ArtsEtc’s First Annual Independence Reading List Now Out

Read any good Barbadian books lately?

At the launch of Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo last year at Ocean Spray Apartments, a woman Linda and I were chatting with was interested in reading more books by local authors. She was middle-aged and felt she had, as a Bajan, been missing out on what her own writers had to say to her about the world in which we live.

To paraphrase Mavis Gallant, I take it for granted that to talk of Barbadian stories is to talk of stories in a specific context. This woman’s understanding of the need to read stories by writers of her own country suggested, encouragingly, that I wasn’t alone in this thinking.

Her only problem: Where to start?

She required a list; she didn’t know what was available apart from a title or two by Lamming or Callender. And Linda and I were sure there were many others like her, whether Bajan or simply interested in Barbadian literature.

That got us thinking and working.

For this Independence, in collaboration with the University Bookshop, Days Books, the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment, Barbados Today, the National Library Service, and the Barbados Association of Reading, ArtsEtc has come up with 12 Great Books Every Independent Barbadian Should Read, which we’ve run as an ad in Barbados Today and The Barbados Advocate.

Do check it out. It’s obviously not meant to be comprehensive or exhaustive, or academically correct, but it is, we hope, a pleasantly surprising start.

Let us know how you find the books, or what selections you would make for future lists. We intend to do this every year for Barbados’ Independence until the shelves run dry. And, given the activity in Barbadian literature the last decade, and what was produced the previous century, we’re not expecting that to happen anytime soon.

Born free, you say? Then be free.

Read your writers. Enjoy your Independence.

—Robert Edison Sandiford

November 29, 2011

October Tea Reading—nicely brewed!

THERE was such a great vibe at Pelican Village on Saturday.

Writers Ink held its October Tea Reading there at the Barbados Arts Council gallery and you really do get a warm, fuzzy glow surrounded by all that art on the walls and the shared passion for writing. The gallery is proving an ideal space and the fast growing turnout means Writers Ink is going to need more chairs.

Featured readers Christine Barrow and Robert Edison Sandiford really delivered. What was noteworthy is that the former is a writing student of the latter and they both dealt with some dark and difficult themes: Christine entering the mind of a child for one of her pieces about death and loss, and Sandiford examining the moment of death or dying from a number of angles and also sharing some of his erotic prose. Both presented their work with a Samurai’s touch—a huge reward for any audience unafraid of being challenged.

For open mic, many people walked with their 5 lines (or more) on Bridgetown. Among them, Loretta Hackett, Sarah Venable, Ann Hewitt, Susan Mahon and Theo Williams who shared some fine words not to mention unexpected and unique perspectives on our capital city.

A team from Eye on the Arts was there to capture it all, so keep an eye out! And— to steal a line from the Bajan Reporter (we missed you Ian!)—all of Barbados is invited to the next Tea Reading when the open mic theme(s) will be “The Sea, Food, Love.” Plenty of room in which to brew some Independence spirit!

• The Tea Readings are staged by Writers Ink the last Saturday of every month.—LMD

Wor(l)dbuilding at Barbados’ AnimeKon 2011

Fans of AnimeKon are very serious about their science fiction. This dude with the huge and heavy sword is based on the character "Cloud" from the animated feature/video game Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children.

From left: Robert Sandiford, Karen Lord and Tobias Buckell shared their experiences of creating Fantasy in a Caribbean setting with a large audience and moderator Andre Harewood (extreme right) at AnimeKon 2011.

Shiver me timbers! Cosplay (short for costume play) was a major part of AnimeKon 2011 held July 2 & 3 at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Barbados. In this pause at a videogame booth, here's a young girl who's obviously a fan of Johnny Depp & Pirates Of The Caribbean.

JUST coming down from AnimeKon 2011, Barbados’ comic book, animation, gaming, multi-media…well, it’s a so-much-of-everything kind of convention, and the only pop culture convention in the region, that to sum it up seems a little unfair.

Many thanks to Omar Kennedy and Melissa Young for keeping the two-day event tight, and for inviting me onto a panel to discuss speculative fiction from a Caribbean perspective with US-based Tobias S. Buckell (Crystal Rain) and Barbados’ own fantasy author Karen Lord (Redemption in Indigo).

The tag lines are merely for identification purposes. I’m probably known as a realist or true-to life writer who has made some forays into comic-book flavoured storytelling (I like the notion of alternate realities) as well as graphic novels (Great Moves), but what we discussed—and what the people in the audience wanted to know—was how to create convincing worlds and characters, how to write beautiful and believable stories.

