that I was reading, sometimes even in French….I would say that it’s the duty of any parent to check out the talent of the child and to make sure that that talent is not smothered, that you don’t divert that child’s ambition, especially in terms of a writer; we would have more writers if we didn’t have a system that said you have to be a doctor or engineer.” – Derek Walcott in conversation with CBC Radio

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“When you’re creating, it’s not always automatic. Many days in the studios were just days of talking and listening to music that had nothing to do with our music. Sometimes she’d say she wasn’t coming in. We treated it much more as a creative thing than an emotional process, but we knew there was a lot of emotion involved. Literally she’d sometimes say that she just was not coming in, so we’d create new tracks or tweak something or comp a vocal. We always had things to do even when she didn’t come in and we’d pick up where we left off.” – Jimmy Jam (producer) discusses the making of Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“Drop the hints. Don’t point out the clues.” – Janice Hardy on Telegraphing

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“My advice to aspiring writers is the short story is a fantastic form to commit yourself to, but don’t to put all your eggs in the competition basket. Subscribe to your local literary journals, read them, submit your own stories: when accepted, add a line to your literary curriculum vitae; when rejected, take another look at the story and see if there’s anything you want to change before submitting it elsewhere.” – Confessions of a Prize Winner by New Zealand writer Craig Cliff, at Commonwealth Writers

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“Foreshadowing can be a little confusing. It’s a single word used to describe a narrative technique that can be used for two different purposes. Probably there should be two different words—one for each purpose—but there isn’t. So to make this discussion a bit clearer, I’m going to borrow a word from film studies: planting (as in: planting and payoff).” – Don Allmon

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“To me, structure always comes about as a result of trying to answer the issue of point of view.” – Christopher Nolan discussing Dunkirk

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“I decide to dissect myself” – Sheena Rose

POETRY

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?” – from Harlem by Langston Hughes

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“I am the great mother boa
turning the soft egg of the world
beneath my ribs. I will tear myself in two
and heal before morning.” – Danielle Boodoo Fortune

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“I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with Allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe
to cool my thirst.
My oldest daughter is Nefferttiti
the tears from my birth pains created the Nile
I am a beautiful woman” – Ego Trippin by Nikki Giovanni

***

“The night she tried to beat me, I slept on the veranda
of the shop in the square. At dawn, a man hauled
me home. She dragged me to school, whipped me
with the principal’s cane.” – Wounds by Juleus Ghunta

FICTION

“Hyacinth Ike wanted to kill himself because he had lived a fulfilled, successful life and couldn’t think of anything else he was loitering in the world for.” – By Way of a Life Plot by Kelechi Njoku

***

-excerpt from The Wide Circumference of Love by Marita Golden
***

“God thought of ways to punish the woman for what she had done, without immediately killing her.” – from The Day After by Stephen Greenblatt in The Paris Review

NON-FICTION

“I remember a Haitian radio show I was on years ago, after my first book was published. This woman called in to say, ‘That’s all fine and good, but you better get your nursing degree.’” – Edwidge Dandicat

***

‘It doesn’t matter what pisses you off, she says, as long as you pay attention to that feeling. “Writing against” is a good compass “until you know what you’re writing for,” she said.’ – Katherine Boo’s 15 Rules for Narrative Non Fiction

***

“Most of us are not compelled to linger with the knowledge of our aloneness, for it is a knowledge that can paralyze all action in this world.” – The Creative Process by James Baldwin

***

Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman speech is a powerful piece of speechmaking (note the use of tone and rhetoric in the words and in this Cicely Tyson interpretation of them).

***

“You stay because it’s your home, you have to stay and take care of it.” – Luis by Jo-Anne Mason

As with all content 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!, Fish Outta Water, With Grace, and Musical Youth). All Rights Reserved. Do not re-use content without permission and credit. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

Reading Room and Gallery 23

The Reading Room and Gallery is a space where I share things I come across that I think you might like too  – some are things of beauty, some just bowl me over with their brilliance, some are things I think we could all learn from, some are artistes I want to support by spreading the word, and some just because. Let’s continue to support the arts and the artistes by rippling the water together. For earlier installments of the Reading Room and Gallery, use the search feature to the right. This is the 23rd one which means there are 22 earlier ones (can’t link them all). Remember to keep checking back, this list will grow as I make new finds until it outgrows this page and I move on to the next one.

NON FICTION

“It wasn’t as bad as I make it sound now; it was worse.” – Jamaica Kincaid’s essay On Seeing England for the First Time

MISC.

‘We must never for a moment doubt that it is absolutely vital that a nation should foster and honour its writers. The good writer devotes his energy to searching for truth. And in the love of truth, straight and unvarnished, lies not only the hope but the safety of a nation. “The people need poetry,” the great Russian Poet, Osip Mandelstam, wrote, “to keep them awake forever.” The good writer, the true writer, as Cyril Connolly said in Enemies of Promise, “helps to unmask those pretenders which distract all human plans for improvement: the love of power and money, the short-sighted acquisitive passions, the legacies of injustice and ignorance, a tiger instinct for fighting, the ape-like desire to go with the crowd. A writer must be a lie-detector who exposes fallacies in words and ideals before half the world is killed for them.”’ – Ian McDonald

FROM THE BLOGS

“People think writing children’s stories is some simple, easy thing. You’ve heard that, right? It is not; children deserve that as much attention be taken with their stories as would be taken with an adult novel. The child doesn’t need to recognize the many layers in a story. The layers of meaning will come later, or not, but the layers create the finished picture. The child just needs needs to enjoy the story, just needs that satisfying feeling of reading a story where the ending spreads like joy from the tips of the toes to the tips of the fingers and creates a bubbling-up-joy in the heart and mind.” – Caribbean Children’s Literature Diane Browne

***

“he dipped his toe in the puddle
of her first words” – SimplyNatural1

STORIES

“Being a migrant is like living in a limboland where you never fully belong anywhere, the positive perspective being it also gives you a wider and deeper empathy and universality.” – Maggie Harris interview

***

***

“In the lateness of the night, she rises from the table. After these many years, she has become attuned to the restaurant, and to her beloved. They work in tandem. She can hear the eaves sigh in the wind, feel the dining room chairs sag with relief as the frenetic energy of the day finally draws to a close.” – The Woman Who Lived in the Restaurant by Leone Ross

***

“Across a field of short, sparse grass, she spied another group of aliens, facing each other in silence as usual, with their silver-stones piled in the center. Some were young—short with thick fur. Others were old—their scaly skin showing where hair had fallen out in patches about their body. She wondered if they considered this planet theirs. The family parrot, Rupert, considered the bell on his cage to be his property and pecked anyone who tried to move it. And the aliens of this world were certainly smarter than Rupert. Clara remembered her father’s stories about Columbus invading the Caribbean a thousand years before and declaring himself its discoverer. Maybe Clara and her family were the invaders now.” – from Clara in the New World, 2492 A.D. by Imam Baksh – See more here.

