37th Annual Meeting of the West Indian Literature Conference

October 4-6, 2018

Hosted by:
Hemispheric Caribbean Studies (HCS)
 University of Miami
Newman Alumni Center
6200 San Amaro Drive, Coral Gables, Florida, USA

 

This year’s conference recognizes the vast routes/roots that link the Caribbean to the hemisphere and the globe. As many writers and literary scholars have noted, the immense bodies of water that appear to isolate belie the currents that intimately connect, and at times, destroy shelter, lands, and peoples. Deploying Arjun Appadurai’s concept of “scapes” that work to enable the exchange of ideas and information, we hope to engage a breadth of issues relevant to Caribbeanists in the region and its diasporas. Throughout the conference our aim will be to explore the intersections between disciplinary approaches to problems that are borne out of the shifting tides of globalization and cultural expression. Undoubtedly researchers in literary studies, anthropology, history, philosophy, medicine, sociology and environmental studies, are all concerned with issues of global migration, environmental sustainability, human rights, state power, education and other global issues that have particularly devastating impacts in the circum-Caribbean region. Our conference will examine some of the innovative approaches to addressing these issues across national, cultural and disciplinary boundaries, and particularly encourage inter, multi, and transdisciplinary conversations and panels.

For more information, please follow this link: West Indian Literature Conference

Forthcoming Young Adult novel by Diana McCaulay

Papillote Press is delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of Gone to Drift by the award-winning Jamaican writer Diana McCaulay. This young adult novel, which won second prize in the CODE’s Burt Award for Caribbean Literature (2015), will be published on 29 February 2016.

Gone to Drift tells the story of a 12-year-old Jamaican boy, Lloyd, and his search for his beloved grandfather, a fisherman who is lost at sea. An adventure story about a boy confronted with difficult moral choices it will inspire its readers to choose bravery over cowardice and to follow their hearts. 

"This is my first novel for young adults," says McCaulay, "and as reading meant so much to me as a teenager, I'm hoping Gone to Drift will be read and enjoyed by many Caribbean young people. I wanted to pay tribute to our long tradition of fishermen, and I'm so grateful the Burt Award has made that possible. I'm also thrilled that Gone to Drift will be published by Papillote Press, a Caribbean publishing house which I've long admired." 

Gone to Drift follows on from McCaulay’s two acclaimed novels, Dog-Heart (2010) and Huracan (2012) and is built on her 2012 Regional Commonwealth prize-winning short story, The Dolphin Catchers  (Granta Online). As well as writing, McCaulay founded and, for many years, ran the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET); she was also a popular newspaper columnist. 

As Pamela Mordecai, author of The Red Jacket, sa ys: "Gone to Drift  is a love story about Lloyd's deep affection for his grandfather, and about the author's deep love for Jamaica, its land and seas. A Jamaican coming-of-age story - realistic, often funny and deeply touching - it’s a story for adventurous boys and girls, and for grownups too." 

CODE's Burt Award for Caribbean Literature is an annual award given to English-language literary works for young adults (aged 12 through 18) written by Caribbean authors. Established by CODE - a Canadian NGO that has been supporting literacy and learning for over 55 years - with the generous support of the Literary Prizes Foundation and in partnership with the Bocas Lit Fest, the Award aims to provide  engaging and culturally relevant books for young people across the Caribbean.

Founded in 2011, the Bocas Lit Fest administers major literary prizes for Caribbean authors and organises the annual NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s premier literary festival.

Papillote Press, based in Dominica and London, specialises in books about Dominica and the wider Caribbean. “I love this story. It entwines a tale of modern Jamaica with memories of the old ways of the sea. The reader follows Lloyd’s desperate search for his grandfather every step of the way.” says Polly Pattullo, publisher of Papillote Press.

For further information please contact the publisher: info@papillotepress.co.uk

sx salon, issue 15

sx salon, issue 15 (February 2014)

Introduction and Table of Contents

Our first issue of 2014 tackles the concept of Chinese Caribbean literature with a special section of essays, interviews, and creative writing that approach this proposed literary category from different locations. Opening the discussion, Anne-Marie Lee-Loy asks the following “intrinsically intertwined” questions: “Is there such a thing as Chinese Caribbean literature? What would make such literature identifiably ‘Chinese Caribbean’?” And these questions haunt the other pieces in this issue’s special section.  In the two included interviews, Easton Lee speaks with Tzarina Prater about his early years and the influence they now have on his work while Patricia Powell discusses with Stephen Narain the curiosity that led her to writing The Pagoda, a novel that Lee-Loy notes troubles the impulse to constitute Chinese Caribbean literature by author origins. Powell reveals:

The novel grew out of a desire to know more about home, to know Jamaica’s history, to understand the Chinese experience in Jamaica, the complexities of otherness for them—people who are neither black nor white. I wanted to know their particular experiences of exile and immigration and displacement, their experiences of community and home there on the island.