Regardless the genre, we all agreed the process is pretty much the same. Tobias is wonderful at worldbuilding (with many references to the Caribbean of his youth!); Crystal Rain contains maps that help situate the reader in his story.

A fantasy-sci-fi thing? Not quite. A creative writing student of mine, currently producing linked stories about very everyday Caribbean people (with, perhaps, a tinge of the magical—we can’t seem to get away from it in our fiction), has mapped out the community her characters inhabit, undiscovered country and all.

Karen’s Redemption in Indigo is based loosely on a Senegalese folktale. She essentially starts with the known world, as I often do, then goes about uncovering what lies beneath it and above it and in-between to enchanting and disturbing effect.

The thing with writing is to remain open to discovery, especially that of your characters, and not get lost in your own inventions. As one audience member semi-joked, “It’s not the number of ideas I get that’s the problem, it’s knowing which ones are worth pursuing and which ones are simply junk.”

- Robert Edison Sandiford

July 4

Robert Edison Sandiford is a co-founding editor of ArtsEtc.

(Photos courtesy Ian D. Bourne /The Bajan Reporter)

Yvonne Weekes - Green Reader, bridging worlds

Yvonne's poem doubles as her Green Statement, doubles as a prayer...

Untitled

If the life-giving gullies of Barbados were to run blood

And Broad Street sank under the weight of sanguine waters

And there was no Bop or Baygon to blow up

either the mosquito or fill our lungs

- Fool: everyone knows a mosquito has no lungs

Would we then regret the casual discard

of plastic lipstick butts into empty cane fields?

Would we finally regard the butterflied lizards

children targeted in a game of Cowboys and Indians?

Would we remember the soft petals of the flamboyant trees

picked naked for vain pleasures?

Would we recount the flying fish fleeing our acid waters

recycle the soda pop bottles full of deadly dyes

raise our eyes to skies dropping in on us

and remember to pray for a world

of clean-running waters

pure coral reefs and fish

that look like our grandmother’s memories?

Copyright © 2011 by Yvonne Weekes

About the Author

Yvonne Weekes is an actress, writer/director, teacher, and currently the Theatre Arts Coordinator at Barbados Community College. Winner of the Frank Collymore Literary Award in 2004 for her memoir, Volcano, her first play, Blue Soap, was published in 2010. Her most recent work, Broken Dolls, aired on CBC in 2011. Yvonne is currently involved in writing and directing community drama pieces for the AIDS Foundation of Barbados, the Ministry of Health and the Barbados Government Information Service that deal with AIDS awareness, stigmatization and discrimination as well as other chronic non-communicable diseases.

Yvonne's appearance at GR11 on Saturday, June 18, bridges the literary and theatrical when she takes to the Folkestone stage with the Barbados Community College theatre group. (Green Readings is a trademark of ArtsEtc.)

Margaret D. Gill - Green Reader...

...The Poem Says It All

The poem extract below is both my green statement and impact statement. In essence, we all got responsibility, but some more than others.

“Across from Victoria Harbour Hong Kong”

I

Victoria Harbour

So much beauty

And so much blue.

How many dreams

Of a technic tomorrow touch?

So the silver running

Of cool of air co

Or the camera’ s true monstrosity.

Cool images you cell from

Cell to high rise cell.

But I see Sam Sung

Only dimly now.

This gauze

That is not morning

Drapes the edges of

Olympus now.

And I breathe cautiously,

Each breath a filtered prayer

As ships go calmly

Through the blue air.

II

A ferry coming home,

Expelling and again

uploading tourists.

Each camera saves

That chip of memory.

Visibility 200 yards,

A blue so true,

So true the edges of you certainty

Dissolve.

The only mountains now

I know for sure,

For sure, I say,

Are in the art I saw

At Tsim Sha Sui.

III

There is a sea,

This is an island.

I suppose a necessary

Though awkward beauty

Shaped these blue trees.

Yet I long for Victoria Harbour

Green before Victoria

Today, pollution turned

The sun to silver,

Polythene texture.

Visibility making ghosts

Of ships in the harbour.

Water reflecting chrome,

At night, technicolour.

It was just like

A science fiction movie,

Jane Li said to me

Newspaper op eds say

Sea so sick if someone slipped

They die of the sink in.