***

“Placing one slender, manicured tip on the backspace key, she erased every word, every trace of what she’d been feeling. It was four in the afternoon, and Laurie was beginning to feel suffocated. She needed this meeting to end. The only consolation was that she’d chosen a seat with her back against the wall, so her screen was not easily seen. Today was not her day to present, nor did she have the energy to rebut the statements being made, so she blindly allowed her mind to wander – a dangerous pastime.” – The Looking Glass by Zahra Airall (also posted to A & B Writings in Journals and Contests)

INTERVIEWS

“I would say to young writers be true to yourself and go for what is deeply meaningful for you, ask yourself over and over: What do I want to say?   Be as authentic to yourself and your subject as you can be.  Write every day.” – Lawrence Scott

***

“It’s scary out there, man. It’s so scary.” – Kendrick Lamar with Rick Rubin

***

“My mantra is definitely slow and steady wins the race. I apply this mantra to a lot of things, but I think in terms of my business I really avoid the sensation of being overwhelmed.” – Holly Wren Spaulding

***

Several Caribbean writers sharing their work and insights, including Jamaica’s Tanya Shirley – “Matter of fact which women really needs a head unless she’s proficient in giving head and keeping her mouth shut when she’s not”; St. Lucia’s Vladimir Lucien – “…no land, not enough last name to get the loan…”; and Barbados’ Karen Lord – “It appears that war, when deprived of one reason, simply seeks out another; we are still a people divided.” – listen to the full thing at the BBC.

***

“…if you have just finished writing your first story, you may want to take some time honing it and your craft and ensuring that it is truly ready for publication before approaching publishers. Completing a draft for most writers is the first step in a long journey of becoming a published author.” – advice from agent Anna Ghosh

***

“Every day I learn to write a better sentence.” – Ingrid Persaud and other Caribbean Commonwealth short story finalists interviewed by Shivanee Ramlochan

POEMS

“Bob Marley doesn’t know
His song has been hijacked
And drummed into heads
Knees weak from fear
Do not allow us to stand up.” – Althea Romeo-Mark’s Revolution and Reggae (Liberian Coup 1985) in Calabash

***

“light      smoke      how to dance

disco ball blocked by bodies

the sun eclipsed by moons

men growing like trees

in this club we leap

we do not look” – After Oliver Senior, ‘Flying’ by Andre Bagoo in Cordite Poetry Review 

***

“I think of you like a storm remembered—a marker in my life

Stalking my dreams and my memories like a phantom” – Stormy Night by Damian Femi Rene in Cordite Poetry Review

***

“when I was eight, a priest came and flicked holy water

into the four corners of this wooden house

that kept my parents, two sons, a daughter,

and a darkening forest in its mouth.” – Exorcism/Freeport by Richard Georges in Cordite Poetry Review

***

“Their point guard calling an illegal pick

as we double teamed, breathing like dogs

on a leash. I was staying in the spare room

of your house. Living below the line

like denominators until I learnt Algebra;

from the word Al-jabr – the reunion

of broken parts. Your nephew the third man,

floated by (a silver shadow) and drained

a three crunch through the chains.” – Pythagoras Theorem by Nick Makoha in Adda

***

***

“Nennen’s toothless smile

Granny lifts her skirt high

before plunging them back between her thighs

and a laugh from deep within bellows joy

Another aunt tears streaming from her face

thumps a table and gasps for air

and a laugh escapes

peeling sorrow away from the wooden walls

of the house

in Salem” – Chadd Cumberbatch, Norene’ s Laugh

***

“Beautiful man, you are

the ocean churning inside a skull. Every cuss

a broken piece of bottle. You never left

the island but long to. Fingertips smelling

of tobacco or herb, always ready

to fight someone or something.

Thrusting a gun finger

into the air, rigid—

a brown beacon; I will you

to life: fuse sinew, blood

tendons, bones, memories.” – Poem for a Gunman by Soyini Ayanna Forde

***

“I am the last in the line of the man Massa bury.

My great- grandmother run to the hills

same day, with Papa in her belly. Papa

was a wild one, kill plenty backra. Each time

he kill one  him say, ‘Massa me no dead yet.’” – Penny Kill Shilling by Monica Minnot 

***

“Because to him
Giving in
Is the only real sin” – Joanne C. Hillhouse’s Differences (also posted to A & B Writings in Journals and Contests)

***

“Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.” – Love after Love by Derek Walcott (read by Tom Hiddleston)

***

“I felt sleepy, bored by the mundane,
the usual conversation and the continual beauty
of sun and sea” – from The Day The Sea Turned Brown by Tania Haberland in Adda

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“I had this image of a woman grieving the illness of her lover, but yes, the lover is not-quite-human. He’s a construction or a creation or a person who has been made in our own image. I was thinking of love as a double helix between attraction to the other, the opposite; and attraction to some unarticulated part of ourselves that we recognize in another. And then, out of the blue, I could see Jin and Naomi dancing together, and the perspective was that of child, a neighbor, watching this love affair unfold, and interpreting that otherness, that not-quite-humanness, in a very different way. So that was the beginning.” – Five Questions for Madeleine Thien

***

“You learn about the objective art of rhetoric, more specifically about the structural choices that bad and good men have made in speeches to lead us down certain garden paths – not by magic, but by repetition and specific diction and verb choice.” – Leone Ross on The Answer to that Question: Where do I get Ideas from

***

“The reason an inciting moment matters is that it determines what the story is about. It’s like a snowball that is pushed down a hill. It will gather it’s own momentum, and direct the story to its conclusion unless you put obstacles in the way (like a rock) to throw it off track and into another direction. If you don’t want your story about Cinderella to hinge on the prince’s ball, you might not want to include the invitation in the plot in the first place.” – Andrea Lundgren

***

Solange Knowles jam sessions and creative process for Seat at the Table.

***

“When I sat down to write Ashael Rising, I knew very little about KalaDene. In fact, it didn’t even have a name until the third draft or so. My world-building was all done as I went along. I once heard an excellent description of the process; it explains just what it feels like to me so I’m going to share it here. World-building is like walking through a tunnel (the world) with a torch (the story) so I can see as much of the world as the story shines a light on and a little bit around the edges but everything else is just fuzzy shapes in the darkness, with maybe a puff of cool air indicating that there might be a door to somewhere else off to the left.” – Shona Kinsella talks world building

***

“Here’s the catch: More than one type of character arc exists. Our characters can change for better or worse. Or, perhaps they might not change much, except in strength of resolve. So, how do writers determine what kind of arc a character is following, or which arc fits our story best?” – Fantasy writer Sara Letourneau blogging on character arcs

***

“People think writing children’s stories is some simple, easy thing. You’ve heard that, right? It is not; children deserve that as much attention be taken with their stories as would be taken with an adult novel. The child doesn’t need to recognize the many layers in a story. The layers of meaning will come later, or not, but the layers create the finished picture. The child just needs needs to enjoy the story, just needs that satisfying feeling of reading a story where the ending spreads like joy from the tips of the toes to the tips of the fingers and creates a bubbling-up-joy in the heart and mind.” – Jamaican author Diane Browne blogging Children as Heroes/Heroines of Their Own Stories

As with all content 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!, Fish Outta Water, Musical Youth, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight 10th Anniversary Edition and Other Writings, With Grace). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

RIP, Sir Derek

A giant of world literature and son of the Caribbean, Nobel Laureate Sir Derek Walcott has died. Details are slim at this time. But this link at St. Lucia News Online is one of several in his homeland announcing his passing. Will share more links in this space as they become available.

Walk good, Sir.

UPDATES as they come:

ETA the Eulogy by Edward Baugh .

“His monumental poetry, including 1973’s verse autobiography, Another Life, and his Caribbean reimagining of The Odyssey, 1990’s Omeros, secured him an international reputation which gained him the Nobel prize in 1992. But this was matched by a theatrical career conducted mostly in the islands of his birth as a director and writer with more than 80 plays to his credit.

