The Role of the Writer in Society

On Thursday past, the organizers of the Bahamas International Literary Festival (BILF), a new-brand entity, so new it don't even have itself a webspace yet, held a literary forum that served as a precursor to the festival. Six Bahamian writers were invited to present on the topic The Role of the Writer in Society. I was privileged to be among them. The others were: Keith RussellObediah Michael SmithAlex MorleyIan Strachan... Who?  who'm I forgetting? Or can't I count? ... I don't think I can count ... there were only five of us!  Gah!Well, anyhow.  The evening was memorable for a couple of reasons.  The first was the size of the audience.  It filled almost the entire length of the upper floor of Chapter One Bookstore, much to my amazement.   Now I know it's entirely possible, even likely, that a good chunk of the attendees were students who had no choice in the matter, whose classes were meeting there, who might even have an assignment about the topic later on.  But that didn't stop the fact that there were, oh, maybe fifty or sixty people in attendance from making me hold the event in awe.  Writers in this country are not used to such interest.  At least I'm not.Just for posterity's sake, and because it might be of interest, and because I've been toying with the concept of podcasting for some time and thought this is on the way to creating one, below's an updated version of the presentation I gave.  It's not exactly the same because Thursday was a runaround day and I wasn't able to get all the quotations I wanted for the presentation, but it's 90% similar.  The comment box is on, for feedback's sake, if people are so inclined.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VITJjobWLyU&w=425&h=350]So I'm not an purist when it comes to writing.  Art for art's sake, as Achebe said, being somewhat of a myth.  I don't necessarily believe that all art has to have a function, a purpose; the kind of art that does isn't really art, as it puts emotions and empathy second to function.  But on the other hand, as Ian Strachan, who spoke last, said of writing -- whatever you think about it, the act of writing is always a political act.  One needn't be a socialist (as Alex Morley is) for that to be true; you just need to write, and to share your writing with people beyond yourself.  In fact, each of us spoke about agency and writing and change and revolution of some kind.  Revelation, said one of us (don't remember which one -- if you're reading this, own it, Keith or Ian or Obie or Alex!) is revolution.  If you don't know my name, said Obie, channelling Baldwin, you don't know your own.  (Obie read an essay which meandered through various meditations about writers and society and kept coming back to just that -- if you don't know my name, you don't know your own.)  Write for change, said Alex.  Write to tell the truth.  Write to show ourselves ourselves. Write to make a difference, said Keith.  Write to tell the truth.We talked a lot about truth and difference and change among us, each of us in our own particular way.  So it's no coincidence that I'm going to post the next video here now.  Chris Abani talked about story and the power of telling a tale, the power of telling the truth, and somebody filmed him doing so.  Watch the video below to see what he said.  It's akin to what we said, only (forgive me, colleagues) better.http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf

"Red"

Geoffrey Philp reads a poem here, called "Red". It's about being in between.As Philp writes:

And while this poem does not adhere strictly to the form [the ghazal], it did allow me to play with the word "red," which at the start of the poem refers to a biracial person or "half-caste."

  [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3dO8DKZr3g&w=425&h=349]

The Gaulin Wife

The Gaulin Wife - Helen Klonaris' blogLynn Sweeting sent me this link today, and it's with much pride that I announce it here.  I'm not always so excited about new blogs, but I know Helen, I know her work, and I encourage everybody who's interested in thinking differently about ourselves as Bahamians take the time to visit -- specially if you're interested in culture, writing, or identity.Here's an excerpt from what she's thinking:

When individuals step out of line, or cross the line between status quo and the unknown, into the dangerous and wild places of the imagination, we tell them first they are abominations; we tell them they are of the devil. We threaten them with spiritual warfare, eternal damnation and the like. When that doesn't work, when those individuals do not cower in fear for their souls, we send in backup: the physical forces of domination, in this case, the Royal Bahamian Police Force.

From "Poetry Under Investigation" - Helen Klonaris

National Poetry Month

I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, and am posting (irregularly) the poems I'm writing daily.

But I wanted to note that Geoffrey Philp has been doing a daily update on Caribbean poets all month long. You can find it here.

Today's is particularly good: Anthony McNeill (Jamaica):Somebody is hanging:a logwood treeladen with blossomsin a deep wood.The body stirs leftin the wind ...