These complexities arise in the two creative pieces in the special section, both of which return to the ubiquitous, though often overlooked, Mr. Chin character. While Victor Chang’s short story marries the unimaginable and the expected occurring on and to Mr. Chin’s property, Staceyann Chin’s poem to her father voices Mr. Chin’s progeny, the daughter now diasporic citizen who refuses to forget. Tao Leigh Goffe’s article closes the section with a consideration of six writers, including Staceyann Chin, who are “thrice diasporized,” that is, “shaped by the experiences of the African diaspora, the Asian diaspora, and the Caribbean diaspora.”

Via the writers included in this special section, this discussion seeks to not only contribute to but also complexify the slowly growing acknowledgement of a significant body of work from the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora.

Our issue also features five new book reviews as well as creative work from Cyril Dabydeen, Colin Robinson, Reuel Ben Lewi, and Rajiv Mohabir. The table of contents is included below.

This issue of sx salon is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Stuart Hall (3 February 1932–10 February 2014).

Kelly Baker Josephs

http://smallaxe.net/wordpress3/discussions/2014/02/28/sx-salon-issue-15-february-2014/

Thug Notes: Literary Analysis in Blackface

One of the perennial challenges of teaching literature is finding a way to make the text relevant to students’ interests. As a teacher of introductory courses in British, American, Caribbean, and African literatures, I’ve tried several methods—some successful; some abysmal failures-- to hold my students’ attention. So, I was intrigued when I saw a video series on You Tube, Thug Notes: Classical Literature. Original Gangster.

Thug Notes, “the illest literature show on the web,” has reviewed works such as Beowulf, Moby Dick, Hamlet, Crime and Punishment, and 1984. With the team of Jared Bauer (show creator, co-writer), Joseph Salvaggio (researcher, co-writer), Jacob Salamon (producer, co-illustrator) Greg Edwards (aka Sparky Sweets, PhD.), Thug Notes offers cogent summaries and analyses with a faux hip-hop twist on books that many students find intimidating.

In his introduction to Lolita, Dr. Sweets explains, “I hope y’ll like R. Kelly this week. We be macking on jail bait.” Dr. Sweets also describes Oedipus Rex as a “search for motherf****ing truth.”

But don’t let Dr. Sweets' mugging for the camera, his language, do-rags, and tank tops fool you. Thug Notes’ exegesis of these works of literature is remarkable, and given the medium, the interpretation of Macbeth is one of the best I’ve seen.

What bothers me though is not the distance between the Dr. Sweets’ language and the analysis—which creates a kind of cognitive dissonance—but the character of Dr. Sparky Sweets. And all I can do is ask, “Why?”

Why, when you have a whole range of Black life from which to choose, would you reinforce one of the worst stereotypes of Black men?

Why didn’t the writers, producers, and the actor know the potential damage that they could cause with this racist stereotype? And if they knew, why did they continue?

Black actors and comedians have to walk a fine line between comedy, caricature, and realistic portrayals of black life. Hollywood Shuffle and most recently, Key & Peele’s “Thug English Actor" illustrate the dilemma. Dave Chappelle also faced a similar situation, which led to him leaving his popular comedy show when he felt that a staff member wasn’t laughing with him, but at him.

Thug Notes, as the New York Times reports, is an “example of a trend that has been around for years: the application of street sensibility to high-culture, high-concept areas and, more generally, any place where it’s not expected.”

Too bad they had to use a minstrel in blackface.

***

The Coalition for the Exoneration of Marcus Garvey is petitioning President Barack Obama to exonerate Marcus Garvey:

https://www.causes.com/campaigns/71936-urge-president-obama-to-exonerate-marcus-garvey

Thank you for your support.