…

“For the Jamaican poet Kei Miller, Walcott’s most important contribution was perhaps his assertion of his Caribbean identity and his confidence that this identity was enough to encompass all of human experience.

““Walcott always insisted that he was a Caribbean writer,” Miller said, “and that this wasn’t a limit, that it didn’t make his work parochial. I always say I want to write a large literature from a small place, and it is Walcott who embodies that attitude more than anyone else.” While the colonial experience was terrible, he continued, Walcott argued that it gave him “the language that was his kingdom. His poetry was supremely ambitious. He was taking on Shakespeare, he was taking on Chaucer, he was taking on Dante – all of these were his forefathers and he thought of himself as equal to them. This is what great writing was and this is what he wanted to produce … he wanted to stand alongside them.”” – The Guardian (UK)

“He had a sense of the Caribbean’s grandeur that inspired him to write “Omeros,” a transposed Homeric epic of more than 300 pages, published in 1990, with humble fishermen and a taxi driver standing in for the heroes of ancient Greece.

“Two years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. The prize committee cited him for “a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.”

“It continued: “In his literary works Walcott has laid a course for his own cultural environment, but through them he speaks to each and every one of us. In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet.”” – The New York Times (US)

‘The appointment was announced May 1, 2009, and he would begin teaching in September. I wanted to plan a syllabus immediately, but had a very hard time reaching him to find out how he envisioned a creative writing course. His fax machine—there was no email account—was offline, and no one answered the phone at his home in St. Lucia. I wrote letters. Then packets. A postal clerk wept when she couldn’t find St. Lucia on her computer. “Is it a US island?” In August, a fax came from New York, where he was spending the summer. It was just a handwritten list of authors: he wanted me to order editions of Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, W. H. Auden, Hart Crane, and Philip Larkin. He also wanted to include George Meredith’s Victorian-era novel in verse, Modern Love, a book that I had never read. He did not include a creative writing textbook. Nor did he tell me what he would do in the course. I had a month to submit a rush order for books.’ – The Stranger who has loved You by Bert Almon in The Walrus (Canada)

“For my A levels, we are doing Selected Poems by Derek Walcott, edited by Wayne Brown. For a whole year my eyes follow a girl with the most beautifully sculpted face — a finely wrought jaw that produced a jut in her lower lip that seemed to make something elegant of her. Not a girl I was attracted to, or had strong intentions of courting as I think of it now, but as a kind of sculpture, a place where the marks, or style of Creation were visible. Where Creation began to smile to itself and try things, new things with the faces it sculpted. I read it as (or wanted it to be) infatuation at the time. Like Walcott’s beauty, in “The Light of the World”. I had infused her with other loves and impulses of mine. I had forced onto her the weight of symbol for so many interwoven needs.” – Growing Up Under Walcott by Vladimir Lucien on the Peepal Tree Press blog

As with all content on Wadadli Pen, except otherwise noted, this is written by Antiguan and Barbudan writer Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Fish Outta Water, Musical Youth, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight 10th Anniversary Edition and Other Writings, and With Grace; also a freelance writer, editor, writing coach and workshop facilitator). Excerpting, reblogging, linking etc. is fine, but PLEASE do not lift ANY content (images or text) wholesale from this site without asking first and crediting the creator of that work and/or copyright holder. All Rights Reserved. If you like the content here follow or recommend the blog, also, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. Thank you.

Reading Room and Gallery 21

The Reading Room and Gallery is a space where I share things I come across that I think you might like too  – some are things of beauty, some just bowl me over with their brilliance, some are things I think we could all learn from, some are artistes I want to support by spreading the word, and some just because. Let’s continue to support the arts and the artists by rippling the water together. For earlier iterations of the Reading Room and Gallery, use the search feature to the right. This is the 21st one which means there are 20 earlier ones (can’t link them all). Remember to keep checking back, this list will grow as I make new finds until it outgrows this page and I move on to the next one.

INTERVIEWS

Judd Batchelor: What advice would you give to young writers
Dorbrene O’Marde: Two things. Firstly, I want them to write, keep writing it will get better as you write more – read the full interview

***

“I just looking to give back, I looking to show that you can be some body, especially in the arts.” – Sheena Rose

***

“I didn’t set out to write a faerie story, just write myself out of the headspace I’d landed in because of this unexpected negative encounter. As I wrote, I was drawn in by the challenge of doing something I hadn’t done, I enjoy experimentation, and something about taking this negative and working through it in a genre where typically good and bad are clear, and they all lived happily ever after, appealed. Also appealing was this idea of how passion for something can help it flourish, and how good can attract good, do good and good will follow you; and then the faerie was there awakened by, responding to the goodness that this girl was sending her way. It was an interesting development, and I enjoyed exploring it – and that this became a faerie story is the thing I’m most excited about. I like when something I’m writing surprises me.” – Joanne C. Hillhouse

***

“The heart wants what it wants. But I chose to, and aspire to, becoming as good a writer as possible in the circumstances, given the relatively short space of time I’ve got left.” – Andre Bagoo

***

“What I am coming to realize is that long before my preoccupations and obsessions become fully known to me, they are at play in my work.”  – Jacqueline Bishop in conversation with Loretta Collins Klobah

***

“I am a writer first and foremost, but I did a lot of side jobs and odd jobs while I was writing my novel,” Islam says. “I freelanced. I wrote copy for Uniqlo. I modeled for an Al Jazeera campaign. But as I was finishing my book, it struck me. I was like, ‘What am I going to do next? I can’t sit in an office all day. I just can’t.'” She found her answer in her final revisions of Bright Lines. For starters, the patriarch of the story is an apothecary. And as she delved deeper into his persona during the decade she spent at work on the novel, Islam fell hard for fragrance. Besides, she adds, “Brooklyn is such a place to launch a brand. I was really inspired by other beauty brands that had started here. I wanted to have a part in that movement.” And, finally, Islam points to a scene at the end of the novel in which a trio of girls throws wildflower seed bombs into different areas of Brooklyn. The women want the crops to “grow up and into something.” – from Elle.com interview with Tanwi Nandini Islam

***

“Lightfoot:  Chapter Five was difficult to write, but it was also incredibly revealing. It shows that even within such a homogeneous population of working peoples there was an added set of constraints on black women. Specifically, constraints around what women’s roles were supposed to be and the dangers of masculinized black women. And, of course, there was never the sense that black women in post-emancipation Antigua should have the right to stay home and be dainty ladies. Whatever stock ideas about femininity that might have been applied in the middle of the nineteenth century to white women certainly didn’t apply to black women, ever.” – Dr. Natasha Lightfoot, a historian of Antiguan and Barbudan descent, interviewed by the African American Intellectual History Society on her book Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation

***

“The assumption was very real. And then it was actually named, ‘does Solange know who is buying her records?’ So it became a totally different conversation than what I was first approached to be a part of and then it became a conversation yet again about ownership. And here I was feeling so free, feeling so independent, feeling like I had ownership finally over my art, my voice, but I was being challenged on that yet again by being told that this audience had ownership over me. And that was kind of the turning point and the transition for me writing the album that is now A Seat at the Table.” – Solange Knowles talking to Helga on Q2 Music

***

INTERVIEWER
Do you have a reader in your mind when you write?
BALDWIN
No, you can’t have that.
-from James Baldwin, the Art of Fiction No. 78 in the Paris Review

