Carib Lit Plus (Mid to Late December 2022)

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.

Brazilian and world football legend, regarded as the greatest to ever do it Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé (1940-2022) has passed. He is the only man to have won three World Cups – 1958, 1962, and 1970, and his legend usurped the game.

News of his failing health due to colon cancer broke during this year’s World Cup earlier in December 2022. On December 29th 2022 news broke of his passing and the world mourned the man who had been named athlete of the century in 1999 by the International Olympic Committee and named one of Time magazine’s 100 people of the 20th century. A few tributes – this one from Scottish actor Robert Carlyle – “I’ll never forget the 1970 World Cup, the first one i truly remember. There began my lifetime love affair with the beautiful game. Brazil.. magical. This man.. sublime. One of the all time greats.. RIP Pelé”; this from Jamaican PM Andrew Holness – Pelé is the reason “so many Jamaicans are such avid Brazilian fans and whose name is synonymous with the “beautiful game” of football, a man many Jamaicans claim ownership of, and the leading player in football history”; this from US tennis legend Billie Jean King – “a true ambassador of the beautiful game has died…he was joyful and had that something special.” Former US president Barack Obama tweeted that Pelé “understood the power of sports to bring people together.” (Source – Twitter)

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Trinidad and Tobago calypso legend Leroy “Black Stalin” Calliste (1941 – 2022) died on December 28th 2022. He is a five-time calypso king perhaps best known for “Black Man feeling to Party”. More in this report from TTT Live Online:

Another of his crowd pleasers is “The Caribbean Man”.

(Source – Twitter)

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Haitian writer Odette Roy Fombrun (1917 – 2022) died on December 23rd 2022. Her extensive resume includes opening Haiti’s first kindergarten, and writing and publishing mystery novels, text books, magazines, and more. She lived in exile for 29 years, beginning in 1959, and was socially and politically active on her return – including setting up the Foundation Odette Roy Fombrun in 2007. Per the Haitian Times, “Known for proposing ‘konbitisme’ as a way to rebuild Haiti, the writer, educator, and youth advocate sought to improve Haiti’s education system and her ideas helped shape several generation of Haitians.” Her historical works include L’Ayiti des Indiens (Port-au-Prince: Deschamps, 1992) and Le Drapeau et les Armes de la République (Port-au-Prince: Deschamps, 1989). (Source – Haitian writer M J Fievre on instagram)

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Francine ‘Singing Francine’ Edwards (1943 – 2022), calypsonian out of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, has died. Among her popular songs are the seasonal “Hurray Hurrah”, an example of parang soca, which she helped pioneer.

The late calypso singer, who used her music to advance social concerns of particular interest to women, has been quoted as saying, “I never became involved in the calypso art form. I was born into the calypso art form.” (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

Accolades

Some awards news (via Trinidad Express) “Trinidadian Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, author of the acclaimed debut novel When We Were Birds, is the winner of a 2023 Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award. Presented to two authors each year, the award includes £20,000 to support a current writing project and a year-long residency at the British Library in London, with access to curatorial expertise and the library’s extensive Americas collections.

Jamaican poet Shara McCallum was named the winner of the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry for her book No Ruined Stone. Founded in 2001, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards honour black writers in the United States and around the globe for literary achievement, in the categories of poetry, fiction, debut fiction, and non-fiction.” (Source – JRLee email)

Books and Other Reading Material

Antiguan and Barbudan lawyer, gender advocate, and photographer Annetta Walker is a contributor to the coffee table book ILẸ WA: An Homage to Home. It is a product of We are Soul – an alternative music and art community-based online platform.

There are 41 contributors from countries like Rwanda and France, Australia, the United Kingdom, Mozambique, South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Jamaica, Burkino Faso, Congo etc. Of her involvement, Annetta said, “Back in 2020 I was approached by We Are Soul to be part of a creative project. I was given a live brief to create photos that captured the spirit of my home, culture and connection…After several photoshoots with friends and family, we finalised 3 images to be published in a photo book titled “ILE WA” (Our Land in Yoruba) …The ILẸ WA project aims to inspire us to continue uplifting our community and culture and evoke joy, creativity and free expression. The project also resonated with my personal politics and advocacy as 100% proceeds from the ILE WA publication will help support the We Are Soul Soul Purpose Campaign in collaboration with CWEENS an NGO based in Nigeria that provides financial, psychological and legal support to young women and children who are victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. This is literally a mirror of the work I do at The Directorate of Gender Affairs …So I am happy to share that I am a published photographer and the proceeds from the book go to support survivors of domestic violence.” (Source – Annetta Walker on Linkedin)

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Still Standing: The Ti Kais of Dominica by British anthropologist Adom Philogene Heron and photographer Dominica born and raised, since resident in the US, Marica Honychurch, with a foreword by Lennox Honeychurch, launched December 2022. It looks at the history and importance of the ti kai to the heritage of the island. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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The Adventures of a Black Edwardian Intellectual: The Story of James Arthur Harley is a new book by Royal Society of the Arts, Royal Historical, and British Library Fellow Pamela Roberts. I’m not sure if she is Antiguan but the book was launched at the Antigua and Barbuda High Commission in London.

That’s Roberts, far right, standing next to Claire Hynes, a UK based lecturer and writer of Antiguan and Barbudan descent, who led the conversation with her about the book at the event. The book is about James Arthur Harley, born 1873 in All Saints village, Antigua, to a white landlord father and Black seamstress mother. Per the book summary on Amazon, he attended “Howard, Harvard, Yale and Oxford universities, [and] was ordained a priest in Canterbury Cathedral and was elected to Leicestershire County Council. He was a choirmaster, a pioneer Oxford anthropologist, a country curate and a firebrand councillor…Navigating the complex intertwining of education, religion, politics and race, his life converged with pivotal periods and events in history: the birth of the American New Negro in the 1900s, black scholars at Ivy League institutions, the heyday of Washington’s black elite and the early civil rights movement, Edwardian English society, and the Great War. Based on Harley’s letters, sermons and writings as well as contemporary accounts and later oral testimony, this is an account of an individual’s trajectory through seven decades of dramatic social change.” I’m not yet sure where to enter the author and the book as far as our bibliography goes, so I will hold on updating when I have time to do some more research. (Source – Claire Hynes on Twitter)

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 The Halfway Tree by True Nicks is a December release from Jamet.te Publications.

True Nicks is from Trinidad & Tobago. (Source – Jamet.te Publications newsletter)

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“The tourism industry represented for him, the new plantations by the sea,” said St. Lucian poet John Robert Lee in an interview with Jamaican writer and artist Jacqueline Bishop for her Bookends series in the Jamaica Observer. That full interview is one of the December 2022 additions to the 46th Reading Room and Gallery here on Wadadli Pen. The RR and G includes content curated for your reading and viewing pleasure. (Source – in-house)

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Veteran Jamaican journalist Earl Moxam has published Vantage Point Jamaica.

It is about his 30 years on the ground – breaking news and exposing key stories. (Source – Earl Moxam on Twitter)

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This is the second edition of The Spectator, a publication in Antigua and Barbuda.

The previous edition was published in November 2021. The 68-page second edition dropped December 2022 and includes a range of arts and culture pieces written by Ato Lewis, Barbara Arrindell, John Greene, Vellie Benta, Zahra Airall, Marissa Benjamin, and editor-publisher Petra Williams.

(Source – Petra Williams on Linkedin)

Art and Culture News

Bookstagrammer If This is Paradise is, at this writing, just about ready to kick off her #WereadJamaicaKincaid campaign.

Anyone can participate and the mission is to read all of Jamaica Kincaid’s full length, single authored works. They start in January with AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER (1983).
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The discussion home base will be on Discord. To join, sign up for the Reading Jamaica newsletter.
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This Critical Conversation, initially streamed on November 29th 2022, brings together artists and activists from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific to discuss the power and importance of art to the global conversation on climate change. The event features a series of innovative performances. Featuring: Diana McCaulay of Jamaica, Ina-Maria Shikongo, Audrey Brown-Pereira, Kendel Hippolyte of St. Lucia, and Okalani Mariner.

This is among the content in our Wadadli Pen Reading Room and Gallery. (Source – Diana McCaulay)

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Haitian-American writer M J Fievre’s children’s book The Ocean lives Here is being turned in to a symphony in Miami. Composer Ethan Soledad is working with the Greater Miami Youth Symphony at the Frost School of Music on the project. The Ocean lives Here was released in February 2022 and was #1 on Amazon’s list of Children’s Exploration Fiction and Haitian Travel Guides. Main character Imane goes through a magical red-blue door inside her house – one she imagines holds adventure and fun but which her mother keeps firmly closed. There, she discovers her family’s Haitian culture. In announcing the symphony, Fievre specifically thanked the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and indicated that the symphony will premiere during a free family fest on April 15th 2022. (Source – MJ Fievre on Instagram)

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.

Carib Lit Plus (Mid to Late November 2022)

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).

Accolades

Selvyn Walter, Antiguan and Barbudan politician-writer-art-collector-and-pan-booster, who died in 2020, received a Sunshine Award posthumously for his support of the performing arts. It was presented November 26th during Moods of Pan, a premier local pan festival, which was live this year for the first time since the pandemic. Daily Observer reported that the award was partly in recognition of his founding role in Halcyon Steel Orchestra and was meant to have been presented at the multi-panorama winning band’s 50th anniversary, in 2021, but was delayed due to the pandemic. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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Caribbean Reads author Danielle Y C Mclean’s The Whisperer’s Warning has been named winner of this year’s Bocas Children’s Book Prize. The book, illustrated by Rachel Moss, is a sequel to her Burt award winning The Protector’s Pledge.

The Trinidad born US based author’s book is “a juvenile fantasy novel which draws on TT folklore…packed with exciting and dramatic plot twists, taking readers into the shadowy world of characters such as Papa Bois, La Diablesses, jumbies, and douens, harmonising reality, myth, and imagination” (TT Newsday). The prize is in its second year. The winner takes home US$1000. (Source – Caribbean Reads on instagram)

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Musgrave medals have been handed out to 10 Jamaicans including writers Diana McCaulay and Geoffrey Philp.

(source of images – the one in the middle is from Twitter and the flanking ones are from Annie Paul’s Facebook)

Gold medallists are, per the Jamaica Observer, McCaulay (author, Daylight Come etc.), Lenford Salmon (actor, Third World Cop etc.), and Joy Spence (chemist).
Silver medallists are Philp (author, Garvey’s Ghost etc.), Kevin Jackson (animator), Eric Garraway (entomologist).
Bronze medallists are Safiya Sinclair (author, Cannibal), Patrick Brown (playwright), and Susan Koenig (biologist).
David Salmon received the youth medal award for advocacy and leadership.

