15 Miami Poets@ The International Literary Quarterly: Geoffrey Philp

Mangroves (B)
acrylic on canvas
48 inches x 36 inches
2007 
© Xavier Cortada

Sharing space with fellow comrades-in-word @ Interlitq:  Elisa Albo, Howard Camner, Adrian Castro, Denise Duhamel, Corey Ginsburg, Michael Hettich, Miriam Levine, Christopher Louvet, Jesse Millner, Barbra Nightingale, Laura Richardson, Alexis Sellas, Virgil Suárez, and Nick Vagnoni. The artwork was done by Miami-based artist, Xavier Cortada.

Here's the link: http://www.interlitq.org/

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“Put Your Vision to Reality”:Citizen Journalism at Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot

About four years ago while listening to Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry,": "In this great future, you can't forget your past," I wrote my first post: "Why Do I Continue to Write?" Little did I know, 1176 posts later that my blog would become the "premier [blog] on Caribbean book and literary events."

The relative success of the blog has been surprising. In those early days, I thought the Internet’s promise was to be lauded, especially within the Caribbean where cultural gatekeepers decided who would be published, but there were also some dangers with the of the democratization of data. I realized that the media revolution would alter every relationship in publishing and blur definitions that had been taken for granted: publisher, journalist. And as with all revolutions, there were going to be winners and losers. But how would the "winners"--the voices to be preserved/privileged--be decided?



These were just some of the concerns that I had when I began my journey as a citizen journalist. For as a former book reviewer of The Miami Herald and Miami Times, I had seen the work of Caribbean writers disappear, column inch by column inch, from the pages of newspapers in Miami and the Caribbean. And coming from a region plagued by poverty, earthquakes and the yearly round of hurricanes that threaten to erase memory, and which had already lost so many writers either because of their inability to support themselves financially or who had given up because of critical neglect, I didn't want the voices of the elders or my generation to be silenced, for them to become the "losers" in the media revolution.



So before I wrote my first post, I began reading other book blogs, especially those written by author/bloggers, and I made critical choices that would distinguish my blog within my niche. And after attending the We Media Conference in Miami under the auspices of Global Voices, I initiated several innovations that would affect the direction of the blog. 


Unlike other sites which charge a fee for a subscription and thereby prohibit the free flow of ideas, I decided that the blog would be a transparent data repository which would connect readers and writers in the community. Given the literacy rates in the Caribbean, it would also have to convince the occasional reader that writing was an important endeavor. Another strategy would be to use book reviews to introduce these readers to lesser known writers who did not have the support of multinational publishers. However, I didn't want the blog, although it bore my name, to be merely a list of by biases. I wanted to initiate a dialogue with readers that would broaden the scope of Caribbean writing and bring in as many voices as possible--even if I disagreed with the opinions or aesthetics. "Make it new," said Ezra Pound and I have always followed his sage advice in every aspect of my work. But where would I begin?


The first step was to make the design of the site as welcoming as possible and to transform the negative stereotype about bloggers: a lonely male geek dressed in a sweaty undershirt typing away in the basement of his mother’s home. For this, I had to learn basic JavaScript so that I could create a sidebars for sites such as The Caribbean Review of Books  and to publish a wide range of articles about Caribbean life in the hope of attracting newer readers to the rich vibrancy of our literature. The second step, as I described in “Blogger and Me: A Three Year Journey” and “Caribbean Publishing in the Internet Age,” was to overcome the “digital divide” that still exists in the region and the resistance that many older Caribbean writers have toward technology.


Luckily, with a little help from my friends, I began a series based on John Baker's blog, Five Questions I interviewed Kwame Dawes, Marlon James, Adrian Castro, Sandra Castillo, and Barbra Nightingale. Then, I expanded the idea to include individuals such as Erika Waters, the founding editor of The Caribbean Writer, who had played an important role in developing Caribbean writing in the late twentieth century. I also interviewed bloggers who were expanding the boundaries of Caribbean blogging: Patrice Elizabeth Grell Yursik, Fragano Ledgister, Tobias Buckell, and Karel McIntosh. Another improvement was to offer the writers from nearly every Caribbean island an opportunity to speak about their work without the filters of editors or critics. Several writers such as Cyril Dabydeen, Diana McCaulay, Sasenarine Persaud, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Kamau Brathwaite responded to the invitation for In My Own Words.