***

“Writing a novel is like pulling a saw out of your vagina. Writing a memoir is like pulling a saw out of your vagina while others are looking on.” – 5 Questions for… Emily Raboteau

***

“It is a myth of my own invention. I am taken with the idea of creating new myths that speak to our current world in the same way that old mythology spoke to the world in its creators’ time.” – Lesley Nneka Arimah on Imagining a Universe of Handcrafted Babies  in her story Who Will Greet You at Home published in the New Yorker

***

“My mother also tells me that for Celeste different children and their various broods would be assigned various colours in her quilt-making schemata which is all quite interesting to me, one set of children being red, one being yellow etc. What I think is lost to us is the stories that my great grandmother was telling in her funky multi-coloured quilts about her family, because no one knows who was assigned which colour. I also mourn the fact that when my great grandmother died my cousin Mary told me that she was wrapped in two of her biggest and best quilts and taken to the morgue in Port Antonio Bay and no doubt those quilts were simply discarded. This is why I so appreciate your interest in this subject and you doing this interview Veerle because we might all be discarding and getting rid of quite valuable things.” – Jacqueline Bishop

***

“Is it lazy to look at the Caribbean as a unified whole rather than individual states?

I think it’s lazy to look at a country as a unified whole. But there are resonances and reasons why I think of myself as writing Caribbean literature more profoundly than Jamaican literature. The Caribbean isn’t a whole but there are aspects of unity and Jamaica isn’t a whole either, which is what this book is trying to say.” – Kei Miller

FICTION

‘But Theo never remembered that the pedal of the trashcan was broken. He would step on it without looking and drop the banana peel or the wet tuna-juicy baggie directly on top of the still-closed lid, and then walk away, leaving the garbage there for Heather to clean up, a habit that had finally caused her, just last night, to spit at him, in a voice that came straight from her spleen, “Pay attention, for Christ’s sake! Why don’t you ever, ever pay attention!”’ – Amy Hassinger’s Sympathetic Creatures

***

“I don’t know what gods watch me, or how it came to be that my fate brought me to an island in the Caribbean sea. It was miraculous, not least because, in the novel I am currently writing, there is a shipwreck in that same sea. I would not know how to write it if I had not found myself in a Jamaican fishing boat one wet and windy day in June, contemplating the whims of the sea and the alligators up the river. But it is equally miraculous to find myself in a humble neighbourhood in my own country, face to face with women who quietly go about their lives, walking between worlds, singing up salvation by connecting us with our own roots.” – ‘On All Our Different Islands’ by Tina’s Makereti, Pacific regional winner for the 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize

***

“It’s sick and it’s soulless but it’s one of the things I love about my job; here you can force the world to be something it’s not.” – audio reading of The November Story by Rebecca Makkai

***

“The blue plumes of the peacock’s tail were shot through with filaments of silver and, twenty years on, the ink hadn’t faded. It sat on her long slim body like a birthmark.” – from Peacock by Sharon Millar

***

“Now, listen to this next bit carefully: in the morning THE WHOLE KIPPS FAMILY have breakfast together and a conversation TOGETHER and then get into a car TOGETHER (are you taking notes?) — I know, I know — not easy to get your head around. I never met a family who wanted to spend so much time with each other.” – from Zadie Smith, On Beauty

***

“No, Pa, it really could happen that way!” – A Conversation with My Father by Grace Paley as read by Ali Smith

***

“I do not lie,” Crispín replied. “Adannaya is not only the most beautiful mulata of this hacienda and the best bomba dancer; she can also change brown sugar into white. Yes she can! And if I only had some brown sugar, I would prove it to you.” – from Adannaya’s Sugar, a fairytale by Carmen Milagros Torres

***

“We were surprised to find ourselves thinking again, it had been so long.” – from We by Mary Grimm

***

“Tantie Lucy had drunk from the cup of happy living and the shop was her world.” – Lance Dowrich’s In and Out the Dusty Window

***

“It was a joyous occasion in a young woman’s life when her mother blessed life into her child. The two girls flushed and smiled with pleasure when another woman commended their handiwork (such tight, lovely stitches) and wished them well. Ogechi wished them death by drowning, though not out loud. The congratulating woman turned to her, eager to spread her admiration, but once she had looked Ogechi over, seen the threadbare dress, the empty lap, and the entirety of her unremarkable package, she just gave an embarrassed smile and studied her fingers. Ogechi stared at her for the rest of the ride, hoping to make her uncomfortable.” – Who will greet you at home by Lesley Nneka Arima

***

“Some days I am alone, and I wonder whether I exist.” – Circus by Anushka Jasraj

***

“The three of us, smelly and itchy, clinging to each other, waiting for the gasoline and vinegar in our hair to start the killing. We had lice. Our heads were wrapped in bright turbans made from my mother’s old hippie skirts. She was reading my left palm to see if I was going to pass my math test. With one hand, my sister was holding my nose, and with the other she was drawing skulls and bones on my brother’s arm with a red pen. With his left hand he was holding her foot, and with his right, the table. We were always prepared in case somebody tried to separate us by force.” – from A Bunch of Savages by Sofi Stambo

***

“But what angered Zeke even more than the ancestors’ silence was the knowledge that he was helping Sonia to seduce a man who, sometime in the foreseeable future, would beat her for burning his dinner or create any other excuse he could think of to abandon her, as he done to all his other baby mothers after he had gotten what he wanted.” – Myal Man by Geoffrey Philp

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“I think, there’s a couple of songs.  I’m, I’m really proud of  “How far I’ll go.” I literally locked myself up in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house, to write those lyrics. I wanted to get to my angstiest possible place. So I went Method on that. And really, because it’s a challenging song. It’s not ‘I hate it here, I want to be out there.’  It’s not, ‘there must be more than this provincial life.’  She loves her island, she loves her parents, she loves her people.  And there’s still this voice inside.  And I think finding that notion of listening to that little voice inside you, and, and that being who you are. Once I wrote that lyric… It then had huge story repercussions. The screenwriters took that ball and ran with it.” – Lin Manuel Miranda on writing songs for the animated film Moana

***

“…it comes down to cause and effect, but and therefore.” – Janice Hardy on plotting

***

‘So much as it is possible in a manuscript, every scene should be followed by another scene that dramatizes either a “Therefore” or a “But,” not an “And Then.” So if, in one scene, a girl has intimate eye contact with a beautiful male vampire, the next scene should either dramatize the consequences of that eye contact, which will likely raise the stakes or escalate the emotion—THEREFORE she kisses him; or introduce a complication/obstacle—BUT she remembers she hates vampires, so she drives a stake through his heart. If they continue to stare into each other’s eyes, or maybe they just get some tea, that’s an AND THEN—nothing new is happening, because it’s at the same level of emotion as the previous action, and so while movement is occurring in the plot, it isn’t necessarily dramatic action. And action is ultimately what keeps readers reading:  change, challenge, consequence, growth, for a character in whom they’re invested.’ – Trey Parker and Matt Stone

***

“Now this: mistakes are everything. Write, abandon, start again. But understand you will do this on your own, over and over.” –  Ellene Glenn Moore