Launched in 1889, the Musgrave medals are named forAnthony Musgrave, a former governor of Jamaica and founder of the Institute of Jamaica. (Source – social media – twitter and facebook)

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The Lionfish Derby has emerged as a creative solution to the problem of the invasive marine species in Antigua’s waters. In addition to the catch, there is also a competition for student artists. In the 14 – 18 category, 14-year-old Xezlaina Looby won, and in the nine to 13 age category Summer Goodwin won.

The winners attend the Christ the King High School. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)

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The winner of Antigua’s got Talent, a creative arts showcase and fundraiser, which raised EC$15,000+ for PAAWS animal shelter, is Stephen Gore who performed Tian Winter’s “In de Dance”. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco/Antigua)

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Euzhan Palcy (director of Sugar Cane Alley and Dry White Season) collected the Governor’s Award from Viola Davis on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America, an award previously announced in our early to mid September 2022 Carib Lit Plus bulletin. Two students from schools in Martinique – one from a school named for her – were present at the awards ceremony, to bear witness to this native daughter’s moment of glory. While doing so with gratitude, she also called out Hollywood for its diversity issues (being told “Black is not bankable, female is not bankable, Black and female are not bankable”- still ongoing. “I was tired of being the first of too many firsts but denied the chance to make the movies I (felt) compelled to make,” Palcy said. The award she said encourages her “to raise my voice again, to offer you movies of all genres that I always wanted to make in my own way.”

(Source – YouTube)

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A number of awards were given out in November by the Antigua and Barbuda Gospel Music and Media Awards, its 8th iteration of this awards programme. The Daily Observer by Newsco picked up three of those awards – media of the year, regional media of the year, and a legacy award for longevity.

All winners can be viewed here and you can read about the awards programme here. While I didn’t see it on the main list, there is also reporting of the ABGMMA presenting an award to social media influencer J’Truth in the name of late (since his death in 2002) journalist, Leonard Tim Hector – a local pioneer in investigative journalism and unbridled criticism, with his newspaper Outlet and its “Fan the Flame” column penned by him often shaking the table and receiving the backlash that can come with that (see the Antigua and Barbuda media history post on this site). That Hector’s family did not give permission for the use of his name in this way became obvious when they condemned the award of the Leonard Tim Hector Impact Award for Social Activism to J‘Truth. The Leonard Tim Hector Memorial Committee which already awards a prize in Hector’s name with the endorsement of the family co-signed this condemnation. The public has been weighing in on the suitability of the award recipient (Ameen Dias who has become popular for his controversial vlogs), especially given the association with Hector’s name, but what I’m curious about, simply because as a literary and arts space we are always trying to empower ourselves (and the various creators who come here) with knowledge, is IP issues around the use of Hector’s name (any lawyers in the comments?). (Source – Daily Observer newspaper & Facebook)

Movies

As you’ll see below, two Caribbean films, The Fab 4 and Deep Blue, the latter by Antiguan and Barbudan filmmakers, are having their regional debut at Montserrat’s Alliougana Festival of the Word. And then there is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The international blockbuster’s M’Baku, Winston Duke of Tobago, graces the cover of the latest edition of Esquire magazine.

He said on Facebook, “It has always been a dream of mine to grace the cover of especially esquire magazine! Growing up, being an esquire man was the epitome of style and masculine refinement. Dramatic, yet assured … being able to see myself on this is literally a dream come true! I dedicate this to my mom, Cora Pantin, whose love, guidance & prayers sowed the seeds. Though she isn’t here to see her son grow to this today.” You can read the Esquire article here. Excerpt:

‘As an island kid, he missed warm weather. Rochester was cold, and Americans were colder. “I come from a culture where people are warm-blooded, warm culture. When they talk, sometimes they talk real close to you. Americans feel entitled to space.”’

Also learned, reading the article of the death of his mother at 66, quite suddenly, quite recently. RIP Mama Coco. (Source – Winston Duke on Facebook)

Books & Other Reading Material

From Hansib, another 2022 release: Joe Solomon and the Spirit of Port Mourant. Port Mourant is a sugar plantation from the Berbice district of Guyana, and Solomon, who, at 92, is the oldest living West Indian Test cricketer, is one of three Windies 1960s players (the others being Rohan Kanhai and Basil Butcher) it produced. He played for Windies 27 times between the late 50s and early 60s. The book is written by academic Clem Seecharan with assistance from Ian McDonald (author of The Hummingbird Tree). (Source – Facebook)

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The Bookseller reports, “Picador signs first prose collection by Linton Kwesi Johnson”. The collection, Time Come: Selected Prose will be published in April 2023. “The publication brings together his book and record reviews published in newspapers and magazines, lectures, obituaries and speeches, spanning five decades.” Johnson is a Jamaica-born, Britain-based dub poet and activist. (Source – JRLee email)

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Dominica born and raised, in Vieille Case, Kisma Panthier-Jn Pierre, resident in Antigua and Barbuda where she is now building the MJP Academy, along All Saints Road, has announced the publication of My 10 Year Blue Print Journal: |A Journal that helps 10-16 year olds to create their future.

This journal is a part of the My 10-Year Blue Print Motivation Journey offered by Kisma which includes guidance and coaching in the form of videos, text, and live sessions. Your child or teen is not alone on this journey and for the next 100 days after starting this program, Kisma will be with them every step of the way. November 18th 2022 is listed on Amazon as the publication date and, per her linkedin, Jn Pierre is offering a special rate for the book, with coaching , through to November 28th 2022. This is not her first publishing experience. In 2021, she was part of an anthology Unleash Your Undeniable Impact: A Compilation of Messages to inspire You to maximize Your Impact on the World presented by Les Brown and Dr. Cheryl Wood. (Source – Kisma Panthier-Jn Pierre on linkedin)

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Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters Issue 22 is out. It is a special Bermuda bienniel dispatch including the likes of Yesha Townsend and Nancy Anne Miller of Bermuda. There is also a new edition of Sky Words, the Moko podcast. (Source – Moko magazine email)

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The Speak Out! series on the Commonwealth Writers Adda platform. This is four issues strong with different editors from around the Commonwealth including Antigua and Barbuda’s Brenda Lee Browne. The stories and poems selected for the collection were submitted in response to “a call for submissions related to Freedom of Expression and its wider subthemes of gender, LGBTQIA+, race/ethnicity, and politics among others.” I have posted reviews to issues 1 and 2 of Adda (and full disclosure submitted to and was rejected by the selectors for Speak Out!). (Source – me)

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Three recent Papillote titles are Still Standing: The Ti Kais of Dominica by Adom Philgene Heron with photographs by Marica Honychurch, Black Man Listen by Kathy Casimir Maclean, and A Scream in the Shadows by Mac Donald Dixon. Papillote Press is a small, independent publishing house specialising in books about Dominica and the wider Caribbean. From observation, Dixon’s book especially has been getting a fair amount of critical attention including from Bookends in the Jamaica Observer where the three-time novelist was described as “arguably one of the Caribbean’s most versatile writers” and A Scream in the Shadows as “a timely novel that will strike a chord with readers.” (Source – N/A)

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Antiguan and Barbudan artist Zavian Archibald has illustrated another of Harper Collins’ Big Cat children’s books. She previously illustrated Turtle Beach written by Antiguan and Barbudan writer Barbara Arrindell and now Jumbled by British writer Jasmine Richards. It’s the story of Baccoo, a character from Guyanese folklore, which may have originated from Yoruba culture, infiltrating a classroom in the UK

(Source – various)

Events

Caribbean artists Diana McCaulay of Jamaica and Kendel Hippolyte of St. Lucia are (at this writing) scheduled to participate in Art and Climate Justice: Reimagining the Future, a critical conversation bringing together artists and activists from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific to discuss the power and importance of art to the global conversation on climate change. It’s on November 29th 2022. Register here. & we’ve seen climate activists targetting art but art was also used to illuminate the issues.

e.g. this mural by Indian artist Shilo Shiv featuring climate campaigners from the Amazon, Uganda, and Pakistan. – “the stories we tell and the cultures we create is ultimately what shifts public opinion.”

e.g. this mural by Painot, a young illustrator from Peru; it spotlights people from different professions resisting the fossil fuel industry.

(Source – Commonwealth Foundation email)

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The Alliougana Festival of the Word kicked off in Montserrat on November 17th 2022. Here are some scenes from their opening parade.

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Activities between November 17 and 19 listed below:

Two Antiguan and Barbudan films are being screened on movie night, Yemoja’s Anansi, a short by Christal Clashing as mentioned above and HAMA’s Deep Blue.

(Source – AFW on Facebook)

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Two music events have crossed my timeline. One is Burna Boy announced for December 17th at the Sir Vivian Richards stadium, Antigua (on the heels of mixed reports out of Dominica about the costs associated with booking such a high profile international artiste) and the other is part of the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra play out series, with guest violinist Braimah Kanneh-Mason.

Braimah is part of the renowned Kanneh-Mason clan out of the UK – the patriarch of which has Antiguan roots. (Source – Facebook)

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The Moray House Trust’s 2022 programme will close with two events to commemorate Guyanese writers Martin Carter and Edgar Mittelholzer. Every December they feature the work of Martin Carter who died on 13th December 1997. This year the plan is to focus on Carter’s Poems of Affinity. This year, the finale of the Chapter & Verse series will be dedicated to the work of Edgar Mittelhozer, who was born on 16th December 1909. The call goes out to anyone who has a favourite poem from Poems of Affinity or a favourite passage (or poem) by Mittelholzer and would like to read, should email Morayhousetrust@gmail.com by Friday 18th November. They will record the readings by Zoom from 21st – 25th November. (Source – the Nature Island Literary Festival on Facebook)

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 46

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.

VISUAL ART

I requested and received images from top (and consistently so over her decades spanning career) Antiguan and Barbudan visual artist Heather Doram‘s December 2022 show, held for a second year at the Henre Designs Studio in Belmont. If you missed the 2022 show, this is a selection capturing signature Doram – Colour, Caribbean, Culture, Nature, Life Vignettes, Ever Evolving, Women, and in particular Black women, and if we want to get to the nitty gritty Black Caribbean women whose every expression is a whole story.

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Heather has been featured in several installments of my (author and Wadadli Pen founder Joanne C. Hillhouse’s) art and culture column CREATIVE SPACE:

CREATIVE SPACE #4 OF 2020 – ART, MORE ESSENTIAL THAN EVER

CREATIVE SPACE #12 OF 2020 – MORE ESSENTIAL THAN EVER 2 (THE PANDEMIC SERIES)

CREATIVE SPACE #9 OF 2021 – #ARTISTCHALLENGE, WHAT CAUGHT MY EYE

Art, More Essential than Ever (CREATIVE SPACE Coda)

CREATIVE SPACE #6 OF 2022: THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF (A WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH FEATURE)

View the slides, read the articles and discover Heather Doram art.