Kamau Brathwaite's support from the inception was very important, for it gave the blog instant stature. From the first time I met him at the University of Miami, his example of reaching back to help unpublished writers demonstrated his engagement with the Caribbean and his efforts in his generation's mission: the "decolonization of the mind." And as an educator who had worked in Miami, the heart of the Caribbean diaspora, I had seen the effects of those soul/self destroying memes of racism/colonialism on my generation and "The Children of the Matrix."



"If it doesn’t exist on the Internet, it doesn’t exist," argued Kenneth Goldsmith in his post at Harriet. This is especially true for the Millennials. Their cultural amnesia became clear to me after a discussion with a group of high school students about the poetry of Félix Morisseau-Leroy. Even though a street in the middle of Little Haiti was named after the old griot, the students did not know who he was. This prompted me to write another birthday post for Morisseau-Leroy and I published "Boat People," one of his better known poems from Haitiad & Oddities. But the more I talked with children at other schools, the more I realized that they knew very little about their cultural heritage. Some had never heard about Anancy. Caribbean children who did not know about Anancy? Something had to be done.


Based on the interplay, I wrote a children's book, Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories, and read at various book fairs and elementary schools. For everything in my writing life would have been in vain if it did not benefit the children, who face daunting challenges even as they try to cope with being caught between cultures. Frequently they adopt novelty over the wisdom of the "older" culture. During the readings, I talked about Anancy, the Middle Passage, and writing. One of the biggest surprises for the children was when they discovered that I was the author of the book. They never imagined that an author who looked like them was writing about kids who looked like them. This was even more pronounced when I had the opportunity to speak to high school and college students about essay writing, the work of Caribbean women writers, and the use allusions. For another aim of the blog is to convince readers that the new "flatness" of the world affords opportunities which had previously never existed—that to the call, of ancestors such as Marcus Garvey, they are the answer.


As had become the pattern, live discussions led to posts that engaged the virtual community. One post led to another and soon the blog had become a learning resource for students as far away as India, Australia, United Arab Emirates, and South Korea who wanted to know more about writers such as Mervyn Morris, Olive Senior and Derek Walcott.


Pam Mordecai helped me to respond to the requests with "Letter to A Young Writer." And based on private e-mails from teachers, I posted critical readings of Walcott, Olive Senior, and Dennis Scott. I also hosted original podcasts by Kamau Brathwaite, Ramabai Espinet, Lawrence Scott, Deborah Jack, and Joanne Hyppolite, author of author of two popular middle-grade novels for children Seth and Samona.

This is another aspect of the blog about which I am extremely proud: the Caribbean children author series which has featured posts by Summer Edward and Joanne C. Hillhouse. I am also proud that this blog was the first to publish digital photographs of Dennis Scott and Anthony McNeill. Tony's sister, who had been searching the web, found my post about her brother and donated the photographs to the blog when she found out that her brother's image did not exist on the web. I could tell about similar stories, especially the ones having to do with Don Drummond, and other musicians from the Caribbean.

And this, perhaps, is one of the noteworthy contributions of the blog--the exploration of the connection between literature and music of the Caribbean with a special emphasis on reggae and Bob Marley. 

However, my interest in Marley is not merely as a celebrity pop icon. Marley, as an adherent of Garveyite principles, owned his own recording company, Tuff Gong, and used legal and extralegal methods to safeguard his publishing rights, and any discussion of Bob Marley and reggae would be incomplete without the mention of Marcus Garvey and Rastafari. Again, writers such as Colin Grant, author of Negro With a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey, have been more that gracious with their time and have written excellent guest posts, free of charge to the community.

And at its heart this is what the blog has become: a meeting place for the community to be informed about book events, read reviews and interviews with authors, and sometimes to sound the alarm whenever one of our institutions is threatened. But it's also more than that. It has expanded the role of the book blog to include conversations about homophobia, climate change, censorship, and future of publishing in a digital age. Part advocate, cheerleader, and critic, it has provided information to writers about venues for publication, published original poetry and fiction, initiated discussions about topics such as What Does It Mean to be a Caribbean-American and What is a Caribbean classic?