***

“At one point, I got the idea to ‘set a clock’ in the Antarctica thread. Instead of making her time there quasi-borderless, I would limit her stay at the station to four or five days. This simple question about literal time led me to a host of new questions and discoveries: Instead of a scientist, she was now a civilian, which would account for why she, as a kind of interloper, would have limited access. From there, I wondered: what would a civilian want with an Antarctic research station? What is she in Antarctica to do? What will happen if she fails? Eventually I located the timeline that unfolds in the past, and explores the nature of the estrangement and how a secret shared between the narrator and her sister-in-law brought about an irrevocable fracturing. In this version, the past informed the way the narrator experienced the present; it helped the present to matter.” – from Inventing Time by Laura van den Berg

***

“3.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” –Kurt Vonnegut’s rules of writing

***

“different works have different ambitions and, therefore, require different approaches” – Zehra Nabi

***

“I abandoned short stories and wrote a novel.  Maybe short stories weren’t my thing.  In a book, I had more elbow room.” – The Big Rush, or What I Learned from Sending a Story Out Too Soon by Julie Wu

***

“You have to do the work; you have to do your research. There are no short cuts.” – Justina Ireland in discussion on Writing the Other

POETRY

“Here’s to the fools who dream
Crazy as they may seem
Here’s to the hearts that break
Here’s to the mess we make” (from La-La Land. Lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul)

***

“That is how life is.

When you are placed in hot oil

be patient

keep going

you will be ready soon.” – Browning Meat by M. A. Brown in Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters

***

“My father
would not have imagined

seeing me here,
hearing of me fleeing a war.” – Althea Romeo-Mark’s A Kind of Refugee

***

“Maybe it is best
not to know.
Maybe it is
Inevitable.” – I am Unsure by Ashley Harris

***

“That’s one thing nobody tells you. Sometimes it’s okay to give up.” – Boys Don’t Cry

“give yourself a chance Andre
be open
love someone
do not fret, fete” – A Prayer to Andre

“When the nurse takes
blood you won’t have to be afraid
of her knowing you are afraid.
And then maybe you could tackle your
your fear of white cars next.” – Incurable Fears
from Poems by Andre Bagoo in Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters

***

“as I walk

people

stare and pass by

on the far side” – Madness Disguises Sanity by Opal Palmer Adisa

***

“The mirrors of their eyes only blind me.” – from Ivy Alvarez’s What Ingrid Bergman Wanted

***

“He is a writer a sensitive man
a thundering terrible intelligence” – from Pamela Mordecai’s Great Writers and Toads

***

“The new therapist specializes in trauma counseling. You have only ever spoken on the phone. Her house has a side gate that leads to a back entrance she uses for patients. You walk down a path bordered on both sides with deer grass and rosemary to the gate, which turns out to be locked.

At the front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door finally opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house. What are you doing in my yard?” – Claudia Rankine reading excerpts from her book Citizen 

***

“Another glittering day without you; take my hand
and bring me to wherever we were: the empty house
in Petit Valley or the city of Lapeyrouse
where headstones multiply like sails on a Sunday,
where a widower tacks under a pink parasol,
where people think that pain or pan is good for the soul.” – excerpt from Derek Walcott’s Lapeyrouse Umbrella published in Morning, Paramin

***

“I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to” – from God says Yes to Me by Kaylin Haught

VISUAL ART

Cloudrise from Denver Jackson on Vimeo which I discovered through the Wardens Walk blog  which I discovered through the Pages Unbound blog

***

Painting by Antiguan artist Rachel Bento, on commission from the Governor General of Antigua and Barbuda, of Team Wadadli, which took the Talisker Whisky Challenge (2015-2016) rowing approximately 3000 nautical miles across the Atlantic – from the Canary Islands to Antigua – in 52 days. They set two world records – oldest team and oldest rower – in the process. Bento’s commission commemorates their historic achievement. See more of Bento’s work here.

MISC.

Speculative fans, I thought you might find this bibliography interesting. It’s a Bibliography of Caribbean Science Fiction and Fantasy.

***

‘I have not yet had a student turn me down.  Some of the ARCs came back after a few days with a negative review, but most of the time the readers would seek me out before school in the morning to tell me they had finished the book and thought it was, “GREAT!”  The readers who brought back the “GREAT” ARCs often brought a friend with them who wanted to be the second person in the building to read the book.  And before my eyes, dormant readers woke up!’ – teacher, librarian Mary Jo Staal on the Power of the Arc in stoking her students’ interest in reading

From the Mailbox: John R. Lee Review of the Globe’s Staging of Walcott’s Omeros

This is late but I want to post it anyway. So.

By John R. Lee

On Tuesday May 3rd and Wednesday May 4th, Omeros came home to Saint Lucia. The dramatised version of Walcott’s major, 325 page, book-length poem of the same name (1990), was presented by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. The venue was the National Cultural Centre. The two-actor masterpiece, and make no mistake, we watched a masterpiece of poetry and drama, featured St. Lucia’s Joseph Marcell and actress Joan Iyiola.

I say Omeros came home since the powerful descriptive-lyrical-narrative poetry of Sir Derek, set in Gros Islet, with iconic fishermen and villagers at the centre of the drama, resonated in St. Lucia, with St. Lucian audiences, in a way that is probably not possible in London or New York or other metropolitan centres. I would love to see this play put on in Gros Islet, in the open air, free of charge, to the public. It would have a liberating reception that would be unique. And I think that Walcott would feel a deep satisfaction that those of his home people for whom he writes recognised and received his work and portrayal of their lives, with a joy and satisfaction beyond real or imagined boundaries of class and education.

In case anyone had forgotten, we were reminded that Sir Derek Walcott, grown up on 17 Chaussee Road, is a major international poet. The Omeros poem /drama we witnessed showed a great and powerful imagination, an almost unbelievable skill with language, metaphor, image, ideas that compare with the great masters Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton and others of that ilk. Walcott is a modern master (I state the obvious.) He is a master of the English language, of Caribbean/St. Lucian idiom; he is a painter and playwright and theatre director, so the lines so exactly rendered by the fine actors (and they, Shakespearean actors are very fine actors) carry a power of description/narrative/lyrical beauty/humour/compassion that can move one to tears. I was so moved.

Omeros carries stories of love; death both natural and tragic; healing and reconciliation; fractures of history; and racial and historical reconciliations that are effected through vision and a kind of magical realism. And for those who were not there, these epical narratives are shouldered by two excellent actors, presenting/performing the verse poetry of Nobel laureate Walcott.

The central characters, presented through role changes of Marcell and Iyiola, are Helene, Achille, Hector, Philoctete, Ma Kilman, an English couple resident in St. Lucia (the unnamed but definite setting) Denis and Maude, Seven Seas. The beach on Gros Islet, the No Pain Cafe, bedrooms, the gommier forests are among the settings. And, forgive my repetition, but these are drawn through the verse and the actors’ presentation of these through their dramatisation.

In Joseph Marcell, Walcott has found the perfect Walcottian actor. I would like to see him do other Walcott creations, eg Makak in Dream in Monkey Mountain, the devil/planter in Ti Jean, the schoolmaster in Remembrance and other now-famous Walcott creations. As well as doing readings of Walcott’s verse.

The director and adapter Bill Buckhurst deserves full credit for his faithful, empathetic, understanding, imaginative shaping and directing of Omeros. The original 325 page modern classic had to be framed in a two-hour drama. Choices had to be made (with the guidance of the poet/playwright) as to what of the comprehensive long poem would reflect its essence, its centrality. And they succeeded very well.

