Caribbean Crossroads @ the Circa Hotel

If ever there was a time when I wished I was a member of the audience and not a moderator, it was last night at the Circa Hotel. With artists such as Curaçao musician Oswin "Chin" Behilia; Haitian-American musician Jan Sebon, Sophia Lacroix, Andrea Shaw giving their unique perspectives on the African Diaspora and the themes of resistance, the event, which went on for a little more than an hour, moved along beautifully.

The artists also spoke about their influences, the "official languages" versus the "language of the people," victimization and resistance, which were often peppered with the intricate stories of the raconteur "Chin" Behilia.

Give thanks to Mary Luft and Robert Rosenberg for inviting me to be a part of "From Dushi Korsou to Peyi Mwen: Caribbean Culture and the African Diaspora," and I can't wait to see the show on Saturday.

For more photos of this event, please follow this link: Caribbean Crossroads @ the Circa Hotel.

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The Passing of a Caribbean Literary Giant: EA Markham

We have just received the sudden and shocking news of the death of E.A. (Archie) Markham in Paris on 23rd March, Easter day.

Archie had apparently been taken to or gone to a Paris hospital where he died, it seems, of a heart attack. It was not until Monday 6th of April that news of his death was discovered by his family. As a hale 69 year old who was always on the move, no-one was too alarmed not to have heard from him for a week or two.

As publishers of Archie's novel Marking Time, his retrospective collection of stories Taking the Drawing Room Through the Customs, and just having sent his memoir, Against the Grain, due for publication later this month, to the printers, Archie has long been a part of our life, and over the last few months a regular presence either in the office or on the phone. It was always both an education and a joy to work with him. He was generous (we still have a bottle of good St. Emilion awaiting an occasion), particular (he was still emailing small alterations - which always improved the text - right up to the last time we heard from him just before Easter) and immense fun when he was in the office.

We know that there was so much more that Archie planned to write. In every way we feel deprived. There is so much more we want to say, but that needs more thought. In the meantime we send our deepest regrets to Archie's family and know that there will be many of our friends who will share our huge shock and sense of loss.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Poynting

Peepal Tree Press

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Photo Credit of EA Markham

"All This" by Opal Palmer Adisa

Opal Palmer Adisa is a professor of creative writing and literature at California College of the Arts, with eleven titles to her credit, including the novel, It Begins With Tears (1997) that Rick Ayers proclaimed as one of the most motivational works for young adults. Her most recent works are Until Judgment Comes (short story collection), 2007; Eros Muse (poetry and essays), Africa World Press, March 2006 and her forthcoming is I Name Me Name (poetry & stories), Peepal Tree Press, 2008.

All This

living in oakland

i never know

when i leave my home

if i’ll return alive

i’m less valuable than gum

on the sidewalk that sticks to your shoes

three friends were killed this year

they weren’t into dope or gangs

and i saw my first dead person

when i looked down at ron

in his coffin i couldn’t move

i thought i would faint

felt like a piece of paper

being blown on the street

someone in the line nudged

me forward

afterwards several of us

drifted to the park

by school and i just cried and cried

none of it made sense

ron was the captain of our

soccer team

i might be dead tomorrow

or the next

but i want to live

i want to go to college

for ron

for myself

i want a chance

to fall in love

play soccer at college

travel to senegal or kenya

make a wish on the full moon

like my mother says

focus on staying alive

staying alive

stay alive

***

Throughout the month of April, National Poetry Month, poets from the Caribbean and South Florida will be featured on this blog.

From Dushi Korsou to Peyi Mwen: Caribbean Culture

Don't miss this fascinating FREE panel discussion and meet-the-artists reception featuring Curaçao musician Oswin "Chin" Behilia; Haitian-American musician Jan Sebon, Sophia Lacroix, Andrea Shaw and moderator Jamaican-American writer Geoffrey Philp.

The Miami New Times has said that "Sebon keeps Haiti's political, poetic, and musical heart beating" and Sing Out magazine has called Chin Behilia "...a legend of Curaçaoan music." Light refreshments and cash bar, open to the public, no reservations required.

From Dushi Korsou to Peyi Mwen: Caribbean Culture and the African Diaspora

Circa39 Hotel, 3900 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach

Thursday, April 10, 6:30 pm

Click here for more on Caribbean Crossroads, including video of Jan Sebon & Chin Behilia

Saturday, April 12, 8:00 p.m.

Colony Theatre

1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, FL

Post-concert discussion

$50 VIP best seats & priority entrance

$25 General Admission

$20 Student/Senior with I.D.