In this respect the blog is not only innovative, it is also useful as the comments of readers attest. And to quote Derek Walcott in "A Letter from Brooklyn": "For such plain praise what fame is recompense?"

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My Ideal Reader: Barbra Nightingale

My ideal reader is someone who loves the taste of words. Who reads aloud to him or herself (or to others, of course!) just to be able to roll the words around in the mouth, tasting each one of them, enjoying the sweet, the tart, yes, even the bitter. My reader says to him or herself: “I felt just like that, but I just didn’t how to say it!” Or, “That’s exactly how I feel now!” I want to speak for those to whom words might not come as poetry or prose, I want to speak for those who want to share my words with others, and passes around copies of my poems, or tucks them in gifts or private notes. Most of all, I want to be able to sing, and since I’m tone deaf, I offer my poems instead, even though I sing in key of L. As I say in my first book, “All songs are poems, but not all poems can be sung.” My reader will not only read, but listen as well.

Barbra Nightingale’s newest book of poetry, Geometry of Dreams was just published by Word Tech Editions. Her first book, Singing in the Key of L won the 1999 NFSPS Stevens award. She has had over 200 poems in various journals, anthologies, and online, and resides in Hollywood, Florida, where she is a full professor of English, literature, and Creative Writing at Broward College.

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Who's Your Daddy? @ Books & Books

Reading in front of family and friends, especially when there are new readers in the audience, is never easy. On the one hand, I wanted to read something that showed I had grown artistically and the faith that my family has had in me—not to speak of the money they’ve lent me—had been justified. On the other hand, I wanted to introduce new readers to my work. It’s that delicate balance that I faced when I read at Books & Books on June 9, 2009.

Of course, Mitch Kaplan helped me in satisfying the expectations of old and new readers by mentioning my previous books and setting a context for Who’s Your Daddy?. Mitch has always been a great supporter of local writers and he also recalled the earliest readings that I and many other writers have given at my favorite South Florida Indie bookstore. It was a generous introduction that helped to set the stage for the stories.

I started with “Third Time,” a humorous tale about a young man who uses his father’s advice about the “third time being the charm” to his own advantage. The audience enjoyed the double entendres and the social commentary that was part of the subtext of the reading.

That, I thought was the end of the presentation, but in responding to a question, I read “My Jamaican Touch” as an example of my experimentation with meta-fiction and magical realism. The story was a hit and my mother-in-law enjoyed it even though I had some light hearted humor at her expense.

The book signing that followed was special for me. I met old friends such as Mary Luft, Vicki Hendricks, and Barbra Nightingale, who will be reading at Books & Books on June 19. 2009.

This was one of those readings in South Florida that I’ll always remember, not only because nearly all of my extended family was there and that I introduced a few new readers to my work, but I also read stories that confirmed a feeling that I’ve had for a long time—I’ve become pretty good at this writing thing.

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Please follow this link for more photos: Reading of Who's Your Daddy? @ Books & Books.

"The Ex-Files" by Barbra Nightingale

There is often the urge when faced with an unbearable tragedy to wallow in self-pity. And if one turns to verse to render the circumstances into an aesthetic experience, the most important aspect of poetry—transport—is often missing.

In the The Ex-Files, Barbra Nightingale has transformed the details of her ex-husband’s death into a powerful meditation that takes the reader through landscapes of grief filled with hurricanes, cookbooks, dreaming cats, and ruminations about the meaning of the Hebrew word: chai.

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Upcoming Posts

Five Questions with Garry Steckles (4/3/2009).

Garry Steckles, author of Bob Marley: A Life.

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In My Own Words: Martin Mordecai (4/6/2009).

Martin Mordecai, author of Blue Mountain Trouble.

"Romancing the Numbers" by Barbra Nightingale

Barbra Nightingale has had over 200 poems published in various national and online journals such as Tigertail, The Best of Tigertail, MiPo, Ocho, The Appalachee Review, Kansas Quarterly, Barrow Street, The Chatahoochee Review, Mississippi Review, MacGuffin, Many Mountains Moving, Kalliope, Calyx, and others. She has five published books, including the Prize-winning Singing in the Key of L.