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Lost, a short film by Tananarive Due, African-American horror writer.

POETRY

“I go gently towards the ruin, cradling a lover.

mallet and a proem in my hands.

they seek destruction and prelude:

what way to acknowledge those we lost to this.

what sobbing tragedy.” – from “Chaos Theory” by Nnadi Samuel in Speak Out! 1 in Adda by Commonwealth Writers

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“ask the men who have feasted on me

          if they ever had to dislodge

     my bone from their throats” – from “Fish” by Topher Allen in Speak Out! 2 in Adda by Commonwealth Writers

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“Now, all across this archipelago
are those no longer daunted
by the world, no longer fearful
of dismantling one history
for another. Ancestral guardians
everywhere open the gates of memory
of origins we recognize at last as ours” (from “Archipelago”)

“We watch him reading silently. She, eyeing him
all the while, waits with the rarest patience.
Perhaps this book will teach him how to answer
all the “Whys?” she’s heaping up
or prompt him to another round of games.” (from “Meeting-Point”)

“I searched for calmer spaces.
Somewhere inside these tangled forests
there must be a tract where sunlight falls,
soft rain nurtures green shoots, and the sound
of the wind as it rises is the call of a heart – ” (from “You Another Country”)

From Leaving Atlantis (Peepal Tree Press, UK, 2015) by Barbadian poet and poet laureate Esther Phillips, editor of BIM: Arts for the 21st Century

esther-phillips-leaving-atlantis-3-poemsDownload

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“years later, Buju entrapped in Babylon, and you, telling me how you nearly forgot, but your voice broke into a gravelly chant when the bassline dropped” – from “After Buju’s Love Sponge since I was Never One” by Soyini Forde in ANMLY

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“We always would let her sing, then build the track in around her vocal” – Jimmy Jam on producing Janet Jackson

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“Combining the styles from old Hollywood movies – Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and we’re throwing it all in this wild setting.” – Amy Wright, choreographer of the fantasy dance sequence in the series The Boys.

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“Sometimes nature can mimic our deep need to belong to the world and that is what this scene is about.” – Denis Villeneuve, director, Dune

STORIES

“Atiya planned on delivering her baby in the privacy of her home, in water, guided by the spirits of her mothers.” – from “Atiya Firewood” by Lisa Latouche in Speak Out! 1 in Adda by Commonwealth Writers

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“‘Don’t worry jare. It is just a scare tactic.’ Dubem appeared unbothered, and so, I was unbothered.” – from “Dubem” by Priscilla Keshira in Speak Out! 1 in Adda by Commonwealth Writers

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“Jared thought to himself: Is you who could a shoot me. De man dem a drive away and is you fire after them. I was near the car.” – from “Things must Change” by Lloyd D’Aguilar in Speak Out! 1 in Adda by Commonwealth Writers

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“‘Close your eyes, and imagine you were riding a bus.’ I closed my eyes, and a flutter of ecstasy rose from my chest to my throat.

‘Imagine you were riding a bus, but remove the constant bumps and potholes.’” – from “A Matter of Time” by Kabubu Mutua in Speak Out! 2 in Adda by Commonwealth Writers

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“I picked up the hallway handset as Adada was screaming, ‘Doctors write, Lusubilo! Don’t doctors write? Doctors write useful things. Like prescriptions and medical books! What is this foolishness about wanting to be a writer? Better stop with this fucking nonsense!’ ” – from “A Doctor, A Lawyer, An Engineer or A Shame to the Family” by Mubanga Kalimamukwento in Speak Out! 3 in Adda by Commonwealth Writers

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“Opened up my eyes in Ward C one mornin’, and a broad-shouldered lady in hair curlers was grinnin’ down at me.” – from “Annabeth” by Rolli in Speak Out! 3 in Adda by Commonwealth Writers

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“We had a clear view of the horizon in any season.”

– St. Lucian writer McDonald Dixon reading from his novel A Scream in the Shadows

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“So, you’ve tasted the fisherman, but you’re not satisfied. You are his secret. He tiptoes to your backdoor after dark. He only kisses you with the curtains closed. He makes love to you with the lights off. He leaves your bed to sleep in hers. You want more. You want to keep him all to yourself.” – The Fix by Alexia Tolas, 2022 winner-BCLF Elizabeth Nunez for Writers in the Caribbean

INTERVIEWS, CONVERSATIONS

“We, the artists, we need to be partnered with organizations who have the resources that can fund the work we do because creating the work is one thing, getting it out is another…the theatre production that we’d done, bits of it were taken like to schools… bits of it were done like in a rum shop…bits of it were done like at community meetings…more of that needs to happen but that takes funding, that takes money, we need to partner with who can help.” – Kendel Hippolyte, award winning St. Lucian poet and dramatist, during a panel entitled “Art and Climate Justice: Reimagining the Future” chaired by Jamaican writer Diana McCaulay, Commonwealth Foundation

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 “Now, for instance, my showrunner Jenn Flanz…I’ll say to her, ‘hey, watch out for my blind spots. I’m not a woman, so let me know if I’m missing anything.’” – Trevor Noah in conversation with Alex Wagner about creating comedy

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“At 72, I guess I also am more aware of aging, death of friends and my own time of departure, whenever that comes.” – St Lucian poet John Robert Lee with Jacqueline Bishop an article in her series in the Jamaica Observer.

john-r-leeDownload

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“The captain had been to West Africa: the captain knew Barbados – that’s where he found Samboo and picked him out as a gift for his wife. There were things that he and the captain shared. You read it as an unnatural attachment, but I had to fiture out what else did this nine- or ten- year old have. He’s overwhelmed with fear and panic, and he wants to be out of it, he wants to lie down and not wake up. But I couldn’t leave him there, so I gave an alternative, imagined ending of the return. Perhaps his last dream, a vision, perhaps his spirit travels home; I’d like to think it did.” – Dorothea Smartt in conversation with Jacqueline Bishop:

page-59-bookendsDownload

pages-60-and-61-bookendsDownload

***

“My reaction sent me on a journey of further reading and thinking that led me to reevaluate a lot of my beliefs and realize the incompleteness, partiality, and, in some cases, dishonesty of many of the narratives that prevail around British colonialism in the UK. In addition to broadening my horizons, my reading quest remade my understanding of myself and my world. Although the journey wasn’t always easy and required me to shed some assumptions along the way, it taught me to see much further than I’d been able to do before. Even books that seem to have been written that have quite different views from us can deliver such epiphanies.” – Audio essay. Ann Morgan on BBC: Four Thought – Reading Outside Your Comfort Zone.

***

Marita Golden, co-editor of Gumbo, revisits the making of the seminal anthology with some of its 70 contributors, all successful writers in their own right. They also discuss writing and publishing then and now. See also the Gumbo review in this site’s first Blogger on Books.

***

Image: “Seba’s Ecstasy” by Delvin Lugo. Credit A. McKenzie (from Delvin Lugo – Caribbean-American Artist Depicts ‘Chosen Family’ | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net))

IPS interview (“Caribbean-American Artist depicts Chosen Family“) with Dominican-American Delvin Lugo about his first solo show in New York. ‘The exhibition, titled “Caribbean Summer”, pulled visitors in with its vivid colours and animated characters and also exemplified the success of alternative art events. The gallery space was provided by non-profit arts group Chashama, which describes itself as helping to “create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world by partnering with property owners to transform unused real estate”.’

NON-FICTION/ESSAYS/CREATIVE NON-FICTION

“Another thing my daughter taught me: surveillance is never neutral (Foucault).” – “Lettre a Simone” by Sonya Moor in Speak Out! 2 on Adda published by Commonwealth Writers

***

“So when Babylon, like a raging bulldozer, tramples over your daughter’s rights to wear her hair as she pleases, when it wields shears like a weapon and turns her scalp into a scarred hill, woman, don’t let the oppressors see you cry.” – “Hair/Her Emancipation” by Nadine Tomlinson in Speak Out! 3 on Adda published by Commonwealth Writers

***

CREATIVE SPACE is an Antigusn and Barbudan/Caribbean art and culture column by Joanne C Hillhouse, Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator. It runs every other Wednesday in the Daily Observer and online. This Reading Room and Gallery (likely the last of 2022) seems a good time to recap the most popular CREATIVE SPACE of 2022:

it “is a tradition and skill I’m very passionate about,” Celene Senhouse in CREATIVE SPACE #19 OF 2022: THE “HEADKERCHIEF”; HERITAGE, FASHION, CELEBRATION, AND RESISTANCE (10), “It was an exciting time then…dealing with children who wanted to play the pan,” Barbara Mason in CREATIVE SPACE #7 OF 2022: THE PAN PROGRAMME AT CULTURE: WHAT HAPPENED…? (9), “gentle rising ground…open to the sweet and gentle breeze of the bay” is the location of the historical site discussed in CREATIVE SPACE #11 OF 2022: MINING NUGGETS OF HISTORICAL GOLD (8), “the epitome of glamour, structure, and sophistication” is how model and budding designer Nicoya Henry describes her new direction in CREATIVE SPACE #12 OF 2022: CUT AND CONTRIVE (7), “whatchu gonna do, whatchu gonna do, when time, time, time, finally run out on you,” Short Shirt wonders in this track from the album featured in CREATIVE SPACE #5 OF 2022 – IS PRESS ON SHORT SHIRT’S GREATEST ALBUM? – A CASE COULD BE MADE (6), “But these are just memories, and everyone’s Carnival memories will be different,” I acknowledge in CREATIVE SPACE #15 OF 2022: THAT CARNIVAL FEELING (5), “a form of self-care…a fun, creative outlet” is how St. Lucian sister Catherine-Esther Cowie described collaging in CREATIVE SPACE #22 OF 2022: ART PLAY – MAKING ‘USELESS’ STUFF AS A FORM OF SELF-CARE (4), “de song an’ dem so sweet…I does forget they send me out,” my mother said recalling town crier Quarkoo in CREATIVE SPACE #14 OF 2022: DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN? (3), “To the best of my knowledge, no legislation exists that mandates women must not enter sleeveless into government buildings. It is actually a policy held over from the colonial period,” said lawyer Beverly George in CREATIVE SPACE #2 OF 2022: THE CII™ OF PUBLIC SECTOR DRESS CODES (2), and “Heather Doram, a former Culture director and the designer of our national dress” is one of the women featured in CREATIVE SPACE #6 OF 2022: THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF (A WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH FEATURE) (1).