Call for Papers: Islands in the Mainstream: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Caribbean Rhetoric

Proposals are sought from scholars, teachers, practitioners, and researchers in rhetoric, communication, literature, Caribbean studies, indigenous studies, diaspora studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and the visual and performing arts for contributions that explore aspects of Caribbean rhetorical expression from an interdisciplinary perspective. In particular, original essays are sought that will contribute to and fortify emerging work in the study of Caribbean rhetoric by envisioning the scope and dimension of what such work might entail. Such essays will engage, challenge, and move beyond the traditional perimeter of rhetorical analysis, encompassing the epistemic, pedagogical, and public work that occurs in a broad range of Caribbean texts: oral/aural, visual, scribal, tactile, digital, environmental, supernatural, etc.. Essays about the anglophone, francophone, and hispanophone Caribbean are strongly encouraged, though authors are asked to submit their proposals (and their essays, if accepted) in English, except in the case of specialized terms, phrases, and concepts (annotated accordingly).

The first of its kind to specifically consider the rhetoric of Caribbean cultural production from interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection will provide scholars, teachers, and students with innovative approaches for discussing the range of motives, histories, and social realities that necessitate inquiry and inclusion in rhetorical studies. Similarly, it will contribute to Caribbean studies and other disciplines represented in the volume by providing a dynamic set of robust rhetorical theories for reading Caribbean culture. In addition to defining theoretical parameters for reading Caribbean rhetoric and exploring areas of practice for further research, contributors will be encouraged to consider the pedagogical implications of their ideas. This can include developing curricula (introductory, intermediate, or advanced courses in rhetorical education among undergraduate writing majors, or courses that respond to particular writing-intensive programs, writing centers, or Writing Across the Curriculum), community literacy/publishing initiatives (ongoing or envisioned), or research studies (archival, ethnographic, qualitative, quantitative, etc.) on projects that engage students on matters of Caribbean import. Essays that are collaboratively authored by faculty and students and/or faculty and professionals are particularly welcome.

While the following list is not exhaustive, possible chapters may fall within these broad categories:

• Carnival Theatre
• Dance/Performance Art
• Digital Humanities/New Media/Technology/Broadcast Media
• Fine Art/Photography
• Food
• Geopolitics
• Historiography/Interrogations of Historical Narratives
• Labor Union/National/Political Parties
• Literature
• Music
• National/Sub-Supranational/Transnational
• Oratory/Public Address
• Pedagogy
• Postcolonial/Neocolonial
• Public Archives/Public Memory/Concepts of Vernacular Memory
• Race(d) Relations
• Surveillance
• Vernacular Bodies/Love, Sex, Sexualities

Please submit a proposal, approximately 500 words, that discusses the proposed chapter to the editor, Kevin A. Browne (browne@syr.edu). Questions and queries are welcome. The deadline for proposal submissions is November 1, 2013.

New Issue: sx salon (May 2012)

The May issue of sx salon is now available, featuring new poetry, an excerpt from Diana McCaulay’s new novel, interviews with Earl Lovelace and Sandra Pouchet Paquet, reviews and a discussion on “Elizabeth Nunez’s Anna Novels” with pieces from Stephen Narain, Donette Francis and Elizabeth Nunez.

sx salon 9 (May 2012)
Introduction and Table of Contents

Reviews
Pao, by Kerry Young—Tzarina T. Prater
Caribbean Literature and the Public Sphere, by Raphael Dalleo—Faith Smith
Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, by Laurent Dubois—Jeremy M. Glick
The Afro-Latin@ Reader, edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores—Yvette Fuentes

Discussion—Elizabeth Nunez’s Anna Novels
The Resolution Will Not Be Theorized—Stephen Narain
The Boundaries of a Space In Between—Donette Francis
The Two Anna Novels: A Response—Elizabeth Nunez

Poetry
Arturo Desimone
Summer Edward
Erika Jeffers

Prose
Zachary’s Arrival, Part II—Diana McCaulay

Interviews
“This Is How I Know Myself”: A Conversation with Sandra Pouchet Paquet—Sheryl Gifford
An Interview with Earl Lovelace: Reflections on the 1970 Trinidad and Tobago Black Power Movement in Earl Lovelace’s Is Just a Movie—Sophie Megan Harris

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Blog Disclosure Policy

Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through links to Amazon, Shambala Books, Hay House, or any of the Google ads or Google Custom Search.