Romancing the Numbers

Miranda, naked, sits cross-legged on the bed.

She is loving a man with her eyes only

because he does not exist. She has made him

up in her mind and he is the perfect lover.

His kisses cover her body, reach every crevice,

shed new light on darkness.


Miranda rocks back and forth and shakes her head,

counting beats of her heart. She is practicing Love

in the Perfumed Garden, the Arabic way.

She is on number fourteen and by the time

she reaches twenty-five, she will die of ecstasy.

She knows this and does not mind.


“Desire is the wish for heaven,” she says,

her hands fluttering like hummingbirds

around her body. She feels them peck and bite,

knows the power of suggestion.

What, after all, is reality, but a different spatial plane,

a riddle we move to, traveling in circles?


It is not the answer, she thinks, that binds us,

it is the question unasked—

the one where purpose is not a definition

but an adventure yet to be had.

Miranda sighs, lies down and closes her eyes.

Her lover sleeps, then brings her gently to fifteen.

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"Romancing the Numbers" by Barbra Nightingale first appeared in MiPoesias, and is part of a new collection, Geometry of Dreams, due out in 2009. Throughout the month of April, National Poetry Month, poets from the Caribbean and South Florida will be featured on this blog.

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Real Fantasy: Barbra Nightingale @ BCC

Barbra Nightingale writes real fantasy and last week Wednesday at Broward Community College, South Campus, she demonstrated this talent when she read from her prize winning collection, Singing in the Key of L and her manuscript, "The Ex-Husband Files."

Many of the poems in the manuscript display an almost macabre sense of humor because they describe the traumatic events of the poet's life that resulted from her ex-husband's suicide and her discovery of his body nine days later. The poems, eighteen sonnets of rage, despair, loneliness and humor with rich imagery of the body as a landscape of passion and betrayal, are a tour-de-force. In every poem, Barbra shifts the perspective on everyday objects that surround our lives, cats, books, can openers, and hammers, and transforms them into metaphors of our deepest despair or hopes.

And there is always her playful humor. For even when she's vamping on the D(ead) W(hite) M(en) of the canon, "A thing of beauty is a boy forever," her sense of the fantastic hovers over every line so that the real becomes woven into dream, into fairy tale, myth, and re-enters the body as poetry that is grounded in the body, "an ear lobe, toe, small tender ankle" ("Making Love to a Cannibal").

During the reading, which she described as "cathartic," Barbra read one of her best known and favorite poems of the audience:

The Cape Was Never White

Little Red Riding Hood

First of all, I was not skipping.

I never skip, but yes, I was eating

strawberries: red, ripe, delicious.

I had heard rumors

that girls who ate them

would never want for men.

I was after the woodcutter

not the wolf, but the wolf

was quicker, sly, and intense.

I hadn't meant to enjoy it--

but being swallowed whole

was a definite kick

no man could ever give.

For more photos of the reading, click here: Barbra Nightingale @ BCC, April 4, 2007.

Barbra Nightingale has had over 200 poems published in various national and online journals such as Tigertail, The Best of Tigertail, MiPo, Ocho, The Appalachee Review, Kansas Quarterly, Barrow Street, The Chatahoochee Review, Mississippi Review, MacGuffin, Many Mountains Moving, Kalliope, Calyx, and others. She has five published books, including the Prize-winning Singing in the Key of L.

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On Thursday, April 12, 2007, "In My Own Words: Frances Anne-Solomon."

Frances-Anne Solomon is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and producer whose credits include Lord Have Mercy!, Peggy Su!, What My Mother Told Me and Bideshi. She is the president and artistic director of the two companies she founded, Leda Serene Films and CaribbeanTales, and has also worked as a radio film and television drama producer for the BBC. Her new film, A Winter Tale, will open the Reel World Film Festival in Toronto on April 11th.

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Writing Books Poetry Writing South Florida Writers

Five Questions With Barbra Nightingale

Barbra Nightingale has had over 200 poems published in various journals, anthologies, and webzines, including, MiPo, Tertulia, The Georgetown Review, Barrow Street, MacGuffin, Kalliope, Calyx, Tigertail, Florida in Poetry, and many others. She has a doctoral degree in Higher Education, and is a senior professor of literature and creative writing at Broward Community College in South Florida. She lives in Hollywood, Florida.