Buy tickets to Caribbean Crossroads now or by phone at 305 545 8546

Group sales discounts available by calling Tigertail at 305 324 4337

See Tigertail's full Season Schedule

Directions and map to the Colony Theatre

***

Junot Diaz Wins Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Junot Diaz has won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

The citation:

For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books).

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Shakespeare's Kitchen by Lore Segal (The New Press).

For more information, please follow this link: The Pulitzer Prize.

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"What It Takes to Be Lois Lane" by Celia Lisset Alvarez

Celia Lisset Alvarez has been living in Miami, Florida, almost all her life, since her parents emigrated from Cuba after the Castro revolution. She has two collections of poetry, The Stones (Finishing Line Press, 2006) and Shapeshifting (Spire Press, 2006), winner of the 2005 Spire Press Poetry Award. “What It Takes to Be Lois Lane” appears in the recently released anthology Letters to the World (Red Hen Press, 2008), a collection of poems from the University of Southern Maine’s Women’s Poetry List, affectionately known as “Wom-po” to its hundreds of members from throughout the world.

What It Takes to Be Lois Lane

At twenty-one she graduated magna cum laude

with a degree in English. Her first apartment

had a leaky faucet that kept her up nights

and a view of the bridge to Metropolis.



Her shoes pinched as she walked

handing over typed carbon copies of her resume

explaining once again that she was not interested

in the secretary position, although she was

good at steno and really appreciated

that comment about her legs.



Late nights with the stray cat

who got in through the fire escape

(she called him Elroy), she looked

out the window and dreamed of uncovering

corruption in the city government.



Her first week at the Daily Planet

they made her get coffee for the fellas,

and assigned her a story on the Junior League.



Writing back to Sam and Ella, she asked

about the weather in Pittsdale, said hello to Lucy,

and could you please send a little money,

although I’m doing just fine.



When those naked pictures Jimmy Olsen took

somehow wound up in Playboy, she went missing

for three days. Some say they saw her with Lex Luthor

in Detroit, sipping screwdrivers and go-go dancing

around the Metro area in white cowboy boots.



At work in her ruffled collar and solid pumps

she looked only at her typewriter. Promptly at five,

she walked into the phonebooth, closed the door,

and screamed for fifteen minutes. Nights with Elroy

and the faucet, she meditated on her chakras, placing

the green crystal Lex gave her on her flat,

grumbling navel.

***

Throughout the month of April, National Poetry Month, poets from the Caribbean and South Florida will be featured on this blog.

"History" by Peter Schmitt

Peter Schmitt is the author of four collections of poems: Renewing the Vows, from David Robert Books (August 2007); Hazard Duty and Country Airport (Copper Beech Press); and a chapbook, To Disappear, from Pudding House. He has received The Lavan Award from The Academy of American Poets; The “Discovery”/The Nation Prize; and grants from the Florida Arts Council (twice) and The Ingram Merrill Foundation. His poems have been featured on National Public Radio’s Writers Almanac (read by Garrison Keillor), and his poem, “Packing Plant,” won The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival open competition in Farmington, Connecticut, in 2001, chosen out of 632 entries. His poems have appeared in many leading publications, including The Hudson Review, The Nation, The Paris Review, Poetry, and The Southern Review, and have been widely anthologized. He has also reviewed poetry for The Miami Herald and The South Florida Sun-Sentinel. A native Miamian and graduate with honors from Amherst College, where he studied with Richard Wilbur, and from the University of Iowa, where his teachers included Donald Justice, Peter Schmitt has taught creative writing and literature at the University of Miami since 1986.

History

On a walking tour a few years ago

of historic homes in my old neighborhood,

we entered a house that I soon realized

belonged to the family of a girl

I knew in junior high—smart, good-looking,



vivacious, popular—and who had died

suddenly not long after, in college,

of a heart condition never diagnosed.

She was editor of our ninth grade yearbook,

so it’s no surprise she’s everywhere in it,



and in my copy she had signed each photo,

crossing out in one her face and writing,

“I hate this picture!” That year she dated

a black classmate, when at the time not one

black family lived anywhere in our town.



And now we were walking through her old house,

a house I had never visited then,

not a close friend, and into her bedroom,

which her parents had evidently left

as she might have last seen it, the lone, twin bed,



the Frampton posters, cramped desk, box turntable.