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Disclaimer of Endorsement

The documents posted on this Web site may contain hypertext links or pointers to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links and pointers are provided for visitors' convenience. I do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any linked information. Further, the inclusion of links or pointers to other Web sites or agencies is not intended to assign importance to those sites and the information contained therein, nor is it intended to endorse, recommend, or favor any views expressed, or commercial products or services offered on these outside sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites, by trade name, trademark, manufacture, or otherwise.

Reference in this Web site to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the site's visitors, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by this blog.

My Blog in 5 Categories

Based on readership, here are the top 5 categories on my blog:
 

Bob Marley & Rastafari

Caribbean Literature & Writing

Marcus Garvey

Children

Fatherhood

 
Dig through and enjoy!




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Thank you!


Image source: http://blackfathers.org/

1 Minute Book Review:Beyond Sangre Grande by Cyril Dabydeen

Name of the book: Beyond Sangre Grande

Author: Cyril Dabydeen (Editor)

Publisher: TSAR Publications (September 30, 2011)

What's the book about? "Beyond Sangre Grande "brings together a contemporary selection in English from some of the key writers now living in Canada, the US, and the UK, as well as various countries of the Caribbean."

Why am I reading the book? Beyond Sangre Grande extends the definition of Caribbean beyond a geographically enclosed space and recognizes the contributions of writers in the diaspora.

Quote from the book: Sangre Grande means "big blood," the image of a red river; "blood" as symbol evokes consanguinity and "red," courage.

Where to buy: http://tsarbooks.com/TSAR_BeyondSangreGrande.htm

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I've modified this format from One Minute Book Reviews: http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/







***

If you enjoyed this post, check out my page on Amazon. I’d also be very grateful if you’d help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Thank you!

E-Book Review: My Darling You by Hazel Campbell

A delightful Sunday afternoon. What could be better than after a hearty family brunch, curling up with a good book and reading until mid-afternoon? And especially when you "discover" a writer who has been on your radar, but you haven't read most of her work.


Last Sunday, I decided to put my money where my mouth was by supporting a fellow Jamaican/Caribbean writer. For if discoverability will continue to be the main challenge for Caribbean writers, especially with the advent of e-publishing, I figured that if I liked the work, then I would do my best to spread the word. So, I downloaded a copy of Hazel Campbell's e-book, My Darling You, curled up with my iPad on the sofa, and marveled at the sheer mastery that Ms. Campbell displayed in her new collection.


Setting the tone with a poem, "Our Antillean ark/ painted Carib blue/ charts ancient unknown waves/ even to the center of the storm," the six stories, with the exception of "The Santa Picture," are set in Jamaica and live up to the description on the Amazon web site: "Six short stories set in the Caribbean, loosely linked around the theme of love."


The stories in My Darling You are engaging in their deft development of character, use of dialogue, and adept handling of plot. But there's more. They also give the reader a brief glimpse into the lives of characters who have been changed by love while skillfully exploring Jamaican attitudes toward sexuality ("Emancipation Park) and the influence of the church on the romantic decisions of its members ("First Love").


But wait, there's even more. Hidden between the layers of realism and social commentary there's a delightful fable, "The Jamaican Princess," a story about a sleeping princess in the land of Jamrock, who after many years awakens to the misery that her years of slumber have created. Of course, there is the requisite charming prince (who is unlike any other Prince Charming you've read about) who rouses the princess's compassion for her people and two scheming priests, Bongojai and Congojai, who oppose the princess's plans to undo the damage caused by her neglect.
I won't give away the rest of the plot, except to say that I've learned something from My Darling You. Instead of putting together the equivalent of a two hundred-page collection, wouldn't it be better, as Ms. Campbell has done, to assemble stories that could according to Poe's advice, "be read in one sitting"?


You may be on to something here, Ms. Campbell. I can't wait to see what you'll do next.




About Hazel Campbell


Hazel Campbell was born in Jamaica in 1940. She attended Merl Grove High School and obtained a BA in English & Spanish at UWI, Mona, followed by Diplomas in Mass Communications and Management Studies. She has worked as a teacher, as a public relations worker, editor, features writer and video producer for the Jamaican Information Service, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Creative Production and Training Centre. From 1987 she has worked as a freelance Communications Consultant.


Her first publication was The Rag Doll & Other Stories (Savacou, 1978), followed by Women's Tongue: a collection of eight short stories, (Savacou, 1985). Her stories have also been published in West Indian Stories, ed. John Wickham, 1981; Caribanthology I, ed. Bruce St. John, 1981; Focus 1983; Verre Wereld; and Facing the Sea, ed. Anne Walmesley, 1986.