***

“All this made me wonder the extent to which the diaspora represents an untapped market for St. Lucian literature, where the challenge is one of reaching readers.” – from “St. Lucians don’t read: Fact or Myth?” by Anderson Reynolds

***

“In talking to someone recently about the new set of plates I had completed, The Market Woman’s Story, in which I traced the figure of the huckster, higgler, vendor from the period of slavery until today while enveloping her in fruits and flowers, he pointed out that my first collection of poems, Fauna from Peepal Tree Press, had a section that did a similar thing, for in it I was using local Caribbean flowers to tell Jamaican women’s stories. I suddenly realised that I had a long history of using floral imagery to represent female concerns.” – “The Market Woman’s Story” by Jacqueline Bishop in the Jamaica Observer

***

“In an introduction to Steppenwolf (which I’ve not finished reading after all these years of trying, as much as I love Siddhartha), Hesse complained that his poetic writing was often misunderstood. But he nonetheless conceded it was up to the reader to interpret his work, declaring, “I neither can nor intend to tell my readers how they ought to understand my tale. May everyone find in it what strikes a chord in him and is of some use to him!” Who knows if Hesse would approve of my wayward ways. He would certainly not deny me my right to remember the version of the book I first found as a young, single student in London one balmy autumn day in 2004.” – “My Hundred-Year-Old Boyfriend: On Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha” by Trinidad and Tobago writer Andre Bagoo in LitHub

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 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.

***

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”

***

“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.

***

“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

***

 “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.

***

“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.

***

Great Art Explained – Jean-Michel Basquiat

***

“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.

***

 “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

***

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

***

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.

***

 “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 (Early to Mid January 2022)

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).

Happy New Year! And let’s hope it truly is happy.

Milestones

Celebrated St. Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte, named as you’ll see below as the person tapped to deliver the Sir Derek Walcott memorial lecture during poet laureates’ week, is being feted for another reason this January – a birthday milestone. Hippolyte turned 70 (three score and 10) on January 9th 2022.

Wadadli Pen’s Joanne C. Hillhouse who also celebrated her remarkably non-milestone birthday this month, January 5th, is pictured with Kendel HIpplyte at their first meeting, at the Congrès International des écrivains de la Caraïbe in 2013.

“Kendel Hippolyte was once described as “perhaps the outstanding Caribbean poet of his generation.” Besides being honored with the St. Lucia Gold Medal of Merit for his contribution to the arts, he joins Derek Walcott, Vladimir Lucien, and Canisia Lubrin as one of only four St. Lucians to win an OCM Bocas Prize, the English-speaking Caribbean’s most prestigious literary award. Note, however, Hippolyte won the poetry prize, while the other three won both the poetry and overall prize.”

Click here to read three poems by fellow Lucian poet John Robert Lee dedicated to Hippolyte on this occasion. (Source – Jako Productions)

Farewells

Antigua and Barbuda media veteran and Rastafari elder King Frank I has been laid to rest in an official state-funded funeral held at the Sir Vivian Richards national stadium.

There were five pages of coverage of the funeral in the Daily Observer including reporting of performance of Farewell to a King by the Nyabinghi Theocracy Order. Francis was credited for activism that has led to Rastafari being more integrated into society. Frank I’s children Jomo Hunte St. Rose, and daughters Malaika and Denise Francis, the latter also a media worker, paid tribute to their dearly departed dad. Denise invoked her father’s well known sign off: “We know Jah will continue to guide, continue to keep fit, and to always be a good sport.” Read that full article here:

frank-i-remembrance-1Download

In an article in the subsequent issue, head of the Reparations Support Commission, of which King Frank I was a part, Dorbrene O’Marde, is said to have indicated that the Commission will be seeking some way to honour him. “We have lost an example of steadfast commitment to a cause…we have lost a proud proclaimer of the fact that although he was not born in Africa, Africa was born in him…” O’Marde was quoted as saying, during the ceremony, of his friend of more than 60 years. Read in full:

frank-i-remembranceDownload

(Source – Daily Observer newspaper)

Events

The Sir Derek Walcott Memorial Lecture (mentioned immediately below) is only one of a full week of activities which began on January 10th 2022 in celebration of Nobel Laureates Week in St. Lucia. The Windward island has two such Laureates – Walcott for Literature and Sir Arthur Lewis for Economics. The full listing of activities can be found here. (Source – Jako Productions)

***

Bocas Award winning St. Lucian playwright and poet Kendel Hippolyte will deliver this year’s Derek Walcott Memorial Lecture January 18th 2022.

Read about him here.

Tune in online at
Facebook: @NobelLaureateFestivalSaintLuciaFacebook
Youtube: @cdfsaintluciaNTN
Flow Channel 122UWITV
Flow Channel 105

(Source – Facebook)

Accolades

Antiguan-Canadian writer Tanya Evanson’s Book of Wings has been named to the 2022 Canada Reads long list. Read about it here. (Source – Author’s facebook)

It has also been added to Antiguans and Barbudans Awarded.

***

This round up of 2021 book prize winners includes several Caribbean writers: namely, Barbadian Cherie Jones, a finalist for the Woman’s Prize for Fiction for How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House; and Jamaican Maisy Card, a finalist for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, part of the Los Angeles Time Book prize, for These Ghosts are Family. (Source – email)

Publication News

Jamaican Poet Laureate Olive Senior’s Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems lands at the end of January 2022. From Carcanet.

(Source – Twitter)

***

You know that Wadadli Pen team member Floree Williams Whyte’s latest book dropped in December and she features in the first CREATIVE SPACE of 2022.

(Source – Me)

***

There were seven book publications out of St. Lucia in 2021, according to Jako Productions. “These included two memoirs (My Journey, and You Left Me Broken), two commentaries on St. Lucian Art and culture (The Reign of Terra, and Dance Footprints), a children’s book (The Reunion: The adventures of Froggy-T & Bunnie), a book of poetry (Ear to My Thoughts), and a commentary on St. Lucian politics (No Man’s Land: A Political Introspection of St. Lucia). Added to this list is Scream, a murder mystery novel by McDonald Dixon, a leading St. Lucian poet and novelist, to be launched this month.” (Jako Productions). The post also singled out multi-award winning St. Lucian poet Canisia Lubrin for commendation. (Source – Jako email)

***

The latest issue of Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters has landed. Issue 20’s theme is Thanksgiving and it includes as its cover image ‘Daylight’ by Stefan Rampersad/Alexander Phoenyx, part of the Trinidad and Tobago artist’s Caribe Arch series.

Poets featured in the issue are Jason Allen-Paisant, Fawzia Muradali Kane, and Edythe Rodriguez. The issue includes reviews of Celeste Mohammed’s Pleasantview, Shara McCallum’s No Ruined Stone, Lisa Allen-Agostini’s The Bread the Devil Knead, Bermudan poet Nancy Anne Miller’s contribution to Moko’s One Poem One Poet series. The fiction consists of winners of the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival short fiction prize of 2021 Patrice Grell Yursik (Daughter 4) and Akhim Alexis (The Wailers); and new stories in the “sky islands” speculative fiction universe curated by Fabrice Guerrier including his own ‘Magic Mangoes’, alongside ‘Ixie and Izzy‘ by Joanne C. Hillhouse (she, of Wadadli Pen and Antigua and Barbuda) and ‘Rock, Feather, Shell’ by Celeste Rita Baker. The issue is edited by Andre Bagoo. (Source – twitter)

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As part of its mission, non-profit The Antigua and Barbuda Humane Society has released a colouring book, All Creatures Great and Small, as part of its mission to create a more animal-friendly environment by promoting care. The assembly and printing of the books was funded by King’s Casino Antigua. The Amatos family, meanwhile, donated boxes of crayons, among other items, to be paired with the books. The books are intended for distribution to pre and primary schools; and some are on sale in the Humane Society’s merchandise shop. For more information on this initiative and to donate towards future initiatives, call 268-461-4957. (Source – the Daily Observer newspaper)

Site Updates

Writers continue to be added to the Antiguan and Barbudan Writers (+Artists) on the Web, the Antiguan and Barbudan Fiction and Antiguan and Barbudan Writing, and the Caribbean Writers Online data bases. An addition too to Reading Room and Gallery 42 and the Opportunities page. The addition of a new Antigua and Barbuda Literary Works Reviewed. (Source – me)

Shout Outs

To the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival BCLF Cocoa Pod on Apple podcasts. Congrats to them on the continued growth which has included, in addition to the popular literary festival, the short fiction story contests named for acclaimed writer Elizabeth Nunez, and now this podcast described as “a Caribbean storytelling experience in which writers of Caribbean heritage narrate their own stories. …rich with the rhythm, pitch and intonation of the one who wrote it.” We are informed, re the BCLF initiatives for writers (the festival, podcast, and interviews), that they are open to receiving author press kits/bios/links and, also, review copies or ARCs (new releases). 

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To Rebel Women Lit which while counting votes for the Caribbean Readers Awards, to be announced January 9th 2022 after voting closed at the end of 2021, has concurrently announced its Book Club Reading List for the year. The list is not exclusively Caribbean but includes Caribbean reads like Things I have Withheld by Kei Miller, Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo, Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson, and The Dreaming by Andre Bagoo. (Source – RWL email)

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To my Jhohadli blog and specifically this round up post of recent publications and more. (Source – me)

***

To New Caribbean Voices, a podcast on spotify, hosted by Malika Booker. It includes interviews with and readings by contemporary Caribbean authors. (Source – JR Lee email)

***

To the Wadadli Music Scene blog, a project of jazz musicians Khadijah Simon and Foster Joseph, both of Antigua and Barbuda. The goal is to document stories related to Antigua and Barbuda’s music history. (Source – Foster Joseph who was interviewed in 2021 for CREATIVE SPACE)

Opportunities

Two Wadadli Pen team members, Barbara A. Arrindell and Joanne C. Hillhouse went on ABS TV on January 12th 2022 to discuss creative writing. Watch here.

Both are offering workshops. See flyers below.

(Source – me)

***

The Catapult Creative Arts grant is back. The COVID-19 relief programme for Caribbean artists saw funds paid out for residencies, salons, and other arts activities. The new application cycle opens January 3rd 2022 closes January 14th 2022. Apply here. And, yes, you can apply again even if you are a past grant recipient. (Source – Repeating Islands)

Remember to check Opportunities Too for this and other arts opportunities with pending deadlines.

News

As I blogged recently 2019 Independence fashion show winner Nicoya Henry has yet to receive her government promised scholarship to study in Trinidad. My thoughts expressed in this CREATIVE SPACE Coda. (Source – me)

***

Antiguan and Barbudan author Joan Underwood has been delivering live tips from her book Manager’s First Aid Kit on the Mornin’ Barbados show since October 2021. The four month stint was every Wednesday, each episode focus on a challenge covered in a chapter of the book and offering up practical challenges and solutions. See episodes missed in this playlist from Underwood’s YouTube channel. (Source – Underwood email)

***

Antigua and Barbuda’s Cultural Industries Mapping Project announced in November 2021 that it received 430 responses to its survey.