Bacteria so thick

Only the slick of oil lives.

Oh Victoria, Victoria!

You not the only sinner,

But ah really have ta tell yah

You was bad fah true

November 2008, Hong Kong

Copyright © 2011 by Margaret Gill

About the Author

Margaret D. Gill is a scholar, critic and published and performance poet who teaches fundamentals of written English at the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill). Kamau Brathwaite describes her as “One of the very finest poets in the Caribbean—and not only in English. Brilliant (and therefore important) a literary critic as any (of the too few) writing out of the Caribbean today.” Twice winner of the Frank Collymore Literary Award (1998, 1st prize, and 2006, 2nd prize), Margaret was International Visiting Writer 2007 at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKB) and one of the two adjudicators of the HKB English Poetry Writing Competition 2007. She is now an Honorary Fellow in Writing by HKB. Her poetry has been anthologized in several works, including Bim, Aftermath: Best of Third-World Poets (1977) and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (2005). Her works of poetry are Alternative Songs from the Kingdom of the Lilies (1998 Frank Collymore manuscript), Lyric You (Intelek International: Bridgetown, 2000) and Machinations of a Feminist (2006 Frank Collymore manuscript). Margaret’s writing is influenced by the fact that her mother wrote and her father loved poetry and knew large tracts of it by heart, and she received her first award for poetry at 14 years old when she won second prize in the Shankar’s International Children Poetry Competition in India.

Margaret is one of the performers appearing at Green Readings 2011 at Folkestone Park & Marine Reserve on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 3:30 p.m. Green Readings is a trademark of ArtsEtc.

Allison Cadogan - Green Reader, in pursuit of happiness

Green Statement

An emphasis on the role that the environment plays on attitudes is a common thread throughout my work. Even though “ green” is an environmentalist concept, based on healthy, sustainable practices for physically preserving the earth, I believe that our everyday happiness has roots in our physical surroundings, and I communicate this in all of my work. A healthy environment means a healthy, happy community.

excerpt from How to Skin A Cat In 5 Easy Steps

I was enjoying the warmth on my face, until slender matter eclipsed the sun.

“Hullo,” said she.

I placed my punch in the sand and sat up. There she stood, hands clasped behind her back as though ready to recite poetry, toes wiggling in the white-gold grains beneath her feet.

I lowered my head to peer over the upper rim of my tinted panes.

And thus the sky became extra blue, the sea superlatively turquoise and that epileptic, radial pattern on her dress promised me a seizure.

“Hullo?” I said quizzically.

“Hullo,” said she of smiling face and muddled accent. She was pretty, with piercing blue eyes and reddish blonde hair, about four feet tall. Why does she stand before me? I wished she would state her case quickly before the crabs sidled off with my libation.

“This shall be the winter of our contentment.” She looked over my shoulder as she spoke, the same way bad actors look into the camera when delivering their lines.

Copyright © 2011 by Allison Cadogan

About the author

Allison Cadogan is a Barbadian writer and the 2010 recipient of the Frank Collymore Literary Award (2nd place) for her novella The Three Little Pigs. She is the creative director at G&A Communications Inc., and she teaches Creative Writing part-time in the Fine Arts Division of Barbados Community College.

Allison appears at the Folkestone Park and Marine Reserve on Saturday, June 18 as part of ArtsEtc and the Ministry of the Environment's Green Readings 2011.

Martina Pilé - Green Reader, Calabash Woman

Artist's Statement

This event definitely gives me a chance to step out of my comfort zone but still talk about calabashes, the things we use in our everyday life that represent our cultural identity. My love for calabashes is something that is tightly intertwined with my Caribbean experience... Every year, I catch "calabash fever" which translates in an urge to work with them.

About the artist

MARTINA Zahles Pilé is a Caribbean visual artist and ceramicist of Luxembourgian origin. She has lived and worked as a full-time artist in Barbados since 1982, and has her studio in Prospect, St James. She uses many 2D & 3D media as a means to explore the myths and legends of the three main cultures that influenced life in the Caribbean. She served as event coordinator for the Artistsclub from 2005-2010 and was the managing director and curator of Island Art Gallery in Speightstown from 2010-2011. MZPilé is the recipient of many art awards and a member of the Barbados Arts Council.

Martina's appearance at the Boardwalk, Hastings, on Saturday, June 11, will be the first ever visual "green reading" in the four-year history of the event.