She writes of herself: 'Child of the 1940s when nationalism was raising its head in Jamaica, I attended schools where patriotism and budding political movements were regarded as extremely important. In spite of the pervasive use of foreign texts, we were encouraged to think Jamaican. 


This consciousness has remained with me to the extent that I get physically uncomfortable if I am away from Jamaica for too long a time. Perhaps that's why I never migrated and why my work reflects almost a "romantic" view of Jamaica - its people, landscape and the very peculiar aura which makes it difficult to understand; difficult to live in; but nevertheless such an enchanting country.'


Hazel Campbell lives in Constance Spring. She has four children.


Source: http://www.peepaltreepress.com/author_display.asp?au_id=10


Visit Hazel Campbell's blogs:
http://jambooks-fiction.blogspot.com/
http://hazeldeebooks.blogspot.com/







***


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Thank you!

OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, 2012

Caribbean writing gets another boost with the second OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, which will reward the best Caribbean book published this year with a US$10,000 prize. Entries were opened on September 16, and the 2012 prize will be announced in April next year at the Bocas Lit Fest, T&T’s annual literary festival. The best book is chosen from the winner in each of three categories—non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Published writers who are Caribbean by birth or citizenship, living and working anywhere in the world, are eligible for the prize, which in 2011, its inaugural year, attracted 60 entries from more than a dozen countries.

For more, please follow this link: http://www.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/2011/09/20/caribbean-writing-gets-another-boost-us10000-prize

Accepting Submissions: sx salon

sx salon: a small axe literary platform

www.smallaxe.net/sxsalon

The Small Axe Project has recently launched sx salon: a small axe literary platform, a new electronic publication dedicated to literary discussions, interviews with Caribbean literary figures, reviews of new publications (creative and scholarly) related to the Caribbean, and short fiction and poetry by emerging and established Caribbean writers. sx salon also houses the Small Axe Literary Competition, launched in 2009. 

sx salon represents both a new project and a continuation of the Small Axe Project’s ongoing affirmation of the literary as a critical component of Caribbean cultural production. We envision this space as an open source, easily accessible, online resource for students, teachers and scholars, as well as a forum for academics in the field to consult for announcements related to Caribbean literary studies.

sx salon publishes a new issue every two months  and invites year-round submissions of:

• Literary Discussions that engage issues relevant to Caribbean literary studies: 2,000 – 2,500 words
• Book Reviews of recent (published no more than two years preceding the date of submission) creative literary works by Caribbean authors or scholarly works related to Caribbean literary studies: 1,000 – 1,200 words
• Interviews with Caribbean literary figures: 2,000 – 2,500 words
• Poetry and Short Fiction that engage regional and diasporic Caribbean themes and concerns: up to 2 poems or fiction of up to 4,000 words

Submissions must be accompanied by a short bio approximately 50 words, which should include information about the author’s location (institutional, geographical, etc.), and publications. Manuscripts should not contain any information about the author. Please include name, email address, phone number and, if applicable, institutional affiliation with the accompanying bio

Please visit http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/submissions.php for more detailed guidelines for submissions.

INQUIRIES AND SUBMISSIONS

ALL inquiries and submissions must to be sent electronically to the following addresses:

• Literary discussions, book reviews, interviews: Kelly Baker Josephs kbj@smallaxe.net 
• Short fiction and poetry: Andrea Shaw andreashaw@smallaxe.net

"Miss Sally on Politics" by Shara McCallum

Miss Sally on Politics

He is a one-eye man
in a blind-eye country.

But how him can do better
when no one want to see

what going on. Every time
party man come around

him jumping up and down—
lickle puppy eager fi please.

Him tell mi is not woman
business, this election.

Is not fi mi fi understand.
Mi tell yu all the same what I know:

If yu see jack ass,
don’t yu must ride it?

From Shara McCallum's This Strange Land.

About Shara McCallum

Shara McCallum was born in Jamaica to Afro-Jamaican and Venezuelan parents and moved to the U.S. at the age of nine. She earned a B.A. from the University of Miami, an M.F.A. from the University of Maryland, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and African American and Caribbean Literature from Binghamton University in New York. 

