Merry Christmas from Poets of the Caribbean

Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year to all my Poets of the Caribbean readers. Thanks for following my blog and I hope you have found the postings interesting and informative, especially for aspiring poets like myself. I wanted to let you know in this post that I appreciate your regular reading of my blog, and as always I welcome your feedback. Please feel free to leave me a comment on any of the posts you find interesting. I would love to hear from you.

It has been my pleasure to highlight for you Caribbean poets and poetry and I hope to bring you lots more information in the future. Stay tuned for my poet of the month for January as well as any interesting developments on the Caribbean literary scene.

Have a blessed, safe, and peaceful Christmas!

A Lime Jewel

A Lime Jewel is an anthology of poems and short stories written by authors from around the world, including Jamaica. The proceeds will contribute to continuing relief for Haiti resulting from the January 2010 earthquake.

The Jamaican contributors include Geoffrey Philip, Lloyd Palmer, Fitzroy Cole, Opal Minott and Ann-Margaret Lin.

See more details from The Gleaner on the project.

White Egrets, One of New York Times Notable Books of 2010

I just learned today that Derek Walcott's latest work, White Egrets (see my previous post with links to a review by the Caribbean Review of Books) made the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books for 2010.

White Egrets is truly a great read! If you have not yet read it, I highly recommend it. Here is the link to the New York Times list:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/books/review/100-notable-books-2010.html?_r=1

Derek Walcott

I am very pleased to feature Derek Walcott, Nobel laureate, as my poet of the month for December. Walcott was born on January 23, 1930 in Castries, St. Lucia. He published his first poem, The Voice of St. Lucia at 14 years old! In addition to being a gifted poet, playwright and essayist, Derek Walcott is also an accomplished artist.

For a brief but very good biography on Derek Walcott, please see Professor Edward Baugh's Introduction in Selected Poems (edited by Professor Edward Baugh). Here also are some more links to his biographical information:

http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/derek-walcott-110.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott

In 1992, Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His most recent (fourteenth) collection of poems is White Egrets. I just finished reading White Egrets and found the poems to be quite moving, with a few of them transporting me to places like Amsterdam, Barcelona and Capri. I particularly liked Sixty Years After, Forty Acres, which Walcott dedicated to President Obama, as well as his poem number 42, written for Lorna Goodison. For an excellent review of White Egrets, check out Jane King's Portrait of the artist as an old man on the Caribbean Review of Books website.

Listed below are some of Walcott's major works:

Plays
Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays
The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!
Remembrance and Pantomime
Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; Branch of the Blue Nile
The Odyssey
The Haitian Trilogy
Walker and The Ghost Dance

Poems
In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960
The Castaway and Other Poems
The Gulf and Other Poems
Another Life
Sea Grapes
The Star-Apple Kingdom
The Fortunate Traveller
Midsummer
Collected Poems: 1948-1984
The Arkansas Testament
Omeros
The Bounty
Tiepolo's Hound
The Prodigal
Selected Poems
White Egrets

Essays
What the Twilight Says

I hope you will find some time to enjoy the works of this celebrated son of the Caribbean.

Caribbean Literary Resources

Here is a starter list of Caribbean literary resources which lovers of Caribbean literature may find useful. Since it is a starter, and by no means exhaustive, I would welcome any comments or suggestions for additional sources you may know of. For some of the resources, there are previous postings on this blog which give more details about these literary sites.

Book Reviews
Caribbean Review of Books

Literary Festivals
Calabash International Literary Festival (Jamaica)
Bocas Lit Fest (Trinidad & Tobago) (Link temporarily unavailable)

Publishers
House of Nehesi
MacMillan Caribbean
Peepal Tree Press
Smashwords (Self Publishing - See previous post)

Research
Institute of Jamaica
Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC)
University of the West Indies

Writing Communities
Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (ACWWS)
Caribbean Literary Salon

Rejection is good (sometimes)

Recently, I experienced the rejection of my first manuscript of poems. I was crushed. Then, I stepped back and tried as objectively as I could to review the poems I had written over a ten-year span. I did some editing and also added three new poems to the collection. I have since submitted the manuscript to a new publisher whose focus is on Caribbean writing. I don't know what the outcome will be this time around, but I believe in, and stand by my work. I will continue to write poetry, regardless.