It's April

and the USA is celebrating National Poetry Month.  Not that (a) we're American, or that (b) we should do what our northern neighbours do, but it occurs to me that it wouldn't harm us to have national months for some reason or another.The problem is that nothing our governments decide seem to stick anymore.  As soon as a different party gets into power, decisions are reversed, amended, rewritten, recast.  It's all a matter of scoring points, it would seem -- not a matter of national anything.  The PLP, while they were in power, removed the face of Stafford Sands from the $10 bill and sidelined One Bahamas in such a way that people forgot what it was/what it meant (Independence, not One Bahamas, was the priority).  The FNM this go-round have redesigned Urban Renewal and recast the move of the container port; we have yet to see what significance the thirty-fifth anniversary of Bahamian independence will bring.It all seems rather petty, and extremely absurd.And what's more, it's all in utter disregard of the wants or needs of the Bahamian people at large.But all that's by the way.  I started to write about what April's doing in other countries.  If you want, you can receive a poem a day from the Academy of American Poets.  I've subscribed.  You can also write a poem a day for NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), and if you want a community, you can post it here.But I think it's time we started thinking about our nation, and what we want it to do.  Together.  Forward, upward, and onward.

Book Launch!

Video Excerpt from The Children's Teeth (Ellie and Blanche)

Relevant Excerpt:
The outside child of Neville Williams returns to the house where she was raised -- by Ellie, Neville's wife, who took her in -- and Ellie's mother, Blanche, gives her a piece of her mind. In this clip, Ellie responds to her mother. It's the end of Act I, Scene i.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-DJRo7pBt0&rel=1]BLANCHE
Nursing viper in your bosom. I tell you Ellie, you let trouble under your roof and trouble take up residence big big, I tell you that. You see? I swear by these my last years, you take this back in today you digging your own grave far as I concern and you ga have to live in it. You hear me? I's your mother but you would be dead far as I concern if you take this house, the only thing you got to hand your children, and give it to the outside child. You hear me?

DONNIE
This my house too. I got every right to be here.

BLANCHE
Ya pa dead! You een get no right to set foot in here no more.

DONNIE
I get a letter right here to prove it.

ELLIE
Letter?

DONNIE
From a lawyer. Saying Daddy leave me part of this house.

NEVILLE
Damn straight.

BLANCHE
Greedy twoface...

DONNIE
Like you ever did anything for him! You’n got no right to judge me!

BLANCHE
Well, damn!

DONNIE
Where the phone? I need to call a taxi.

BLANCHE
Carry your hip!

JEFF
I’ll carry you.DONNIE
No. I cause enough trouble for one day.
(JEFF collects DONNIE’S bags from their place in STACEY’S room.)

BLANCHE
Jeff, you— Jeff! JEFF!

JEFF
(Moves towards the exit with the bags)
Come, Donnie.

BLANCHE
Ellie, ya see? Ya see? You see how this child get alla yinna running round her like you was the Haitian and she was somebody? Is the same thing all over again. From the day she set foot in that door. She like she pull her panty over yinna head.

ELLIE
All right!! Thas enough. Momma, you is a old woman, and you did raise me from small, and I never had one reason to complain bout anything you do for me but one. But lemme just tell you this one time. When I marry Neville I marry him for me. I take him for better and for worse, in sickness in health, and I keep my vow. For me. I'n care what anyone else do, I make my vow and I keep it. And if that mean taking in his child when she'n got nowhere else to go I do that too, because I love him. Donnie is his child and when her mother leave her high and dry she become my child. I do that for him. So let me just say this once. If I want bring Donnie back into this house what Neville Williams build for me and his family, I don't care if you is the Almighty come down off the cross, I don't care if you have a stroke and die on the spot, you understand, I ga do it. Because this is his house and she is his child. You hear me? So now we ga have this party for you and I ga feed all your cantankerous friends, and I ga smile up in they face and quarm and pretend like I like them cause you is my ma. That is what we ga do this afternoon, and you ga sit right there and smile too. You understand me? So you just put on your happy face and act like you glad you turning eighty-four and thank Jesus he'n call you yet and enjoy this party I slave over, and when I ready I ga take care of Neville daughter just like I promise. Donnie, child, take care, and call me. Stacey, go get the potato salad and put out some plate. Jeff, you hurry back, hear? People coming any minute and I ga be damn if I'n ready for them when they come.
(They all stare at her. The doorbell rings. Blackout.)

The Children's Teeth - Book

For those of you who have been noticing, I've taken the plunge into self-publication.  So if you missed the play (for shame!!), you can read it if you're interested -- simply by buying a copy of the book from Lulu.com.  I've got a handy-dandy link in the sidebar that'll take you straight to the online bookstore.