Her books of poetry include Song of Thieves (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) and The Water Between Us (1999), winner of the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Her poems have won a college prize from The Academy of American Poets, been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and appeared in several journals, including The Antioch Review,Chelsea, The Iowa Review, and Verse. McCallum's poems have been anthologized in The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (ed. Michael Collier, 2000) and Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the Twenty-First Century. She is the recipient of a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant in Literature and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. McCallum lives in Pennsylvania and teaches and directs the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. She is also on the faculty of the Stonecoast Low Residency MFA program.

Source: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/438

Image: http://www.bucknell.edu/x3695.xml

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http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/caribbean-and-its-cultural-arts-when.htm
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/dear-mikey-jiggs-greetings-mikey-on.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/half-thats-never-been-told-fractured.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/funny-thing-happened-on-way-to.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/terrible-beauty-is-born-jamaica-in.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/dear-mikey-in-last-few-posts-i-have.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2006/07/genesis-of-benjamin-my-son-part-1-of-2.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2006/07/genesis-of-benjamin-my-son-part-2_06.html

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Related articles

• "Luck" by Shara McCallum (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• New Book: This Strange Land by Shara McCallum (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
• 21 Days/ 21 Poems: A Love Poem (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)

"Luck" by Shara McCallum

Luck

Somewhere a woman with my face
sits alone in a kitchen,

leading my other life, the one
I exchanged when I entered a room

never meant for me.
Copper light saturates the window.

I sit drinking tea and you enter,
carrying spring in your arms:

bouquet of fire lilies, purple bells, white stars.
Your skin browned from sun.

A thief, I snatched this world
from my other’s gaze—

round, expectant as the empty cup
in which she still swirls her spoon.

"Luck" by Shara McCallum. This Strange Land. Alice James Books, 2011

About Shara McCallum

Shara McCallum was born in Jamaica to Afro-Jamaican and Venezuelan parents and moved to the U.S. at the age of nine. She earned a B.A. from the University of Miami, an M.F.A. from the University of Maryland, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and African American and Caribbean Literature from Binghamton University in New York. 

Her books of poetry include Song of Thieves (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) and The Water Between Us (1999), winner of the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Her poems have won a college prize from The Academy of American Poets, been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and appeared in several journals, including The Antioch Review,Chelsea, The Iowa Review, and Verse. McCallum's poems have been anthologized in The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (ed. Michael Collier, 2000) and Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the Twenty-First Century. She is the recipient of a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant in Literature and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. McCallum lives in Pennsylvania and teaches and directs the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. She is also on the faculty of the Stonecoast Low Residency MFA program.

Source: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/438

Image: http://www.bucknell.edu/x3695.xml

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Related Posts:


http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/caribbean-and-its-cultural-arts-when.htm
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/dear-mikey-jiggs-greetings-mikey-on.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/half-thats-never-been-told-fractured.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/funny-thing-happened-on-way-to.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/terrible-beauty-is-born-jamaica-in.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2007/01/dear-mikey-in-last-few-posts-i-have.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2006/07/genesis-of-benjamin-my-son-part-1-of-2.html
http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2006/07/genesis-of-benjamin-my-son-part-2_06.html

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• Versions Galore! : Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)
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• The Third Annual Anancy Festival: June 11, 2011 (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)

Happy Birthday, Kamau Brathwaite (2011)

Wordle of "Bread" by Kamau Brathwaite

Kamau Brathwaite, “Bread” from Born to Slow Horses. Copyright © 2005 by Kamau Brathwaite.

Source: Born to Slow Horses (Wesleyan University Press, 2005)

About Kamau Brathwaite:

Born in Barbados, Caribbean poet and scholar Edward Kamau Brathwaite was educated at Harrison College in Barbados and Pembroke College in Cambridge. He earned his PhD in philosophy from the University of Sussex.

Using “nation language” as well as linguistic and typographic innovation, Brathwaite composes poems that deftly parse the connected strands of postcolonial, historical, and personal inquiry. As Publishers Weekly noted in a review of Slow Horses (2005), Brathwaite’s work is “omnivorously synthetic, insistently local, sinuously syncopated and consistently exciting.” 

Co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement, Brathwaite is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Elegguas (2010), the Griffin International Poetry Prize winner Born to Slow Horses (2005), Ancestors (2001), Middle Passages (1992), and Black + Blues (1976). His first three collections, Rights of Passage (1967), Masks (1968), andIslands (1969), have been gathered into The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (1973). He is also the author of Our Ancestral Heritage: A Bibliography of the Roots of Culture in the English-speaking Caribbean (1976) and Barbados Poetry: A Checklist: Slavery to the Present (1979).