If you are an aspiring poet who has faced rejection(s), continue to write and keep the faith. Consider, for inspiration, Christian Campbell who recently won the Aldeburgh prize for best first collection, Running the Dusk, (Peepal Tree Press), which was also short-listed for the Forward prize. In his August 2010 interview with Lisa Allen-Agostini in the Caribbean Review of Books, Campbell shared how Running the Dusk was rejected by several publishers. Here is a link to the interview:

http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/22-july-2010/i-must-make-trouble-for-the-nation/

So, sometimes rejection can be a good thing, leading our collection to the right publisher at the right time. Rejection can also help us to take an objective look at our work, refining and reviewing where necessary. Don't lose hope. Continue to be passionate about your poetry!

More on Claude McKay

The exile theme recurs in many of Claude McKay's works. The Jamaican landscape and the yearning to return were prominent in many of his poems. Today, I will feature two more of his poems that are among my favorite. The first speaks of a promise to return home, and the other describes the lovely Spanish Needle flower which seemed to remind him so much of his Jamaican childhood.

I Shall Return

I shall return again; I shall return
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes
At golden noon the forest fires burn,
Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.
I shall return to loiter by the streams
That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses,
And realize once more my thousand dreams
Of waters rushing down the mountain passes.
I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife
Of village dances, dear delicious tunes
That stir the hidden depths of native life,
Stray melodies of dim remembered runes.
I shall return, I shall return again,
To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.

The Spanish Needle

Lovely dainty Spanish needle
With your yellow flower and white,
Dew bedecked and softly sleeping,
Do you think of me to-night?

Shadowed by the spreading mango,
Nodding o'er the rippling stream,
Tell me, dear plant of my childhood,
Do you of the exile dream?

Do you see me by the brook's side
Catching crayfish 'neath the stone,
As you did the day you whispered:
Leave the harmless dears alone?

Do you see me in the meadow
Coming from the woodland spring
With a bamboo on my shoulder
And a pail slung from a string?

Do you see me all expectant
Lying in an orange grove,
While the swee-swees sing above me,
Waiting for my elf-eyed love?

Lovely dainty Spanish needle,
Source to me of sweet delight,
In your far-off sunny southland
Do you dream of me to-night?

OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the Bocas Lit Fest

Great news about a new Caribbean literature prize and a new Caribbean literary festival. The first ever  Bocas Lit Fest takes place April 28 - May 1, 2011 in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. This is a positive development for Caribbean literature and culture, and this new literary festival now joins the Calabash Festival, held annually in Jamaica, as an additional medium to showcase Caribbean writing.

The new OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature will be awarded for the first time in April 2011 during the Bocas Lit Fest. Check out more details at the Caribbean Review of Books website

http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/2010/11/04/a-prize-of-our-own/comment-page-1/#comment-593

Smashwords

I want to share with you this really great website I discovered called Smashwords. Smashwords promotes self-publishing, especially for the ebook market. Best of all, the service is free! They have been around for a while now (can't believe I just found out about them), and have really great guides for formatting and presenting your work, as well as for promoting your work. When you visit their site, also take time to check out the Smashwords blog.

http://www.smashwords.com/

http://blog.smashwords.com/

So, aspiring writers everywhere (especially aspiring Caribbean poets!), check out Smashwords and tell me what you think.

Claude McKay

He was central to the Harlem Renaissance. William Churchill quoted his poem, If We Must Die, during World War 2. Although he became an American citizen, many people still believe Claude McKay was American-born.