The company chosen to create the National Cultural Information System/Cultural Portal is COMPUSULT LTD. Keep track here. (Source – Facebook)

***

Antigua and Barbuda has a new culture minister. Michael Browne, the former minister of education whose cabinet appointment was withdrawn while he fought a charge which shall not be named, is to be re-appointed, having beat the charge, but under a different portfolio. Darryl Matthew who added education to culture and sports after Browne’s dis-appointment, is the outgoing minister of culture. Actually, it’s called creative industries these days, more fully creative industries and innovation – under which falls culture, carnival, independence, the one nation concert, V. C. Bird celebrations, visual arts, graphic arts, decorative arts, performing arts, musical arts, happiness and unity, innovatiion, and the UNOPS. This is according to an article in the Daily Observer. No specific reference to literary arts but google says UNOPS is the United Nations Office of Project Services. (Source – Daily Observer newspaper)

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 38

Things I read 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.

Read the winning entries Wadadli Pen Challenge entries, a mix of poetry and short fiction, with some visual art, through the years.

THE BUSINESS 

INTERVIEW/DISCUSSION

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– Joanne C. Hillhouse Catapult Caribbean Creatives Online #catapultartsgrant #AskMeAnything Q & A with readers

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Antiguan and Barbudan writers discuss To Shoot Hard Labour by Keithlyn and Fernando Smith as part of a month long reading series featuring the book. The series was produced by Beverly George for Observer Radio’s Voice of the People.

REPORTING

Excerpts, in no particular order, from Caribbean Time Bomb author Robert Coram’s A Reporter at Large: Ancient Rights in The New Yorker, 1989:

“Joseph, like most of the divers, is fond of having a drink now and then, and he is fond of rum, but he will not touch Cavalier rum, because it is made on Antigua.”

“And although the Barbudans had long ago learned to live together, so that there was little need for a judicial system, they were now technically bound by the laws of Antigua.”

“But the Antiguans, who saw Barbuda as a poor and backward island, did not want to finance medical facilities, schools, clergy, and courts on Barbuda.”

“The island is also ridiculed because the people are different; their quirky individuality standing out even in the Caribbean.”

“Barbudan slaves (enslaved Barbudans – my edit) even used Codrington boats to send their livestock and the fresh meat from their poaching to Antigua, and in 1829 the Codringtons’ island manager wrote of Barbudan slaves (enslaved Barbudans – my edit) wrote of Barbudan slaves, ‘They acknowledge no master, and believe the island belongs to themselves.’”

“Until 1961, when regular air traffic from Antigua began, it could take a week to reach Barbuda, even from Antigua.” – read the full article here: New Yorker 06 Feb 1989 

***

‘It was in form four, he says, that his work began to acquire an especially grim, menacing glint, layered with violence, tones of the macabre, and an arsenal of baleful sexual suggestion. His father, who dutifully printed off copies of the stories at work, gave him a sage kernel of advice that Hosein has never forgotten: “Even if you writing smut, keep writing. Just be careful of who you showing it to.”’ – Shivanee Ramlochan on Kevin Jared Hosein in Caribbean Beat

ESSAYS/NON-FICTION 

– Yvonne Weekes reading from her volcano themed memoir

***

“Georgetown is where some 90% of the population live today. We shouldn’t really be here. But in the 1700s, Dutch colonisers, bringing technology from their own low-lying country, decided to drain the swampy coast and install a ‘polder’ system of canals, sluice gates (known locally as kokers) and dams to cultivate sugar and other crops on the fertile land. Historian Dr Walter Rodney estimated that, in doing so, enslaved Africans were required to move 100 million tonnes of soil by hand. Ever since then, the sea has been trying to reclaim the land that was taken from it.” – Life on Stilts: Staying Afloat in Guyana by Carinya Sharples

***

“We are unwitting victims of a larger global issue beyond our control.” – from After the Aftermath: Hurricane Dorian by Bahamian writer Alexia Tolas

***

‘In “Winged and Acid Dark,” Hass tells us directly what happens to the woman in Potsdamer Platz in May 1945, but he does this direct telling circuitously. The poet approaches the idea, then “suggests” the rape. Note the second stanza: “the major with the swollen knee, / wanted intelligent conversation afterward. / Having no choice, she provided that, too.” The poem suggests the before by describing the “afterward” and by describing what the woman has to do “too.” Later in the poem, Hass describes the prying open of her mouth and the spitting in it, and lets these moments stand for much more. The lightning strike of this poem, the one we would expect at least, would be a graphic description of the rape, and yet, Hass soothes us on that front while delivering alternatively terrifying truths. The thing we prepare ourselves for, because we’ve heard that old war story repeated so many times, is only alluded to. Instead, Hass focuses on something else we are surprised by and therefore have to hear.’ – Tell It Slant: How To Write a Wise Poem by Camille T. Dungy

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“I wanted not simply to record but to interrogate what was happening and my response to it, to use poetry the way it can function at its utilitarian best: offering ways of seeing, of examining, of challenging complacency, and of contextualising the current situation within broader life considerations. …I am surprised at what I am doing because I normally spend a huge amount of time thinking about, writing, and then editing everything that I write before sending it into the world, so this speed of composing, followed by a click of Send and then almost immediate response is something new for me. I am less concerned with literary values or aesthetics than I am with memorializing the historic moment that I am living through. I want to capture the zeitgeist, literally, ‘the spirit of the time’.” – Cross Words in Lockdown by Olive Senior

“I would sit and talk to them, get to the essence of who they were…because it would help me to figure out how to write for them.” -Babyface

FICTION

“On his knees, hands behind his head, he asked for a cigarette. I gestured that he be given one. Our eyes met, we held each other’s gaze. What was he thinking? He must have been the same age as me. The same dark skin and stature. In another time, another place, we might have been neighbours, colleagues, friends. But here, now, he is one of them. ” – from The Debt by Nicholas Kyriacou

***

“In later years when he lying in bed all by he self…” – Levar Burton reads ‘A Good Friday’ by Barbara Jenkins. You can read this and other stories in Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean

***

“Sunny stayed up the entire night, mopping the floors of her living room and bedroom as the heavy winds forced water through the shutters and windows. It was silly, in hindsight. The water was coming anyway, and fast. But she had to pass the time. Once every half hour or so, she would run to the hallway, frightened by the loud crashing noises from outside, anticipating that one of the shutters would give way and the kitchen window would burst wide open. They never did that night.” – Four Women at Night by Schuyler Esprit

POETRY

“A mother has just lost her son
A mother has just lost her son
A mother has just lost her son.” – reading by Curmiah Lisette, from her poem ‘The Bandits’, part of the CaribCation Caribbean Author Series

***

“Speaking to you from St. Lucia…we have a strong literary tradition, anchored by our Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott.” – John R. Lee reading and discussing his lit and more in the CaribCation Caribbean Author Series

***

“Somewhere or other there must surely be
The face not seen, the voice not heard,
The heart that not yet—never yet—ah me!
Made answer to my word.” – from Somewhere or Other by Christina Rossetti

***

“But grief,
it wrings out your soul-case” – Grief by Yvonne Weekes in Barbados’ Arts Etc.

***

“My iPhone keeps me company.
Plays music for me, shows pictures
of friends, what they’re thinking.
Lights up the dark when I’m missing you,
brings other poets’ words with a touch.” – from ‘April 2020’ by Julie Mahfood (Jamaican in Canada) in the Jamaica Gleaner’s Meeting Ground: Poems in the Time of COVID-19

***

‘Like other poets of the Harlem Renaissance, McKay, though a powerful advocate of black liberation, took the dominant “voice” of traditional culture, mastered it and made it accommodate his different ways of seeing, his visions and his anger. The fusion of urban realism with more traditional Romantic tropes in Harlem Shadows still leaves room for clear blasts of rage against “the wretched way / Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace”.’ – re poem of the week Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay (poem and analysis) 

***

“She forgave grandma, then a single mother of six,
who fed her children with one hand
while choking them with the other.” – from Mother Suffered from Memories by Juleus Ghunta in Anomaly 28

This blog is maintained by Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator, and author Joanne C. Hillhouse. Content is curated, researched, and written by Hillhouse, unless otherwise indicated. Do not share or re-post without credit, do not re-publish without permission and credit. Thank you.

Congrats, Kendel

With this post, we shout out (somewhat belatedly) Caribbean author, St. Lucian Kendel Hyppolyte. His seventh collection, Word Planting, comes via Peepal Tree Press.

“He is quite simply amongst the very best of Caribbean poets who warrant an international reputation.  Kendel Hippolyte’s poetry moves easily, boldly between the worlds of public engagement and the intimacies of domesticity. What unites this movement are the distinctive sounds and rhythms of his voice, and whilst some poems have a named recipient, and some are addressed to himself, all engage the reader in an implicit dialogue.”

In addition to being an award winning poet, Kendel is also a celebrated playwright, director, and anthologist.

I like origins stories and a desire to share a quote from Kendel, from a recent interview, in which he discussed his origins as a writer, among other things, prompted this post. Here it is:

“I was a shy child and having to go and stand in front of a class and read something, especially something personal like that – horror! But disobeying the teacher was out of the question so i somehow reached the front of the class with my exercise book and i read the poem. (A very attentive audience, my memory tells me, but no doubt attentive for reasons other than the pleasure of poetry.) i finished reading … And the class burst into spontaneous applause! Not a bad introduction to the world of composing poetry and performing it.” Read the full interview here.

Oh and I’m not trying to hog his spotlight but the only picture I have of Kendel is this one from the Caribbean Congress of Writers event in Guadeloupe.

As with all content on Wadadli Pen, unless otherwise indicated, this is written by author and Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator Joanne C. Hillhouse. All rights reserved.

Reading Room and Gallery XVIII

This page is for sharing links to things of interest around the internet. It’ll be sporadically updated; so, come back from time to time. For the previous reading rooms (I, II, III, Iv, v, vI , vII, vIII, Ix, x, xI, xII, xIII, xIv, xv, xvI, xvII), click the links or use the search feature to the right, to the right.

ON PUBLISHING

“#3 Not following guidelines.
Double check all guidelines before submitting to a magazine. Is there a word count requirement? Should your name be removed from the piece? Should your document be in Word, pdf, or rich text format? If it’s an email submission, do they want the document attached, or pasted into the body of the email? Do they accept simultaneous submissions? Don’t risk getting your piece being tossed out because you didn’t follow the rules.” – (here at Wadadli Pen I know this one well) – read the rest of the list of mistakes writers make when submitting.