By then I wasn’t listening to our guide,

for just that moment I was closer to her

than I’d ever been, and could grasp a little

clearer the history of that house. Downstairs,



I introduced myself to her mother,

who had waited patiently with a pitcher

of lemonade, for the guests to file through.

She smiled, and claimed to remember my name.

Near the door hung a large family photo,



with Beth front and center, her gaze directed

just above the camera, taken likely

not long before she died. I paused there briefly.

Then we resumed our leisurely tour, as our

guide drew a line across his list of houses.

***

Throughout the month of April, National Poetry Month, poets from the Caribbean and South Florida will be featured on this blog.

"Summer, Florida Keys" by Ricardo Pau-Llosa

Ricardo Pau-Llosa was born in La Habana, Cuba in 1954 and, after the age of six, grew up in exile in the United States. He is the author of six books of poetry: The Mastery Impulse (Carnegie Mellon, 2003), Vereda Tropical, (Carnegie Mellon, 1999), Cuba (the 100th title in the Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series, 1993), Bread of the Imagined (Bilingual Press, 1992), and Sorting Metaphors (Anhinga Prize, 1983). His most recent collection, The Parable Hunter, was published by Carnegie Mellon in 2008. Pau-Llosa has published extensively on the visual arts, particularly 20th century Latin American painting and sculpture.

Summer, Florida Keys

Count on the storm to steel the waves,

tin their shimmer and heave. The electric

cracks sheen the air, particle its vapors,

and the wind that’s coming has already

moved the sea, miles off. Shoreside,

we sense the sea has breathed in and readies.

Now, oiled by the hovering cobalt,

it simply rolls within itself like grain

in a sack a pair of fists is about to take

from dock to hold. Will throw the sack

on his shoulder, sweat will varnish his back,

and muscles will shift his flesh while the grain

finds its hourglass rules in the burlap dark.

We know the world’s been held aloft

in punishment, and drowned in punishment.

But who carries it and why, to make of waves

a granary, of turquoise mirror a shroud?

***

"Summer, Florida Keys" by Ricardo Pau-Llosa was first published in Ploughshares. Throughout the month of April, National Poetry Month, poets from the Caribbean and South Florida will be featured on this blog.

***

Lorna Goodison's "From Harvey River" in the New York Times

Lorna Goodison is a Jamaican poet, a leading West Indian writer of the generation born after World War II, currently dividing her time between Jamaica and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she teaches at the University of Michigan. Her most recent book, From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island (Amistad), was reviewed by Lisa Fugard in Sunday Book Review of the New York Times on March 30, 2008.

Here is an excerpt from the review:

In July 1954, 7-year-old Lorna Goodison left her home in Kingston, Jamaica, to spend the summer with her aunt in the village of Harvey River, a 14-hour drive away. Her maternal great-grandfather William Harvey, an Englishman, had given his name to both the swiftly flowing river beneath the Dolphin Head Mountains and the town that grew up along its banks. Young Lorna ran wild that summer — roaming the countryside, knocking fruit from the trees, eating picnic lunches with her cousins among the tombstones of her ancestors. This seemingly idyllic spot would, she writes, “shape my imagination for the rest of my life.

Give thanks to Rethabile and Marcia Mayne for alerting me to the review.

***

April is National Poetry Month and starting tomorrow, the work of poets from the Caribbean and South Florida will be featured. The series begins with "Summer, Florida Keys" by Ricardo Pau-Llosa.

***

TigerTail Productions Presents: Caribbean Crossroads

"Chin Behilia's music is a soft and lilting mosaic of genres – salsa, calypso, soca and zouk, a truly pan-tropical sound." — Songlines

"Sebon keeps Haiti's political, poetic, and musical heart beating." — Miami New Times

The islands of the Caribbean share the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade-driven African Diaspora, mixed with many different European and indigenous cultures. Tonight two of these island communities, Haiti and Curaçao, take center stage. The evening begins with South Florida-based Haitian artist Jan Sebon, accompanied by his group, presenting the World Premiere of a new multi-media musical work Peyi Mwen (My Country) that blends current events and autobiography. Then, for the first time in Miami, Curaçao's beloved troubadour Oswin "Chin" Behilia, with his musical ensemble, give us a performance that showcases this Dutch Antillean island and their native Creole language, Papiamento. In the end, the performers join together to create a "musical bridge" between their different rhythms and the stories they tell.

Visit Jan Sebon on the web. Go to www.jansebon.com and www.myspace.com/jansebon.

Click here (http://oswinchinbehilia.calabashmusic.com) for more on Chin Behilia.