However, Claude McKay was a Jamaican poet whose works inspired millions. His poems were daring and defiant, yet at the same time, they conveyed a nostalgic yearning for his native Jamaica. Claude McKay was born on September 15, 1890 in Clarendon, Jamaica. He never returned home to the land he loved and wrote so much about in his poems, and died in Chicago in 1948.

I am very pleased to feature Claude McKay as my poet of the month for November, and to share with you perhaps his most famous poem, If We Must Die. 

If We Must Die.

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
hunted and penned in an inglorious spot
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs
making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed 
in vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!


Here are some more details on the life of Claude McKay from the website, Modern American Poetry.

Modern American Poetry http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/mckay/life.htm

Lorna Goodison's Two Little Girls

Two Little Girls

Two little girls to sit
in the garden
to play at tea
I had good-hair
they sent me.
My mother made me wear gloves
and I stepped past Miss Bea
sellin oranges at the gate
past Curriman and George
and Mr. Butty
Past Vie who sold her
waitress body
and hovered above the gutter
like a net-over-taffeta cloud
and they took me to where
there were real trees
and Lady Foot said I was pretty
and when I came home wrapped in vanity
My brother said I was a boasie bitch
and that returned me to reality.

Copyright Lorna Goodison. Reprinted with author's permission.

The Mulatta As Penelope

Enjoy another Lorna Goodison poem, The Mulatta As Penelope.

The Mulatta As Penelope

Tonight, I'll pull your limbs through
small soft garments
your head will part my breasts
and you will hear a different heartbeat.
Today, we said the real goodbye, he and I
But this time I will not sit and spin and spin
the door open to let the madness in.
Till the sailor finally weary of the sea
returns with tin souvenirs and a claim to me.
True I returned from the quayside
my eyes full of sand
and his salt-leaving smell
fresh on my hands
but you're my anchor awhile now
and that holds deep.
I'll sit in the sun
and dry my hair
while you sleep.

Copyright Lorna Goodison. Reprinted with author's permission.

Lorna Goodison, Poet of the Month

I have chosen Lorna Goodison as my first poet of the month because she is my all-time favorite Caribbean poet. I have been reading Lorna Goodison's poems for many years and I have been fascinated by her style, her treatment of the struggles of Caribbean women in her poems, and her political consciousness. I also thoroughly enjoyed her latest work, From Harvey River, a memoir published in 2008. One powerful poem that Lorna wrote was the Bedspread, which dealt with the South African police seizure of Nelson and Winnie Mandela's bedspread during the Apartheid era. I remember watching Lorna on television doing a very moving reading of this poem to Nelson Mandela on his visit to Jamaica, shortly after his release from prison. Today, however, I will feature another of my favorite Lorna Goodison poem, which is I Am Becoming My Mother.

I Am Becoming My Mother

Yellow/brown woman
fingers smelling always of onions
My mother raises rare blooms
and waters them with tea
her birth waters sung like rivers
My mother is now me

My mother had a linen dress
the colour of the sky
and stored lace and damask
tablecloths
to pull shame out of her eye.

I am becoming my mother
brown/yellow woman
fingers smelling always of onions.

Source: From Our Yard. Jamaican Poetry Since Independence. No. 2 Jamaica 21 Anthology Series. Pamela Mordecai (ed.). Institute of Jamaica Publications Ltd. 1987.

Copyright Lorna Goodison. Reprinted with author's permission

Below is a link to more information on Lorna's background and works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Goodison 

Welcome to Poets of the Caribbean

Welcome to Poets of the Caribbean, a blog which aims to showcase the works of Caribbean poets and to highlight the richness of Caribbean poetry, be it from the English, Spanish, French or Dutch Caribbean. Each month, I will feature a Caribbean poet so that readers will learn more about the contribution that these poets have made.

I do hope that you will enjoy the poems I will share and the personalities I will shine the spotlight on. I welcome feedback from poetry lovers everywhere.

Enjoy Poets of the Caribbean!