CREATIVES ON CREATING

“My advice for young writers is to keep reading widely and for pleasure. And don’t get discouraged! So much of it is just mule-like persistence. That’s what I feel I learned this time around. There were many times when Swamplandia! failed and I had to pick it up and try and write it again. There were stories in my collection that were just duds, they’ve been voted off the island, and it was only because I had this material commitment to getting them out the door that I was willing to keep working at them. I really do think that’s the best advice—to keep at it.” – Karen Russell

***

“An interesting insight into the process came when the pair considered how they had arrived at rather different descriptions for the location of the windmill-giants – Jull Costa has them ‘on that same plain’, whereas Bush situates them ‘in the nearby field’. It transpired that, rather than seeking a literal translation of the Spanish ‘en aquel campo’, each had pictured what they read the original to mean and then found a way to render the image in English.” – Ann Morgan on dueling translations of Don Quixote

***

“Not only do I not see movies as I write, I can’t visualise, well, anything. At all. I don’t even dream in pictures. I have absolutely no concept of what it would be like to see things that no one else can see.” – Jo Eberhardt

***

“It happens too often that beginning fiction writers fail to give their characters jobs or occupations. Weak stories by beginning writers often feature adults who are wealthy without any discernible means of income or who perform the indiscernibly ambiguous task of “work.” Characters are described as working each day, but the reader is never told what they do or how their daily jobs affect them or their interactions with others. Characters do not earn money; they simply have it. There are no bills, no expenses, and, of course, no financial struggles.” – Amina Gautier

***

“So here you have a man at the beach, but he can’t enjoy it; he has to sit, because of his paranoia, with his back to the water, sitting in a chair; he wears a Hawaiian shirt but there’s a bullet proof vest under it; he likes a red wine spritzer but it tastes like Skittles which is very loaded…Trayvon Martin had a pack of Skittles.” – Rowan Ricardo Phillips, born in New York to Antiguan parents, reflecting on his poem News from the Muse of Not Guilty after a reading of the poem, from his collection Heaven, on CBC Radio.

***

“You start from building this world with their rules, and then you just follow logic in order to come up with the rest of the details. So once you have this simple fact that you’re treating couples in a certain way and single people in another way—and there’s a bit of a concept that this is almost like a prison drama or something, at least in the first half of the film—then you pick up on those things and you borrow things from other kinds of situations … We tried to get into the heads of people that would be in charge and what they would come up with.” – Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos on the making of his film The Lobster

***

Writing other…Mary Robinette Kowal provides some insight to culturally sensitive approaches to doing so.

***

“The second thing is reminding myself: You don’t have to write anything that you’re not deeply interested in. Every time I remember this, it’s a relief and a surprise.” – Rita Mae Reese on curing the affliction of not-writing.

****

“I use traditional women’s techniques, such as sewing, beading and applique. I incorporate found objects in my work; they are clues towards understanding my story and that of women in general.” – Heather Doram

***

“So much of what the filmmakers did in creating and then editing their work is what we writers strive for when polishing a manuscript: pinpoint the heart of the story and stay true to it, cut what can be lost, and always direct conflict and pacing.” – Therese Walsh and Kathleen Bolton w/ Elena Greene discuss The Lord of the Rings’ adaptation from book to film and what writers can learn from the choices the filmmakers made. It’s a five part series that begins, here.

***

A long form interview on the arts is a rare thing, especially in a Caribbean print publication, so kudos to Jamaica’s Observer for this series of poetry month features, this one spotlighting American Tim Tomlinson, co-founder of the New York Writers’ Workshop, in conversation with Jamaican-American poet and artist Jacqueline Bishop. Tomlinson’s book Yolanda, an Oral History in Verse, is focused on the Phillipines but his connection to the Caribbean – his time spent visiting and diving in various islands and countries but most especially the Bahamas is explored as well. Essentially, this interview is about both his journeying as a person and how that has informed his writing, how he creates, generally, and specifically in the case of Yolanda. W/thanks to Jacqueline Bishop for sharing, here have a slow as you sipping your iced tea kind of read:

***

“That was one of those magic moments. That came out pretty much whole cloth. Every now and then you ride the tiger. Most days the tiger rides me, but every now and then I ride the tiger. That’s my favorite chapter in the book. The opening chapter of The Given Day is another example. It’s my favorite chapter in The Given Day. It was written in two nights. It was rewritten extensively for prose, but it just came out.” – Dennis Lehane

***

“When I closed my eyes, I could smell flue-cured tobacco. I could feel the hot sun beating down on me. I could hear the southern accent of a teacher whose voice reminded me of poetry.” – Shannon Hitchcock on the inspiration for her book Ruby Lee & Me

VISUAL ART

Online gallery of Netherlands artist Marijke Buurlage.

***

***

“Nature is completely indifferent to the human endeavours whether they are good, evil, otherwise, whatever.” – Lori Landey and Beth Harris discussing Joseph Mallard William Turner’s Slave Ship

NON FICTION

“How many times over the years
I have explained
This.
Celie and her “prettier” sister Nettie
are practically identical.
They might be twins.
But Life has forced on Celie
all the hardships
Nettie mostly avoids…” – Is Celie actually Ugly? By Alice Walker

***

“Why, I asked my brother, did you like the film so much? So many messages. Look at the title. Everyone has problems underneath. Just because you are smart doesn’t mean u can work everything out yourself.” – Sejal Shah writing on Ordinary People

***

“You must read to develop a deeper understanding of literary elements, such as character arc, subtext, voice, and narrative distance.” – Chuck Sambuchino in his article The Pros and Cons of getting a Creative Writing MFA at Writer’s Digest

***

Kei Miller’s essay in this BBC piece resonates with me – it’s truthful and thoughtful and bold as so much of his writing is even when speaking of his tentativeness writing the issue of race -how our whiteness and blackness mediate our interactions. That said, I feel that same prickle of disagreement I feel stir in me whenever a black person, black writer (especially if they’re from colonized or formerly colonized places like I am) say, I didn’t know I was black until… because it’s not my truth (my blackness didn’t limit my sense of possibility but the reality is that, like class and other things, our blackness or shades of blackness was and remains a way of separating ourselves from ourselves) even in the predominantly black places I have lived (including Kei’s Jamaica). The Caribbean is not insulated from these issues, though they are not as starkly or sharply or consistently experienced in whiter places like the US and UK. Beyond my own experiences (some touched on in my February 2016 Essence article Mirror Mirror and issues of colourism/shade-ism explored in my book Musical Youth), this fairly recent memory comes to mind: being in a roomful of children of different shades of black, in a public child-friendly space, right here on our predominantly black island, only to have another adult, call out to one of the children, “black boy, black boy” with a tone and cadence that suggested “bad boy, bad boy” and to have him look up, in full acceptance of this (internalizing it). My aside aside, give the audio clip a listen; it’s a really engaging and touching reflection from one of the Caribbean’s best.

INTERVIEWS

“A writer always benefits from being a kind of outsider. That is why I try not to belong to anything too much. [Alienation] makes you an insider-outsider . . . sharpens [your] sense of observation. You look at things with detached eyes. Even some words. Pondering these English words with your Creole eyes. . . . There always is a sort of dialogue going on [within] most artists anyway. They just soak things in that they ultimately try to reproduce some other way. I think having this dual lens has been very helpful.” – Edwidge Dandicat

***

“Grounded in the realities of our history and geography, but unbounded in their imaginative possibilities” – Philip Sander describing the work of Nalo Hopkinson jumped out at me as the very thing I’ve been trying to define when I speak of a Caribbean aesthetic as a criterion for (but not a limitation of) Wadadli Pen submissions.

***

“Shorter doesn’t mean faster or easier! Short story writing is a very different art from that of the novel, from pacing to character development. So for a novelist, it can actually take longer and be more of a stretch to try her hand at writing a short story. A rewarding challenge, certainly, but definitely a challenge.” – Lauren Willig

***

“I remember myself as a young child, my mother had books inside here, and one of them dealt with the Haitian Revolution. I was ever so proud of Toussaint L’Ouverture. I was just proud. I mean, there he was, sitting in the same book with Napoleon and all of these other great men. So, for me, the Haitian Revolution was very significant. I don’t know how it is in popular memory, because right now everybody’s sorry for the Haitians—and “sorry for” in the sense of, “We’re better off” or “They can wear our old clothes.” So I don’t know about it in the popular memory. But certainly historically, Haiti served to frighten late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century governments. Frightening them, and as a matter of fact, had them even more repressive towards their black enslaved workers because their fear of Haiti was so strong. So, I don’t know that it has popular resonances, but certainly for nineteenth-century politics, it did.” – Erna Brodber interview at SX Salon, a Small Axe Literary Platform

***

“What’s interesting to me is that of the women who have read this, every single one thinks that it is absolutely sexy and totally horny. Then I was like, ‘oh, so this is erotica’. And I was reminded again that erotica does not need to be explicit. And, of course, what is erotic and what we find sexy and will respond to viscerally in that way is entirely subjective.” – Leone Ross

***

“The fiction writer in me likes gaps in stories because I can jump into that gap and try to suggest something.” – Marlon James’ Vogue interview

***

“There’s a place for everything…” – says Barbados’ Shakirah Bourne in this NIFCA interview:

***

“To move past the ugly parts of history, you have to acknowledge them, on all sides, and this is what I think historical fiction can do so well: show how we got from there to here, but told through characters who see themselves not as history but as completely modern.” – Andrea Mullaney, author of The Ghost Marriage, 2012 Commonwealth Short Story winner for Canada and Europe

***

“The area where I spent my childhood years was surrounded my trees, and always seemed just on the edge of wilderness. That area has changed so much, but there is still that space in my imagination that’s the same…” – Danielle Boodoo Fortune, Woman of Colour interview

***

“What I’m trying to bring out is the power of words themselves, the power and musicality of words.” – Clifton Joseph

***

“Reading was such a sanctuary when I was a teenager, I wanted to see if I could tell a Jamaican story, a Caribbean story, that would interest even an urban teenager.” – Diana McCaulay re her new book Gone to Drift

FICTION

“In April of 1945, after facing only minimal resistance, Rhett was part of the Allied force that liberated a concentration camp named for the beech forests that surrounded it. The day was damp and overcast, with a heavy ground mist that sometimes hid the heaped bodies and sometimes revealed them. Living skeletons stood at the fences and outside the crematoriums, staring at the Americans. Some were horribly burned by white phosphorous.” – Cookie Jar by Stephen King

***

“In death, we live far more richly than we do in life. Our lives are pale shadows in which we are preoccupied with the business of living. It is in death that we take on nuance and colour. We seep through the floorboards of houses, spread out and nestle there. We whistle through windows, ruffle curtains and inhabit the minds and memories of others. We take on a resonance that only memory provides. We become deities. We become ancestors.” – from Ayanna Gillian Lloyd’s Walking in Lapeyrouse

***

“There was no rebuttal. She ended the call. From the decanter on side board, she poured herself a drink. The rum quelled the chill in her stomach — a chill reminiscent of rain-fly wings brushing against her skin. Where did they find him? They were hunting him for so long. Did he put up a fight? Errol had a point: There was really no need for her to kill him herself. But she wanted to.” – H. K. Williams’ Celeste in Moko

***

“They’ve taken you, in the rolling melody of their steps and song, to the river Aripo inside the forest, and when they sit and beckon you to come join them, their feet, you notice, are not as they’re supposed to be. It’s a peculiar thing to miss, really, backwards feet. You sense that your own feet have been treading air when they come into contact once again with the marshy forest floor. You look back into the bush where you think you came from, and you want to go home.”- Wenmimareba Klobah Collins

***

Edwidge Dandicat reads and discusses Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl and her own Wingless. And here’s Girl, so you can read along.