Click here for more on Caribbean Crossroads, including video of Jan Sebon & Chin Behilia

AND DON'T MISS....

A free panel discussion, From Dushi Korsou to Peyi Mwen: Caribbean Culture and the African Diaspora, On Thursday, April 10 at 6:30 pm, with Oswin "Chin" Behilia, Jan Sebon, moderator Marlon Hill, and others, followed by a meet-the-artist reception at Circa39, 3900 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach.

Saturday, April 12, 8:00 p.m.

Colony Theatre

1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, FL

Post-concert discussion

$50 VIP best seats & priority entrance

$25 General Admission

$20 Student/Senior with I.D.

***

Buy tickets to Caribbean Crossroads now or by phone at 305 545 8546

Group sales discounts available by calling Tigertail at 305 324 4337

See Tigertail's full Season Schedule

Directions and map to the Colony Theatre

Hope: Living and Loving with HIV

Behind the images of hedonism in Jamaica, the specter of AIDS has overshadowed the glitter and garish of the Tourist Board commercials. During the last four months of 2007, Kwame Dawes traveled to Jamaica and met with people who are living with the disease and caregivers who have dedicated their lives to bring comfort. What emerged from this encounter was Hope: Living and Loving with HIV, which according to the Pulitzer Center, "Brings him in touch with people who tell their stories, share their lives, and teach him about resilience, hope, and possibility in the face of despair."

The Pulitzer Center continues: "Hope: Living and Loving with HIV is a multi-media reporting project: an extended essay by Kwame Dawes for The Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 2008), two short documentaries for the public-television program Foreign Exchange, a collection of poetry inspired by his reporting, a performance of the poems set to music by composer Kevin Simmonds, and LiveHopeLove.com, an interactive web presentation that synthesizes audio and text versions of the poems, the Foreign Exchange videos, additional video interviews, the music, and photography by Joshua Cogan."

But it is much more than that. Hope: Living and Loving with HIV features "anthems of hope" in which Dawes introduces us to men such as "Nichols":

dub man's charm

in your grin, still all those

women slain by your art.

It is not very often that I am at a loss for words, but Hope: Living and Loving with HIV has shown me the kind of work that an inspired artist can do for his community. Hope Living and Loving with HIV is not just an extended essay with poems, music, photos, and video. It is an experience.

***

For more information, please visit the Pulitzer Center

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Technorati Tags:HIV, AIDS, Jamaica, Caribbean

MiPOesias Magazine: The American Cuban Issue

MiPOesias Magazine's newly released issue showcases the work of poets of Cuban descent who live in the U.S. The results are stories spun from highways and oceans, lyric meditations on love's rough edges and potent homages to deities and to the departed. No matter the subject, these poems blend the romance and sorrows of the past with a crisp view of daily life. Edited by Emma Trelles and featuring Richard Blanco, Rita Maria Martinez, Grisel Y. Acosta, Kemel Zaldivar, Rich Villar, Sandra Castillo, Achy Obejas, Hugo Rodriguez, Mia Leonin, Adrian Castro, Diego Quiros, Kristina Martinez, Caridad Mccormick, Virgil Suarez, Suzanne Frischkorn, Didi Menendez, and Elisa Albo.

Cover art by Diego Quiros.

Time: Friday, April 4, 2008 @ 8:00 p.m.

Location: Books & Books, Coral Gables

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Related Post: Mambo Night @ The Luna Star

Saunders and Pouchet-Paquet: Caribbean literature and popular culture.

Colleagues at the University of Miami, Drs. Patricia Joan Saunders and Sandra Pouchet Paquet both write about issues of identity in Caribbean literature and popular culture. Saunders explores sexual vs. national identity in Alien Nation and Repatriation (Lexington, $29.95) while Paquet focuses on Calypso style and its influence of the Caribbean literary imagination in Music, Memory, Resistance (Ian Randle, $35).

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Selected essays from the Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination Conference jointly sponsored by Caribbean Literary Studies at the University of Miami and the Historical Museum of South Florida. Contributors include Gordon Rohlehr, Michael Eldridge, Louis Regis, Ray Funk, Hollis Liverpool, Earl Lovelace, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Funso Aiyejina, Paula Morgan, Jennifer Rahim, Kezia Page, Andrea Shaw, Cynthia Davis, and Claire Westall with an introduction by Patricia Saunders and a preface by Sandra Pouchet Paquet and Stephen Steumpfle.

Time: Saturday, March 29, 2008 5:00 p.m.

Location: Books & Books, Coral Gables