No, it's not available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  This one's not that grand. (Why, you may ask, is Essays on Life getting such wide distribution?  Well, because the essays are being printed and read not only here in Nassau, but in Britain, being reprinted by both Bahama Pundit the New Black Magazine, and I thought there might be some interest globally.  The play, now -- that's a different story.)

Yes, it is going to be available in real bookstores in Nassau.  I'll tell you when.In the meantime, you can order it from Lulu.com.  

Essays on Life published!

Now available from Lulu.com.

What does it mean to be this Caribbean writer? - Tobias Buckell

What does it mean to be this Caribbean writer? at Tobias Buckell OnlineGot to this post courtesy of Nalo Hopkinson.edit: Back with comments:Tobias Bucknell writes about being a multiracial SF writer, and what response he gets when he identifies as such. For instance:

I jokingly have been called ‘an undercover brother.’ Vin Diesel calls people like me ’shadow people,’ neither one race nor the either due to circumstances and self-identity, and considers himself one, yet another reason for my close attention to his career.Things came to a head a couple days ago with a few emails challenging me to prove that I was actually multi-racial and not just a ‘poser’ who wanted the ‘advantages’ of being hip and multi-racial.For some people, any attempt to identify in ways that they can’t control are troublesome....... I was born on the island of Grenada, West Indies, and is one of the two Caribbean islands that shape what I think of as home. Grenada, with it’s spice and colorful flowers and deep jungles and people, that is my first home. No matter how split my parents are, my cousins and aunts and uncles are all Grenadian and that is the blood that runs through my veins because of my father. I can’t deny or wish to change that, it’s simply who I am. And I’m proud to have been born there and lived there for the first nine years of my life.

Go read it. Some interesting stuff to think about and to discuss.Thanks, Nalo.

On Publication: Essays on Life

I'm pleased to announce that I'm working preparing Essays on Life for publication in a series of books. The first one, featuring the first fifty essays published, is almost ready to go to print. In a week or so, I hope, if all goes well, it'll be available online through Lulu.com, Amazon.com, and other online bookstores. Within the month, again if all goes well, I'm hoping it can be available in local bookstores; check Logos bookstore or COB's Chapter One and to find out. But I'll keep you posted.After plenty of thought (and some trepidation), and after considering things like time and cost and bulk and other stuff, I decided to self-publish, sort of. There were several options: local publishers, who would edit, lay out, set up, and distribute the book for me (Media Enterprises, Guanima Press); local printers, like the Nassau Guardian, who would do basically what Lulu is doing for me, taking the book I give them and printing it as is, or regional publishers, like Ian Randle, who would do what the local ones would do but with a far wider immediate distribution reach, or international vanity presses, which would design the cover and the layout for a price and then provide me with a print run of a size of my choice (sort of).There were two problems with them all. The first one was time; the turn-around time for traditional publishing services is pretty long, and though the result is of good quality, it wasn't what I wanted for a collection of essays that are pretty topical in nature (though with the way in which life goes round and round in circles of ever-tightening circumference, they are showing themselves to be pretty resilient, as relevant to the new government as they were four years ago to the old).The second one was bulk. Traditional print runs require somebody -- the publisher, if you're doing it the old-fashioned way, or the author, if you're going with self-publishing -- to pay for the production of a sizeable bunch of books. These can sit around, getting dusty and (in this climate) growing mould, while you scramble to recoup your costs. If the publisher bears those, you have to wait years to get paid, because the publisher has to work to recoup its costs. All in all, not what I wanted for this book (though for other potential books, that's quite a different story).I decided to try going with Print-on-Demand (POD).I'd first heard of Lulu.com through NaNoWriMo. (For those who don't know, that's an acronym for the little idea that's taking literature by storm and getting people writing long(ish) fiction on an annual basis -- National Novel Writing Month, an idea kicked up by Chris Baty, when individuals challenge themselves to write a novel from scratch, from start to finish, in 30 days.) I checked it out and thought it was interesting, but wasn't sure about the quality of the product, or about its reach. Since then, though, I've seen books produced through Lulu, and have held at least two of them in my hands -- Rik Roots' The RikVerse, which I ordered through Amazon, and Rupert Missick's Dreams and Other Whispers.There are disadvantages to self-publishing; any serious writer will tell you that. The main one is that for anyone who wants to make a career for themselves as a writer, with all the attachments, like advances and royalties and other trappings of the publishing economy, self-publishing, especially through vanity presses, appears to many serious publishers as a mark of inexperience, desperation, mediocrity, or all of the above. For many of them vanity presses are scammers par excellence; and it's true that if you're not careful, you'll pay far more for a print run of so-so product than the thing is worth. Self-publication also suggests that the writer isn't committed enough to face the hurdles that surround the publishing industry, hurdles whose conquest can produce fairy tales like J. K. Rowling. People who are impatient are often careless, sloppy, rushed, and the quality of the work suffers. And they're not unjustified in that concept; a lot of what is self-published isn't all that good.But self-publishing has its place. One of those places is when you live in small countries with small readerships, as we do. It's generally not economically viable for a big publisher to invest in a Bahamian publication; the cost of production can't be recouped. The market is simply too small. For this reason, hundreds of Bahamians and Bahamian residents -- some of them very good writers, some of them not so good, and some of them admittedly pretty bad -- have chosen to go with self-publishing simply to meet the demand that exists for their work. Among them are big-name Bahamian writers, like Gail Saunders and Winston Saunders and Obediah Michael Smith and Keith Russell and Michael Pintard. Not bad company to keep at all.And then there are serious advantages to print-on-demand. The main one is that the desktop revolution, coupled with the new global world of business offered by cyberspace, has created a completely new way of publishing. Print-on-demand is just that; you can write and create a book that exists only in digital form until somebody's ready to buy it. That keeps the cost down, keeps the waste to a minimum, and makes the whole process easier and simpler.And what would I lose anyway? Collecting Essays on Life is more an exercise in convenience than a full-scale launch of myself as a published writer. The complete set are already available on this blog, and are still searchable (presumably) in the archives of the Nassau Guardian, where they were first published, and some of them appear on Bahama Pundit. The trouble is, if people want to walk around with them away from the computer, they still have to go through the hassle of downloading and printing them out on plain paper. Why not make it a whole lot easier by printing through Lulu so that people can order the books themselves, or so that local bookstores can buy them as they need them?So I'm coming to the end of my inordinately long-winded post, and returning to where I started. In my end is my beginning, wrote T. S. Eliot in his own (far more elegant) contemplation about words and writing, East Coker.Essays on Life Vol. I's being prepared for publication.Look for it on this blog and other places shortly.