***

“My wife is happiest on Sunday afternoon, when I leave the house. We have been married five years – too soon for us to take pleasure in each other’s absence.” – from Radio Story by Anushka Jasraj – Commonwealth Short Story winner for Asia

***

“After years of working like a dog, clawing his way to fame and fortune—forfeiting family in the process—Desiree and the people of the island had broken down his mighty reserve and rewarded him with passion, friendship and the happiest times he’d ever experienced. He loved living in a place where everyone was aware of who he was, but not impressed or intimidated by what he had done. He admired the lack of social divides, that the Chief Minister played dominoes with ‘The People’, and that his best friend and “liming partner” was her cousin, and his Captain.” – Trudy Nixon’s Anguilla Boat Race, part of Akashic’s Mondays are Murder series

***

Mary Akers said about ‘Viewing Medusa’ after it had been posted at The Good Men Project: “For all you writers out there, this story’s publication is a testament to persistence. It won the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize, it was the story I submitted for my successful Bread Loaf waiter application, but for ten years, I tried unsuccessfully to get it published. I submitted it to 101 journals, 100 of whom rejected it before Matthew Salesses believed in it and brought it out into the world.” Here’s an excerpt from the story:  “I found myself unable to look away as she slurped her soup, dipping the pieces of dasheen in the broth and sucking them dry after each dip. When the soursop was served, she peeled away the bumpy green skin and slurped the fruit into her mouth, rolling it around until the smooth brown seeds were free, spitting them onto her plate. Soursop juice ran down her wrists and dripped off her elbows to the floor. I thought of Miss Connie, later, on her hands and knees, wiping up the stickiness while shaking her head at the lack of manners displayed by scientists.” – the voice/point of view and descriptions work well together to create a clear picture of the part of Dominica in which the story (which feels less fiction and more here’s how it happened) is set – the beauty and ruggedness in the landscape and the character of the people as compared with the visiting (presumably white) scientists, to create as well a certain mood of foreboding, and to suck the reader in…even if it spits that reader out the other end with questions, or rather one lingering question: so wait, she nar go do nutten? – Read the whole of Viewing Medusa here.

***

“The fuel tank was empty. He’d collapsed from sunstroke and dehydration. He’d been raving incoherently. When he finally recovered he’d lost all memory of where he’d left his men. A Lysander was sent out to look for them but nothing was ever found. The unforgiving maw of the Sahara had simply swallowed them up.” – Bully Beef and Biscuits by Guy Carter – this was the 2015 winner of the Mogford Prize for Food & Drink Writing

POETRY

“In Trinidad, everyone knows

the Pitch Lake but few have been

few have seen the dark and strange

surface, the vast dirt a mind of its own:

asphalt lake as constant as change.” – from La Brea. Read that and other poems by Andre Bagoo in Moko.

***

“No one sees my tears
wafting through the branch clusters
weeping airy patterns into the jungle silence.” – from Mangrove Armour by April Roach in Moko

***

“We read menacing messages in the scowls
of passers-by. Some circle around,
mark the territory with treads of footprints,
count down days to our departure.” – Camp by Althea Romeo-Mark in Moko

***

“…crushed lemongrass
overcooked tourist flesh sizzling in the noonday sun
barnacled, rusted boats off Devonshire Dock
my neighbour’s garbage ripped open by feral cats
overpriced perfume – from Trimingham’s, I think
‘mountain fresh’ detergent scent of laundry drying on the line
frying fish and sun-ripened fish guts
Baygon and stale beer
overripe cherries
Limacol and sweat..” – from Kim Dismont Robinson’s Scents of Bermuda: Or, All De Smells That Accosted My Nose One Day When Ahs Ridin My Bike From My Momma’s House on Norf Shore To My House in Smif’s Parish

***

‘In the roaring of the wolves the doctor said “Do you feel tenderness”
She was touching me’ – Niina Pollari, sharing and discussing her poem Do You Feel Tenderness

***

“There’ve always been Sunday mornings like this,
when God became young again
and looking back you see
that childhood was a Sunday morning.” – Kendel Hippolyte (Sunday) – be sure to also check out the Dunstan St. Omer Red Madonna that accompanies the poem.

BLOG

“I think I had a very different vision of myself when I was young, and definitely thought I’d have a family and be a loving parent by now. Instead I’ve birthed books” – Zetta Elliott

***

“Neglected authors fascinate me. While the particulars for their disregard may vary over time and from culture to culture, one thing remains constant: their perseverance despite official recognition. Such is the case of Eliot Bliss, a ‘white, Creole, and lesbian’ Jamaican novelist and poet whose collected poems have been resurrected by Michela A. Calderaro in Spring Evenings in Sterling Street.” Geoffrey Philp

***

“Getting to the place in yourself that is beyond influence is the radical edge.” – Brooke Warner

***

“…exploring a new space is a thing of wonder and an entirely individual experience…” – Sonia Farmer, blogging her Fresh Milk residency in Barbados

Reading Room XIV

This page is for sharing links to things of interest around the internet. It’ll be sporadically updated; so, come back from time to time. For the previous reading rooms, use the search feature to the right, to the right.

CREATIVES ON THE PROCESS

“Calypso provided lessons in how to play, teasingly, with language.” – Joanne C. Hillhouse

***

“These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That’s like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft. They are a good place for you to make the mistakes that every beginning writer is going to make. And they are still the best way for a young writer to break in…” – George R. R. Martin

***

“Be careful to stay consistently in one verb tense unless your narrator is a person who might switch tenses.” – Crawford Killian

***

“As I’m sure you know, Time is never a neutral, abstract thing. Nor merely a clock-ticking-on-the-mantlepiece thing. Time for writing your novel is time not for other occupations, not for other people. It’s time stolen from your loved ones; time they will probably resent you not devoting to them. Time is closing the door behind you and not answering when people knock – not unless they knock very hard, and shout words like ‘Fire’ and ‘Bastard’ and ‘I’m leaving – I really am’.” – Toby Litt

***

“I should be clear: there are plenty of times when the thought of reading my own story one more time makes me want to vomit.” – Max Barry

***

“I do think that as a society, even though my work is valued in the tertiary system as a text, writers are often seen as artists. And artists are often connected with entertainment, and seen as not scientific and not affecting evidence-based decisions.” – Oonya Kempadoo

***

I almost passed this one over because I’d never read Anne Lamott but there was too much good insight here to overlook…and now I want to add Lamott to my very long and ever growing reading list. Here’s Theo Pauline Nestor on things you can learn from reading Anne Lamott.

***

“One Wednesday night, while Pastor was telling us that blessings were five miles upstream so we should, like Enoch, wait on the Lord, I started reading Salman Rushdie’s “Shame,” hiding it in the leather Bible case. I had never read anything like it. It was like a hand grenade inside a tulip. Its prose was so audacious, its reality so unhinged, that you didn’t see at first how pointedly political and just plain furious it was. It made me realize that the present was something I could write my way out of. And so I started writing for the first time since college, but kept it quiet because none of it was holy.” – Marlon James

***

“But for those of us who are called to this craft, we know we must write. Because it’s true, your mother, father, brother, sister or cat could end up hating you, but if you don’t write, you’ll end up hating yourself. Ultimately, we write not for the world but for our own souls.” – Bushra Rehman

***

“This is how I know that the symbols we write and read about are as real as flesh, and are one of the only means of remembering ourselves and our personal and ancestral stories.” – Danielle Boodoo-Fortune. Read and see her Amazona and And Other Winged Creatures.

***

“We recognize, in their faces—in their actions—their fearlessness. They haven’t yet been anesthetized by the daily grind of adult life. They still think they have a puncher’s chance at beating everything.” Interesting post by Matthew McGevna, my co-panelist at the Brooklyn Book Festival, about the genesis of his book, Little Beasts. Read his full post.

***

***

“Editing can also lead to moments of humor. At some point, when two of my main characters, an older female scientist and a working mom who grow very close over the course of the book, clasped hands for something like the fifth time, I almost cried out with irritation, and wrote ‘There is way too much hand clasping in this book! Stop it!!’” – Kamy Wicoff

***

“You are not imagining it, my art has become darker over the last couple years. For so long my attitude was that I just wanted to paint upbeat, joyful images to increase the beauty in this world, and not dwell on negativity, which would just be feeding it.

At the time, that meant bright, vibrant, ‘sunny’ colours … sometimes I literally painted on yellow canvases.

But the times we live in have a dark undertone, and I am not immune to it. As artists, it is not just our nature, but our job to FEEL, and to be a channel – through our art – to make others FEEL.” – Donna Grandin

POETRY

“How could his daily toil
of hammer, saw and nails;
an old lady’s reckoning
of last month’s window
against the patching
of her roof this week —
how could her life of sacrifice
and his of labour, sweat
and boiling sun
be totalled up
in this small word?” – Word (on teaching an adult male to read) by Esther Phillips

***

“She was stabbed in a bar in Kingston.
Only men attended her funeral, extra drunk.” – Ishion Hutchinson, Prudence from Far District

***

“There’ve always been Sunday mornings like this,
when God became young again
and looking back you see
that childhood was a Sunday morning.” – Kendel Hippolyte, Sunday

***

“And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:” – Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

***

“…the beach say, This him. John Goodman
he name, originally Jean-Paul Delattre,
brother of Stephen Dillet, first coloured man

in Parliament. Come here on a boat
from Haiti back then, back again,…” – Goodman’s Bay ll by Christian Campbell

***

“…their lines uneven, their slow step out of sync
marching with wrinkled faces to commemorate
a war they didn’t start, majesty’s ship that didn’t sink
distended necks show a conceited attitude

for having served mother England.” – from Memorial Day by Reuel Lewi

VISUAL

Danielle Boodoo Fortune working on a mural project in Trinidad… when I bookmarked this a while ago, my note to myself was why can’t we have something like this in Antigua… turns out, we do, sort of; check out the Antigua Graffiti series.