The set was simple, built on the floor in front of the NCC stage. A large straw mat was the performing space, two Japanese-type screens provided entrance to the performing area. On the stage, Tayo Akinbode provided a percussive musical accompaniment that underscored, sensitively, the lines and moments. Candles in lanterns provided the illumination, subtly supported by regular theatre lighting. The designer was Anthony Lamble. An attractive programme came with the ticket.

Anything to carp about? Not really. One may be tempted to wish that the African Joan Iyiola could have produced a French Creole/Caribbean accent more strongly, but fine actress that she is, her strong and moving performance more than compensated, for what is after all, just an understandable desire for a complete St. Lucian accented sound in such a complete St. Lucian poetic drama.
Congratulations are in order to the organisers of the 25th anniversary of the Saint Lucia Jazz and Arts Festival 2016, who brought us this great Walcottian drama. And to the Globe theatre who have made St. Lucia a regular stop in their tours. They came in other years with King Lear (Joseph Marcell in the lead) and Hamlet.

My heart’s desire is that many more St. Lucians, and many more of those portrayed in Walcott’s great love and healing narrative (with all the pain involved,) could have experienced it.

This review is reposted with its author’s permission. DO NOT Steal. You can excerpt and link back but nuh steal as though smadee nuh write um.

New Bibliography

I’ve been working on an Antiguan and Barbudan bibliography since 2005,  it’s a work in progress on this site; and as regular visitors to the site know, I also have genre-specific lists of Antiguan and Barbudan literary works (allowing users to search for Antiguan and Barbudan fiction, poetry, plays and screenplays, songs,  non fiction, journal publications, reviews and more). Similarly, in St. Lucia, they’ve put together a bibliography of local books, but have found support from the Cultural Foundation there to get it published. It’s done by the same person who did the selected bibliography of Caribbean works also posted on this site.

I think it’s great when the creative folks and the institutions meant to support the creative arts can partner like this. Here’s the official release re the St. Lucia project:

Bibliography of St. Lucian Creative writing 1948 – 2013.

A Bibliography of St. Lucian Creative Writing – Prose, Poetry, Drama, 1948 – 2013 is now available. It is compiled and edited by John Robert Lee, St. Lucian writer and librarian, with assistance from librarian Ms. Anna Weekes.

It is published by Mahanaim Publishing in association with the Cultural Development Foundation. The CDF will be publishing an ebook version of the bibliography.

This reference work will be an invaluable tool for those researching St. Lucian literature, for anyone interested in identifying works of St. Lucian literature and for writers who want to better understand the larger literary tradition and historical context of which they are a part.

While much has been written about Nobel laureate Derek Walcott abroad, this bibliography covers his writings in local papers, and reports by local newspapers and magazines of his activities here at home.

The 212 pg. illustrated book lists published and unpublished books by St. Lucians writing prose (fiction and non-fiction), poetry and drama. A substantial section lists reviews and articles on St. Lucian literature and other arts by both St. Lucian and non- St. Lucians. One section provides a listing of background readings in culture, language, history etc which throw light on the literature.

Lee began this work in the mid eighties and was commissioned by the CDF last year to complete this important historical reference book. In 2006, the CDF had published ‘Saint Lucian Literature and Theatre: an anthology of reviews’, compiled and edited by Lee and fellow St. Lucian writer, Kendel Hippolyte. The bibliography becomes a companion volume to this anthology. They will both be indispensable to students, readers and writers of Saint Lucian Literature.

The book was launched at the ACLALS Conference held in St. Lucia August 5-9, at the Sandals Grande Hotel. It is available at local bookstores.

Librarians are encouraged to purchase copies for the Reference Sections of their libraries.

The covers of the Bibliography and the Anthology feature the art work of St. Lucian painter Kenneth ‘Scotty’ Lawrence.

 

Reading Room and Gallery

UPDATE! The Gallery is now closed. Continue reading at Reading Room and Gallery II, Reading Room and Gallery III, and Reading Room and Gallery IV.

DISCLAIMER: By definition, you’ll be linking to third party sites from these Links-We-Love pages. Linked sites are not, however, reviewed or controlled by Wadadli Pen (the blog, the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize nor coordinator/blogger Joanne C. Hillhouse); and Wadadli Pen (the blog, the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize and coordinator/blogger Joanne C. Hillhouse) disclaims any responsibility or liability relating to any linked sites and does not assume any responsibility for their contents. In other words, enter at your own risk.

Here you’ll find stories, interviews, reviews, poems; you name it…a totally subjective showcase of (mostly) Caribbean written (sometimes visual and audio visual) pieces that I (Joanne) have either personally appreciated or which have been recommended (and approved) for posting/linking. If you’re looking for the winning Wadadli Pen stories (and I hope you are!), click on ‘Categories’ and go to the respective year for ‘2004 Winners’, ‘2005 Winners’, ‘2006 Winners’, ‘2010 Winners’, 2011 winners… You can also see the Best of Wadadli Pen special issue at Anansesem which has the added feature of audio dramatizations of some of the stories.

POEMS

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2011/02/over-hawkins-hill/ – hard to believe this writer is only 13; some interesting insights and beautifully rendered language here.

http://afrobeatjournal.org/en/Issue_2_Spring_2011/1/129/Debris-Poetry-Jamaica-Marcia-Douglas.htm – From Afro Beat Journal, Debris by Marcia Douglas, a British born, Jamaican writer, who reportedly teaches in the US. We are a migratory people, aren’t we; kind of like the juice bag she writes about that still floats somewhere in the sea.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2011/08/the-magic-mirror-tempts-lilys-white-daughter-1951 – a literary mash-up of Snow White and racial politics. Very interesting.

http://www.anansesem.com/2011/10/earths-water.html – imagery, personification…nature comes alive in this one by Summer Edward.

http://www.nyu.edu/calabash/vol5no1/0501042.pdf – literary shout outs aplenty suffuse this lively poem (When I Die by Ann-Margaret Lim).

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/179809 – A little hip action: Hip-Hop Ghazal by Patricia Smith.

http://www.online-literature.com/frost/748 – Nothing Gold Can Stay; love love this poem…and can relate to/understand it better now as a 30 something than I did when I first heard Pony Boy say it in one of my fav movies a a kid The Outsiders …years later I actually visited Frost Farm (Aside: visited Little Women  author Louisa May Alcott house that summer, too :-)) – Summer ’08, walked a good road that summer, which calls to mind another Frost favourite, The Road Not Taken.