1. Which author and/or book has most influenced you?

The Source byJames Michener, Henderson, the Rain King by Saul Bellow and Sylvia Plath's Ariel probably influenced me the most.

2. How has living and working in South Florida shaped your work?

I am very aware of my natural surroundings in Florida; the heat, the heavy air, the closeness of the moon, the song of the stars. And clouds. Clouds here seem to figure in my work a lot, along with the sea. Also, my best friends in Florida are all poets and the community here has inspired me like nowhere else.

3. Why did you choose the name "Miranda" for your poetic alter ego?

Miranda is a name that came to me in 1981. I have no idea why. It just popped into my head. I liked the syllabic sound of it, but there was really no consciousness in choosing the name. After about 30 or 40 Miranda poems, though, I did start thinking about the connections between Miranda Rights (the right to remain silent--or NOT--) seemed to have special significance.

4. "Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within"-- James Baldwin. How does this relate to your poetry?

Because I love what I do (work with words), I use poetry in that same way, as a way to take off the masks, allow the REAL emotions or truths, mostly emotional truths whether the situation is fictional or not, to shine through.

5. What role does myth play in your poetry?

I think that my knowledge of myth and fairy tale has always fed into my poetry, even in the most oblique ways; just in the story telling and suspense and layers of meaning if nothing else.

6. What makes you laugh?

MYSELF. All my silly little foibles, insecurities, mistakes. Life. Love. Everyone.

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Next Week

Monday. In My Own Words: Pam Mordecai, author of Pink Icing

Friday. Five Questions With Marlon James.

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Books
Poetry
Caribbean,
poetry blog
Miami
South Florida writers

Five Questions With Michael Hettich

Michael Hettich has published a dozen chapbooks and books of poetry, most recently Swimmer Dreams (Turning Point, 2005) and Flock and Shadow: New and Selected Poems (New Rivers Press, 2005). His honors include two Florida Individual Artist Fellowships and the Tales Prize (for Swimmer Dreams). Flock and Shadow was selected as a national Book Sense Spring 2006 Top Ten Poetry Book and he received the Tales Prize for Swimmer Dreams in 2005. Hettich holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Miami. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the Wolfson campus of Miami Dade College and lives with his family in Miami, Florida.


1. Which author or book has most influenced you?

For me, this is a nearly impossible question to answer, since so many writers have been important to me at various stages of my life. I don’t think I could honestly say that any one writer has influenced me most. Looking back on my life, though, I can see a number of moments in which poetry came alive to me in ways that felt fresh and new and fashioned (re-fashioned) my whole conception of things in general and poetry in particular.

When I was still small enough to cuddle beside him, my father sat me down and read poems to me. These were intimate, magical, extremely resonant times for me. I can vividly remember the smell of his whiskey and the sonorous way he sang those poems out to me. Two particular favorites of his were Frost’s “Once by the Pacific” and Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” Of course I understood the Frost only vaguely and the Eliot not at all. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was sitting next to my father, listening to that music not understanding—but realizing that understanding was beside the point.

Later, when I started to write myself, Neruda was extremely important—despite the fact that I read him in English—as well as W.S. Merwin and all those whom Robert Bly labeled as “deep image” poets. And then a little later, at Anselm Hollo’s suggestion, I read O’Hara, Creeley, Olson, and the Objectivist poets—Reznikoff, Zukofsky, Oppen, etc.

It wasn’t until I moved to Denver for graduate school that I first read the Romantics. Wordsworth, particularly “Tintern Abbey,” was a huge influence on how I conceived and approached poetry. Whitman, too, became important to me then as well—though never with the power Wordsworth had over me. At the same time, Gary Snyder was becoming more and more important to my thinking and approach to life and writing.

I also like Robert Sund’s work a great deal….