***

Heather Doram’s Rootedness and other art pieces from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Canada, showed during the Pan Am Games, featured in this showing at the Textile Museum of Canada. See all the pieces here.

***

This beautiful painting (I want it soooo bad) is Gardener of Small Joys, 2015 by Danielle Boodoo-Fortune (artist). Danielle is a Trinidadian-Tobagonian artist (and a Wadadli Pen ally having served as a judge in 2014 and 2015); she is superbly talented in both the visual and literary medium. Here’s a link to her work. And to a review of her work in the Arc.

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The film Ah! Hard Rain is the story of a fishing village struggling to survive due to over fishing by huge trawlers from, Europe, China, etc. The film sponsored this special performance at the British Museum, on Saturday 15th August, 2015 by providing two of the amazing Moko Jumbie performers, all the way from Trinidad & Tobago, who feature in the soon to be released film Ah! Hard Rain. Photo is from the Ah! Hard Rain facebook page https://www.facebook.com/AhHardRain

INTERVIEWS

w/John R. Lee:

“…how the literature has developed through personages and work, I’ve always been conscious of that; I’ve always been conscious of the cultural context of our literature and our arts…”

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w/?uestlove:

“I don’t mourn the bad, I don’t celebrate the good, I just walk forward.”

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w/Attica Locke:

“We exist in the middle: We’re not demons or angels — we’re human beings. And so that is what needs to be reflected in the art of our nation.”

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w/Anne Germanacos:

“As writers, we live double lives: lived once in the world of others, and again, in the quiet of our own minds. It takes a certain amount of will and courage to leave with regularity the circle of humanity in order to enact a kind of theft, which is one aspect of what the writing life seems to be.”

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w/Diana King:

“As for me, I just was not the type of Jamaican singer that was ‘hype’ at the time so no attention or encouragement was given. Dreams can die like this.”

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w/Marlon James:

“Of course I’m intimidated, but I’m also protected by social and artistic privilege. You can be immune if you’re a Rex Nettleford, or a rich gay dude, but for a poor or middle class person, not so much. And nobody is ever really immune. Gay men are still getting shot in the face in New York, there is still too much stigma against HIV for no reason. Job discrimination. Some stores want a legal right to discriminate. It isn’t over.”

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w/Justin ‘Jus Bus’ Nation:

“I think that if we help to support this type of creative behaviour, musically and artistically, our culture in the music and arts sector can evolve greatly. A lot of people get discouraged because from a young age they are being told that they can’t succeed at their dream because it’s not the normal doctor or dentist stereotypical job that their parents see fit for sustainable income. If the government and more people took it seriously and equally took risks and chances then an infrastructure could be made for year-round arts and music on a more realistic economic level for people – instead of this fairytale, ‘movie star’ illusion that’s being fed to young kids through TV and internet.”

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w/Yiyun Li:

“I used to keep this journal…and I knew my mother would read my journal (so) my journal was just negative space; so if there was a bird, I would not say there was a bird – I would describe the cloud around, trees, skies, just leaving a blank space of the bird. So if my mother read it, she would not see the bird.”

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w/Joanne C. Hillhouse:

“The analogy in my head is like I’m driving down a lane, a bumpy lane like so many of the off roads in Antigua, and I’ve never been on that road before and there’s a bend and I don’t know what’s around the bend but I want to find out so I keep going, even though it’s a little bit scary…”

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w/Diane Chamberlain:

“I wish someone had told the very young me that good writing is the ticket to success in nearly everything. I didn’t learn that until my junior year of high school when a history teacher taught us how to research and organize our essays and term papers. Suddenly, I realized I could use my writing skills in every subject (except math, unfortunately). My grades soared. It’s those skills that got me through college and graduate school, and it’s those skills I still use today as I outline and work on my books. We can do our young people a big favor by helping them learn to write well.”

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w/Jamaica Kincaid:

“More immediately, I’m trying to earn a living in the way that is most enjoyable to me. I love the world of literature, and I hope to support myself in it. I come from the small island of Antigua and I always wanted to write; I just didn’t know that it was possible. I would pretend when I was a child that I was Charlotte Brontë, because I’d read Jane Eyre when I was ten and, although I didn’t understand it, I loved the idea that this woman had written a book. I wanted to be her.”

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w/Jamaica Kincaid:

“I was up all night long, working on a sentence,” she said. She hadn’t finished it yet.

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w/Michael Anthony:

“I realized I liked words, the sound of words” – Listen to the full interview 

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w/Colin Farrell …yes, that Colin Farrell…Colin is officially the first Hollywood actor in the Wadadli Pen Reading Room…as if Hollywood actors need more publicity, right?…But whatever, I like this interview and love his accent…no apologies….besides it’s always interesting hearing artists, from any area of the arts, talking about their craft…and always refreshing to see the ways in which their journey and sensibility is not that foreign from your own:

Interviewer: Was that the last time that you were on stage?
Colin Farrell: …other than struggling to be myself on things like this.

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w/Oonya Kempadoo:

What’s the best advice on writing you ever received? “Just write.”

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w/John Robert Lee:

“Firstly, more creative arts education programmes are needed at all levels of our education system. The arts will evolve when young people come to a better, informed understanding of the arts. This education also creates an audience for the arts, an audience that is informed, understands what is being presented to them, and so they are better able to appreciate and evaluate creative arts.”

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w/Tamara Ellis Smith:

“Well, the idea for Hurricane came when my son — who was four at the time — asked me from the back seat of the car, ‘Who is going to get my pants?’

This was August 2005, and we were driving a few bags of clothing and food to the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort. What a great question! Of course I didn’t know, but I began to imagine who would get his pants — and then I began to actually IMAGINE who would get his pants. And I was off and running . . .”

STORIES

“But it’s getting weird lately; some nights as he rocks on top of me, I start to imagine that I’m Her…” – Starfish by Randy Triant

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“He always cooked his pepper pot on their Oh Gad, claiming coal fire gave a better flavor, but Nora knew that it wasn’t the fire that made the dish unforgettable, it was him. It was the way they would sit on the veranda, with a bowl of the aromatic stew and listen to him recount the tales of his youth, stories of climbing mango trees and oil pan cook out by the dam. Of adventures in the sugar cane fields, and of jumbi, and sokuna and all the things that made up the lore of the country side. All their legends told in his base voice, punctuated by belly laughs and mouthfuls of pepper pot.” – The Grave Digger’s Wife by Random_Michelle (Michelle Toussaint)

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“Legend states that the Moss is a creature hatched from a chicken egg layed on Good Friday after three months of incubation. The egg is placed under the arm of the person wishing for the Moss and has to stay there until the three months have passed. Once it begins to hatch, at the moment it emerges from the shell, one must say: ‘Mweh seh mette ou’ (I am your master) before it can say it to you, needless to say what happens if you fail. If you accomplish this then the Moss is charged to fulfill your every desire not unlike the Djinns of Persia. However it seems that a Moss comes with a terrible price…” – Glen Toussaint, Tale of the Moss.  Read more.

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“He is taking the back way to town so that he can look at this man’s corn and consider the way in which his corn looks better.” – listen to Austin Smith’s Friday Nigh Fish Fry

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“Outside, I see a million butterflies flitting about in the golden sunlight. He once told me that there’s a place in Kingston where, in butterfly season, you can see them falling out of trees like golden rain. We’d made plans to marry beneath one of those trees. But those plans, like Isaiah, have all disappeared. Suddenly, an image of Peter and Denise appears before me, the money they have promised me for one night.” – Read all of Sharon Leach’s Sugar.

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“Miss lady house burn down, everybody outside. Not even the moon out but everybody out.” – Read all of Glen Toussaint’s Is Obeah dat burn down di house or Goat Mout!?

WRITERS ON PUBLISHING

The only part of this Andrew Lowe article I didn’t like was “He said no. Something about how he never allows his images to be used for commercial reasons.” which, to me, felt vaguely dismissive/mocking of the photographer’s choice but overall I thought it was an interesting and insightful take on the process of cover design… something, incidentally, we’ve tried to tackle with the Wadadli Pen Challenge.

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If you’re out here freelancing, this article actually has a lot of stuff I’ve tried and continue to try …with mixed results.

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“Build relationships with your readers as best you can. Building a loyal following of readers who are willing to pay for your books is your most effective way of personally combating piracy.” – if you’ve written and been published, chances are you’ve come across some site purporting to offer your book for free at some point. As with any theft, it feels like a violation…and it’s cutting in to your royalties. This article provides tips for writers on dealing with piracy.

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“I thought back over the many interactions I’d had with agents – all but two of them white – before I landed with mine. The ones that said they loved my writing but didn’t connect with the character, the ones that didn’t think my book would be marketable even though it was already accepted at a major publishing house. Thought about the ones that wanted me to delete moments when a character of color gets mean looks from white people because “that doesn’t happen anymore” and the white magazine editor who lectured me on how I’d gotten my own culture wrong. My friends all have the same stories of whitewashed covers and constant sparring with the many micro and mega-aggressions of the publishing industry.” – Daniel José Older on Diversity is not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing

NON FICTION

“After colossal effort and countless attempts to acclimate myself to them, I focused on changing my way of seeing them. I pulled the curtain from the other side and started to explore the depths of their world. It took me a while, but I came to the conclusion that criminals laugh, too”. – from 1000 Lashes Because I Say What I Think by Raif Badawi. Translated by Ahmed Danny Ramadan. Read more.

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“When I was a little girl I was sent to mass every Sunday, but I did not pay much attention to the mass, which was mostly in Latin.  My interest was drawn to the ceiling of the church where there were hundreds of paintings of pink-faced cherubs, angels and saints. There was not one black face on that ceiling!  I deduced that black people did not go to Heaven. I was a child, how was I to know that those paintings were some artist’s depiction of The Great Beyond?” – Daisy Holder Lafond, I could have been a terrorist

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Storytelling by Jamaica Kincaid, Josh Axelrad, and Sebastian Junger from the Moth Radio series: link.

As with all content (words, images, other) on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight,  Fish Outta Water, Oh Gad!, and Musical Youth). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about WadadliPen and my books. You can also subscribe to and/or follow the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks. And remember while linking and sharing the links, referencing and excerpting, with credit, are okay, lifting whole content (articles,  images, other) from the site without asking is not cool. And using any creative work without crediting the creator will open you up to legal action. Respect copyright.