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/7126-William-Shakespeare-Sonnet-116—Let-me-not-to-the-marriage-of-true-minds— a favourite from the English bard, Shakespeare.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0&feature=related – Maya. Enough said.

http://www.bartleby.com/126/52.html – ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ by another personal favourite John Keats.

http://ananseseminfo.blogspot.com/2010/12/sugarcane-dance.html – I just love how this feels. Summer Edward’s Sugar Cane Dance at Anansesem, a site for Caribbean children’s literature.

http://www.nyu.edu/calabash/vol4no2/0402115.pdf – Mervyn Morris (my writing mentor during my UWI days) says so much with such few words in this endearing piece.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/04/liberian-curfew/ – This poem set in war torn Liberia and written by Antiguan, Althea Romeo-Mark has been described as “powerful”, “touching”, and “strong”.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/12/chameleon-thoughts – Danielle Boodoo Fortune is a relatively new discovery (first heard her read in 2008) who’s quickly become an old favourite. Here’s an example of why. Here’s another example: Evening in the Room Built from Words.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2009/03/the-joy-of-planting-banana-suckers-in-your-own-land – The Joy of Planting Suckers in Your Own Land; of the compulsion to grow things (a plantain, a child, a nation, an idea…)

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/06/1-o-clock-mass  – ‘1 o’clock mass’ – the line that jumps out at me from this “do nations unite or do they divide”.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/08/sip-an-talk – a related piece (borders, immigration and themes of that nature) by Angelique Nixon.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/06/what-you-cryin-for -The causes and symptoms of crime take centre stage in this piece ‘What you Crying for?’ by Anku Sa Ra, well complemented by the Stevie Burrows image entitled, appropriately, ‘Crime’. Tongues of the Ocean is a multi-media site and this is one of the postings that have, in addition to the written, an aural presentation of the work.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2009/11/wheelbarrow-woman – Readers describe this Lynn Sweeting poem which challenges readers to “love up your own self fearlessly” as “refreshing and candid”.

http://www.nyu.edu/calabash/vol4no2/0402128.pdf – Delores Gauntlett’s Pocomania appeared in Volume 4 Number 2 in the Spring 2007 issue of Calabash.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/03/marassa-jumeaux/ – Geoffery Philp’s perspective on Haiti had an interesting “angle” on things. And for those who think Anansi is always up to no good for no good reason, check out his ‘Anancy Song’ here

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/current/ – This leads to Xan-Xi Bethel’s ‘Sister, Love’, a poignant piece on Haiti, complemented by Lindsay Braynan’s touching image ‘Help a Sistah Out, Man’.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/07/walcott-in-nassau – Walcott in Nassau; very effective analogy.

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm – If.

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/119806-Edna-St–Vincent-Millay-To-A-Friend-Estranged-From-Me – Actually discovered this as a teen in my much-dog-eared (translation: much loved) copy of Stephanie Tolan’s The Last of Eden. Love the imagery in the first verse, especially and the sense of loss and longing it evokes.

http://imani.wordpress.com/2007/05/13/for-my-mother-may-i-inherit-half-her-strength/ & http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/projectsandschemes/artmusicdesign/poems/poem.asp?ID=161 – two faves by Jamaica’s Lorna Goodison

http://sheeralmshouse.blogspot.com/2010/07/no-more-smalling-up-of-me.html – ‘No More Smalling up of Me’ by Jean Wilson

SHORT STORIES

If you’ve been to the Blogger on Books recently, you may remember my mini-review of American writer Will Allison’s What You Have Left. Here’s an excerpt from that very book. ALSO, you’ll remember me raving about Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck; I just came across one of my favourite stories from the book. So, read.

http://www.munyori.com/novioletbulawayo.html – a story by Zimbabwe-American writer Noviolet Bulawayo.

http://dloc.com/AA00000079/00009/19j – Pamela Mordecai’s Cold Comfort is all kinds of funny.

http://ananseseminfo.blogspot.com/2011/05/sun-moon-darkness-rain-and-heart.html – A Caribbean folk tale from Anansesem.

http://ananseseminfo.blogspot.com/2010/12/beaumont-and-moonflower.html – A children’s story; perhaps a bit of inspiration given Wadadli Pen’s 2011 theme.

http://visitstsomewhere.blogspot.com/ – The St. Somewhere Journal features new writings from across the Caribbean. Among your blogger’s faves in the Autumn 2010 issue are Kittian writer Carol Mitchell’s ‘Kept Promises’ on Page 4 and Trinidadian Shakira Bourne’s ‘Crossing Over’ on Page 6. While you’re there, check out my story ‘Somebody!’ on Page 30 and my essay ‘On Writing’ on Page 37.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2009/10/the-rain/ – This “delightful but dark” Christi Cartwright story was hailed by readers for its “vivid imagery”.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/03/landscape-without-horizon/ – “Brilliant”, “vivid”, “beautiful” are a few of the words that have been used to describe this short story by Bahamaian, Sonia Farmer.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/05/when-coffee-time-come/ – Randall Baker’s ‘When Coffee Time Comes’ was credited for its “great characterization”.

http://ananseseminfo.blogspot.com/2010/12/yohan.html – Check out this imaginative children’s piece by Antiguan author Floree Williams.

http://www.munyori.com/miriamshumba.html – Straight out of Africa and yet familiar to all.

NON FICTION

This Jamaican children’s author asks ‘who are we writing for?’

I remember watching a group of kids at the national Youth Rally recently (Nov. 2011) chat and walk about during the Antigua and Barbuda National Anthem remembering how we couldn’t even twitch to scratch our nose singing the anthem every morning on the grounds of Holy Family School. How times have changed. It’s for this reason that I found the article ‘Tales out of School: Singing the National Anthem Word Perfect’ by Mary Quinn   to be at once sobering and amusing.

I’ll be the first to admit, I have my reservations about self-published material; while I appreciate the frustrations of the traditional route, and the desire to bypass them (been there, done that), there’s a part of me that believes the hurdles help ensure that what’s turned out is the best it can be – in terms of physical quality of the product and the quality of the content (stumbling over basic grammatical errors, plot gaps, character inconsistencies or other things that should have been caught and refined in editing takes away from the reading experience). That said, I’ve read poor material from the traditional route and really good self-published works (usually where the writer exercises the patience and good sense to invest in editing). So, with self-publishing more accessible than ever, as you consider the best route for your literary baby, I’m happy to share this article balancing both arguments while ultimately making a pro self-publishing case (in specific instances). Incidentally, the site is the online home of Bahamian writer Nicolette Bethel where there are other interesting postings on a range of topics.

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This is just one of the interesting points made in Susan Lowes’ article on Social Relations in Antigua in the 1940s: “In fact, it was by traversing this terrain that young people often came to know their “class.” Thus a young man would suddenly find that he was not allowed inside the gate of a close school friend, and realize that he was socially unacceptable to his friend’s parents. Or men who were good friends nevertheless did not visit each other inside their houses; those who reported that they were “very close” often got no further than the veranda. Women, as keepers of the indoors, controlled the most intimate types of socialization, ranging from house visits to marriage. Men, in contrast, socialized outdoors, on the streets and playing fields, in rum shops and clubs, arenas where they were less constrained by indoor standards of respectability. It was by and large the women who policed the distinctions of social class: who knew, and cared about, the genealogies, who determined who their children could socialize with inside the house and who had to remain an “outdoors” friend, and so on.”

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http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html – This is not a written piece but rather a piece on the power of writing and the danger of a single story. It’s one of the more circulated TED talks on the net, featuring Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie, author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Thing Around her Neck – which I read and reviewed in the Blogger on Books. On the strength of the latter book and the TED talk – which I can relate to so much as a girl from the Caribbean – she’s a new favourite of mine.

http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/what-editors-want-must-read-writers-submitti – Submitting to literary journals? Read this first.

http://accordingtohoyt.com/2011/08/30/you-say-editing-i-say-proofreading – The importance of editing.

http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/the-criticism-that-changed-my – It may not feel like it at the time but constructive criticism helps us grow as writers.

http://ananseseminfo.blogspot.com/2011/05/writing-up-storm.html – tips for unlocking the literary imagination among students.

http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/7+Things+Ive+Learned+So+Far+By+Danica+Davidson.aspx – What aspiring writers need to know.

http://www.365antigua.com/cms/content/news-community-marcella-andre-commentary-haiti-march-27-2011 – I can FEEL Haiti in this piece.

http://summeredward.blogspot.com/2010/06/caribbean-picture-books-importance-of.html – Interesting piece on illustrations for Caribbean children’s literature; perhaps particularly interesting to me given that it ties in with our effort in 2011 to generate art to support the Caribbean children’s literature themed word entries for Wadadli Pen.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/03/poetry-terrors/ – On the writer and the blank page (by Kwame Dawes)

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/02/me-writing/ – On writing (by Trinidadian Paul Hadden).

http://www.candw.ag/~jardinea/ffhtm/ff971219.htm – The late Tim Hector putting into perspective the writing and life of (one of my favourites) the late Martin Carter.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/waves-and-murmurs/senior-lecture/ – Olive Senior, former winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, was actually my workshop leader when I attended the Caribbean Fiction Writers Summer Institute at the University of Miami back in 1995. Here she speaks at the Bahamas Writers Summer Institute in 2010 on ‘Writing and the Politics of Imagination in Small Spaces’. It’s a lengthy but interesting read.