As I said, it’s very hard to answer that question. I keep feeling as though I’m leaving someone out…

2. How has living in South Florida influenced you?

That’s an interesting question. I moved here from Vermont, and before that I’d lived in Colorado—and I grew up in New York. So my sensibility was very northern, and my internal landscape was filled with mountains and rivers, cold and snow. Moving to Florida was a wondrous experience for me. I remember wading with my wife, that first year, out into the ocean off Key Biscayne at dusk, in winter, marveling at the color of the water, at the fish and birds, at the sky. For all its frustrations, South Florida has remained a place of wonder for me, in large part, I think, because it is so full of plants and flowers and birds and trees I didn’t know, growing up. I am constantly amazed here in ways I don’t think I am in Colorado or New York where the landscape seems so much a part of me I don’t even see it. That amazement has been a great source for my poetry.

3. The poet Marianne Moore speaks about “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” Does this apply to your poetry?

Marianne Moore speaks of “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” which is a wonderful conception of one of the ways poetry works. For me, at least in my more recent poems, the statement might better read: “real gardens with imaginary toads in them.” More and more often I find myself imagining a location or setting from my past and them imagining some human interaction in that “real” place. Many of my more recent poems are set in my garden, for example, or in the Everglades, or in northern marshes—real places—and they are peopled by characters who are similar to (maybe) people I actually know, who are doing things I imagine. So, the setting is “real” and the characters and events are imagined. This allows me both freedom and necessary grounding—and a means to dig into things in a way that yields useful material for me.

I like the idea—the practice—of remembering an actual place, a place I know about well enough to move about freely in my imagination of it, and peopling that real place with figures I imagine, who may be like people I’ve known but are not them—and not even that much lie them, either. Thus, real gardens w/ imaginary toads in them.

4. Why is the theme of fatherhood so important to you?

I guess the experience of being a father has enlarged my sense of being in ways that have opened out into joys and griefs that are both more vivid and more painful than they would have been had I not had children. As a father I have become more than merely myself; and how can I speak of that larger self except through poetry? It’s that mixture of joy and wonder, play and affection mixed with (always mixed with) that grief and fear we know from experience. I don’t know whether I can answer this question clearly, other than to say that being a father has been at the center of my being, in that part of myself I go to for poetry as well as that place that needs poetry. Though the subject matter of my poems may not seem to bear this out, I feel as though the poems I’ve written in this vein are attempts to create charms or magic potions to protect them, to keep them content and protected. I don’t know for certain. I do know it’s about love.

The intimacy of fatherhood is realized in the physical and intellectual-emotional-spiritual realms. Maybe poetry allows me to bring these things together, in some brief and fleeting way.

In writing as a father I feel that I get closer to the source of real poetry than I do when writing about anything else.

And as I think about it I also realize that you, Geoffrey, are one of my few brother-poets in this regard, and that you write from the same center of your being.

5. This may be similar to Question 3, but the world of dream also plays an important role in your poetics. Why are you fascinated by these almost surreal landscapes?

Well, to follow up from the last question, I don’t think the poems I write as a father have much of this quality at all, though I’d have to check on that to be sure. I think that a certain surreal—or dream—or folktale or mythic—quality has at times allowed me to distance myself a little bit from the literal fact-truth of things and get closer to the more urgent, more resonant (for me) truth that lies somewhere else. It may be that when I’m writing about “personal” stuff, I don’t feel comfortable with the overtly documentary and thus find my way through other means. I’m not sure. I don know that I enjoy making up stories that can develop outside the parameters of our actual physical experiences, that I’ve always felt that stories/poems like these get at “the unsayable” in ways that excite and intrigue me.

When I was first starting to write, one of my professors gave me the Bly/Wright translations of Neruda and Vallejo. They blew the top of my head off and I set out at that moment to be a poet. It seemed then that I could say anything I wanted and say it safely from the standpoint of the kind of grounded surreality they used, the surreality Bly called the “deep image.”

I also love fairy tales and myths, particularly Grimm’s Fairytales and Native American myths and tales. Also Ovid’s Metamorphosis. I love the idea of changing shape and thus changing my/our relationship to all-that-is. There’s something true there that can’t be gotten otherwise—something visionary, mythic, primal, and rich.

(Optional)
6. What makes you laugh?

A tack stuck into someone’s pompous ass. Watching pomposity embarrassed. Too many things to mention!

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Next week: Barbra Nightingale, author of Singing in the Key of L.

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At least for today, I'm a featured beekeeper.

South Florida writers, poetry, poetry blog, author, books, writing, Miami Dade College