Does this country really need another bureaucrat?

You know you're in trouble when your job interferes with your calling.

The thing is, I'm a writer. Writers write. Writers write about stuff that inspires them. Writers write in part to inform those who read, and in part becase they just can't do anything else.

The other thing is, I'm a civil servant. I am one of the faceless scores of thousands of Bahamians who are bound to serve the government and people of The Bahamas, who are apprenticed to a hierarchy that grows ever more remote from the reality of life in the nation, and who are governed by a set of rules called General Orders which were drafted, by the tone of them, by English colonial bureaucrats, the ultimate purpose of whose administration was to return revenue to the Crown.

Oh, the folly. Oh, the fodder. Over the short course of my public service career I have collected enough inspiration for three seasons of a hit television series. Count two major elections twenty years apart (you do the math), and you will see the possibilities bloom. I even have the best of all possible titles in mind.

And yet. General Orders interferes.

So I ask you. Does this country really need another bureaucrat? Surely it would do better with some good social comment instead?

Talking writing/writing talking

I had the great pleasure to spend hours this afternoon and evening with Lynn Sweeting, fellow blogger and old, old friend. We talked about writing, about ideas and identity and the place of art in the shaping of identity, in the telling of our collective tale. We talked about emancipation and knowing who you are, about knowing your history and how it shapes you, and how it doesn't; we talked lies and truth and the only Bahamian generation that really believed that the freedom that they talked about between 1967 and 1982 was real.And we talked about the responsibility of the writer in this space. And we vowed to write.Here's to Lynn.

Sabbatical

So I've been on sabbatical.Well, if one were to be pedantic, it wouldn't strictly be a sabbatical, which means literally something that falls seventh, like the Sabbath day, or the seventh year of employment which should be a year of rejuvenation and refocussing. But I've taken a break, anyway, from Essays on Life. It's been a break that's been full of other things, like CARIFESTA and its aftermath and the vacation we took in the wake of that, and it's been used (but only in part) to prepare old essays for publication so that people can, if they want to, walk around with Essays on their person.And it's been a break that's tried to refocus Essays on Life; I've been thinking about and planning an interlocking series that digs at issues that underlie the ones I've hitherto written about. You may find that the essays get a little less accessible, though I hope that won't be the case. I do hope that they will draw a little more on my anthropological training, which I have found invaluable in shaping the way I see the world. But anyway.You'll see in good time.Till then.