INTERVIEWS

An interview with the always outspoken Dr. Carolyn Cooper, whom I personally remember as one of my favourite professors at the University of the West Indies.

“I find that in order to write your characters well, you have to be a little bit in love with them, even the ones that aren’t lovable at all.” – from Nalo Hopkinson’s 5 Minute Interview on Date with a Book.

“There was an idea I wouldn’t have been able to conceive of [the narrator] Precious’s life unless I had lived it,” said Push writer Sapphire. Push, some of you may know is the book that birthed the academy award winning film, Precious. Read her full comments on fact/fiction and assumptions/labelling here. This struck me because I’ve actually gotten a lot of the same assumptions (or questions) about my books – The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight – that the stories were biographical when they are in fact fiction (and no more biographical than any other work of fiction, in fact less so I’d say). Never thought of it as racism though since most of the questioning came from my own community. Hm.

The Farming of Bones remains my favourite book by Edwidge Dandicat, one of my favourite contemporary writers. In this interview, she talks about the book (good reading).

This interview with Tiphanie Yanique is quite engaging and revealing, plus how many of us can say Maya Angelou read a poem of ours while we were still in high school.

http://maudnewton.com/blog/?p=9295 – as I post this, I haven’t yet read Marlon James’ books (though they’ve been recommended to me time and again, especially Book of Night Women) but I found this interview quite interesting. My favourite line comes in the section where he talks of his struggles writing a love scene: Someone once scared me by saying that love isn’t saying “I love you” but calling to say “did you eat?” (And then proceeded to ask me this for the next 6 months).    All that and he’s a Buffy fan; I think I’m going to have to book mark his blog (http://marlon-james.blogspot.com/index.html) and get to reading those books.

http://antiguaspeaks.com/news/?p=204 – Linisa George’s Brown Girl in the Ring – inspired by the children’s nursery rhyme and her experiences as a dark skinned sister growing up in a shade conscious society – is a staple of not only her When A Woman Moans productions but the local (i.e. Antiguan and Barbudan) performance poetry scene. In this article, she discusses the piece with her sister-friend and collaborator, ZIA.

http://sheroxlox.tumblr.com/post/1640248532/she-rox-tameka-jarvis-george– “Write from your heart. Write about your experiences good or bad. Everything in your life happens for a reason, so let those moments big or small be your inspiration to teach or help other people.” – excerpt from interview with Antiguan author of 2010 release Unexpected. Follow the link to read the rest.

http://www.nyu.edu/calabash/vol5no1/0501104.pdf – One of the interesting aspects of this Opal Palmer Adisa interview featured in Calabash was her insights on the Caribbean aesthetic.

VISUAL ART

http://afrolicious.com/2011/08/16/the-missing-peace-is-beautiful – This is a short film, The Missing Peace, by Rachel Benjamin; it’s based on a story by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Dandicat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymvk3HsocqQ – Motion in motion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-DWLzbPmcQ – She Rox Lox – Zahra Airall’s rendering of locked women who are just beautiful.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/06/crime – This Steven Burrows piece calls to mind for me the Bob Marley song ‘Johnny Was’: “woman hold her head and cry, ’cause her son has been shot down in the street and die”…a commentary on the unsettling state of affairs on our streets and in our homes.

http://wn.com/UNICEF_oneminutesjr__Dear_Dad – This is a winning piece in a UNICEF competition by Antiguan Carlon Knight; it’s entitled ‘Dear Dad’ and is quite touching.

http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2010/06/help-a-sistah-out-man – This was posted on Tongues of the Ocean, the Bahamian-Caribbean multi-media arts journal. The artist is Lindsay Braynen.

…AND HERE’S SOME OF MY STUFF

Excerpt from Oh Gad! (my new book due in 2012)

Friday Night Fish Fry (fiction) @ Sea Breeze – http://www.liberiaseabreeze.com/joanne_c_hillhouse.html

After Glow (fiction) @ Tongues of the Ocean – http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2009/11/after-glow

How to Make Cassava Bread and Other Musings on Culture (non fiction) @ Antigua Stories – http://antiguastories.wordpress.com/food-2/food

At Calabash (non fiction) @ Caribbean Literary Salon – https://wadadlipen.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/at-calabash

Defining Moments (non fiction) @ Geoffrey Philp’s blog – http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2010/12/defining-momentsjoanne-c-hillhouse.html

Off the Map (non fiction) @ Signifying Guyana –

http://signifyinguyana.typepad.com/signifyin_guyana/2010/12/guest-post-writing-off-the-map-by-joanne-c-hillhouse.html  

What Calypso Taught Me About Writing (non fiction) @ Caribbean Literary Salon – http://caribbeanliterarysalon.ning.com/profiles/blogs/what-calypso-taught-me-about

At Sea (fiction) @ Munyori – http://www.munyori.com/joannehillhouse.html

Pushing Water Up Hill (non fiction) @ Caribbean Literary Salon – http://caribbeanliterarysalon.ning.com/profiles/blogs/pushing-water-up-hill-one

Wadadli Pen – Nurturing Another Generation of Antiguan and Barbudan Writers (non fiction) @ Summer Edward’s blog – http://summeredward.blogspot.com/2010/08/guest-post-by-joanne-c-hillhouse.html

Cold Paradise (fiction) @ Women Writers – http://www.womenwriters.net/aug08/fiction_poetry/Hillhouse_ColdParadise.htm

Somebody! (fiction) @ St. Somewhere – http://visitstsomewhere.blogspot.com

Reflections on Jamaca (non fiction) @ Caribbean Literary Salon – https://wadadlipen.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/reflections-on-jamaica

Portent (fiction) @ Women Writers – http://www.womenwriters.net/aug08/fiction_poetry/Hillhouse_Portent.htm

Philly Ramblings 8 (poetry) @ Ma Comère – http://dloc.com/AA00000079/00004/36j

Ghosts Laments (poetry) @ Small Axe – http://smallaxe.net/wordpress3/prose/2011/06/30/poem-by-joanne-hillhouse

Benediction before the Essence (poetry) @ Women Writers – http://www.womenwriters.net/aug08/fiction_poetry/hillhouse_poetry.html

Prospero’s Education, The Arrival, Da’s Calypso (3 poems) @ Calabash – http://www.nyu.edu/calabash/vol4no2

Interview @ Caribbean Literary Salon – http://caribbeanliterarysalon.ning.com/profiles/blogs/interview-with-joanne-c