Brathwaite’s honors include the Casa de las Americas Prize for Literary Criticism, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, and the Charity Randall Prize for Performance and Written Poetry, as well as fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Brathwaite has worked in Ghana’s Ministry of Education, as well as teaching at Harvard University, the University of the West Indies, and New York University.

He lives in Barbados and New York City.


Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kamau-brathwaite

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Derek Walcott Wins 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

From Trinidad Express:

White Egrets, his collection of poetry that has already won the TS Eliot Prize and was judged the winner of the OCM Bocas Prize poetry category, was chosen for the US$10,000 award last night, seeing off competition from the fiction and non-fiction winners.

The judges in their citation commented upon the "seemingly effortless flow of the language and imagery despite the poet's stated premonitions of the loss of poetic power and inspiration…. Walcott is still writing great poetry, lovely cadences, beautiful images".

They considered the book-length poem that is divided into separate poems and is an exploration of bereavement and grief in one's advanced years to be, "a book that tells of a period of life more usually talked at and talked about than heard from or listened to, which makes it a very important work".

For more information, please follow this link:

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Derek_Walcott_wins_OCM_Bocas_Prize-121040233.html

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Another Small Axe Boom Shot: sx salon, issue 3

Big tings a gwaan over at sx salon, issue 3—a Small Axe literary platform--edited by Kelly Baker Josephs:

Reviews

Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat—Bastian Balthazar Becker
Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010, edited by Martin Munro—Alessandra Benedicty
Redemption in Indigo, by Karen Lord—Alisa K. Braithwaite
Zong!, by NourbeSe Philip—Helen Klonaris

Discussion—“Caribbean Arts and Culture Online”

Into the Fray!—Geoffrey Philp
Repeating Islands: Caribbean Cultures in Cyberspace—Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert and Ivette Romero-Cesareo
Caribbean Art and Culture Online—Frederic Marc
Future Troubles: The New Dancehall Economy and Its Implications—Edwin STATS Houghton and Rishi Bonneville
A Conversation with Nicholas Laughlin—Kelly Baker Josephs

Poetry

Kwame Dawes
Lou Smith
Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné

Prose

Finding Father (an excerpt from the novel “The Angel’s Share”)—Garfield Ellis
Return of the Dragon—Émille Hunt


Interview

Typhanie Yanique—A. Naomi Jackson

Gi dem a click, nuh?: http://smallaxe.net/wordpress3/discussions/2011/02/27/sx-salon-issue-3-february-2011/

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Leonard “Tim” Hector: Then and Now

The Caribbean Book Blog posted an article by Leonard “Tim” Hector, “Why is our literature so different? Why?” which reminded me of a livication I’d written back in January 2006: http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2006/01/leonard-tim-hector.html.

Hector’s words are as true then as they are now:

“The middle classes, "the assimilados" who assimilated the colonisers’ culture and were chosen for administrative posts in the colonial order, knowing they would have maintained that order with the convert’s zeal. Having been educated they saw and still see their "specific purpose", as Lamming wrote "as sneering at anything which grew or was made of native soil". Such, who even today still look outside for their literature in Harry Potter’s children’s stories, or to Stephen King and the like, could not be subjects of West Indian poetry or novels. Educated in the professions, or buying and selling imported commodities, and re-inforcing the old order they were entirely without character and not fit and proper subjects for novels or verse, with the possible exception of satire, that is, as mimic men and mimic women.

West Indian literature, in the novel or as poetry is of artistic necessity preoccupied with:

What new fevers arise to reverse the crawl?

Our islands make towards their spiritual extinction?

Remember that word "fevers", it is a recurring image.

For we were born "in spiritual extinction", slavery and indenture sought to extinguish the African and Indian personality, at every turn, in or out of school, church, home or work. Always it sought not just the stereotype, but the other-determined personality as stereotype. Anything other than the other-determined stereotype was a threat to the system to be demonised and hounded, as if life itself depended on the reproduction of homogeneous and uncritical persons, who elevated the imposed sacred while undermining the native secular; the economy itself was about status and not the production and accumulation of wealth for human development.”

Long live, Leonard "Tim" Hector!

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