Coming up in the August CRB....

Dear readers, you may have noticed that in the last few weeks posting here at Antilles has been rather light. It's not that we've run out of steam, and not that there hasn't been lots going on in the Caribbean literary scene. Rather, your Antilles blogger, who moonlights as CRB editor, has been hard at work on the August issue of the magazine, which goes to press later this week--and print deadlines ever trump all others.

So what might CRB readers have to look forward to in the August issue (our biggest yet)? Reviews of Leonardo Padura's Havana Quartet novels, of Bahamian art historian Krista Thompson's new book An Eye for the Tropics, of a new anthology of African diaspora poems, of Kwame Dawes's first novel, and of (former St Vincent and the Grenadines prime minister) James Mitchell's memoir. Short reviews of new books about the Taíno of Jamaica and Hispaniola, of poems by a writer from St Martin, of a memoir of Montserrat in the time of the volcano. An essay by David Dabydeen on the long-forgotten poems of the 19th-century Guianese poet Egbert "Leo" Martin. Marlon James on Jean Rhys's women. Garnette Cadogan on why we should pay more attention to V.S. Naipaul's non-fiction. Judy Raymond on the Trinidadian designer Meiling and "the business of selling dreams". A whole portfolio of Georgia Popplewell's photos from Calabash 2007. An interview with Geoffrey Philp. Poems by Vahni Capildeo and Thomas Reiter.

To make sure you don't miss all the above and more, renew your subscription, take out a new one, or give one to a friend!

"No contradiction between the sensual and the spiritual"

I have always found comfort in the opportunity and permission to be devotional about sensuality and about the wonders of erotic love. The Song of Songs serve as a wonderful purpose in that regard. As a poem of sensuality it is exemplary and instructive. As a poem rooted in the use of metaphor it is a study in how to and how not to do it. As an example of a beautifully shaped narrative poem that employs refrain and counter point to create a dynamic of drama and aural beauty, it is a splendid example. But I have to return to the most critical value for me--that I like it for the permission it gives me to embrace the sensual. How the reggae artists got to that place of seeing no inherent contradiction between the sensual and the spiritual can be traced to many things, not the least of which would be the multiple cultural sources that fed Rastafarianism-—from African to India. However, what I do know is that in many of the great reggae songs, this quality is present. It is a similar spirit that I see in the Song of Songs and it is this quality that I am grateful for each time I read it.

--Kwame Dawes on the biblical Song of Songs.

What to read during Caribana



Georgia Popplewell is in Toronto for the second annual Caribbean Tales Film Festival. In a branch of the bookshop chain Indigo, she spotted this Caribana-themed display of Caribbean books--Naipaul, Carter, Lamming, Harold Sonny Ladoo, Jamaica Kincaid, David Dabydeen....

2006 Guyana Prize shortlists

The shortlists for the 2006 Guyana Prizes for Literature have been announced, according to an article in the Stabroek News.

On the shortlist for the best fiction prize: Cyril Dabydeen's Drums of My Flesh; Mark McWatt's Suspended Sentences (which won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize last year; the Guyana Prizes are biennial); and Ryhaan Shah's A Silent Life.

On the best book of poetry shortlist: Cyril Dabydeen again, for Imaginary Origins; Elly Niland's Cornerstones, and Berkley Semple's The Solo Flyer.

The best drama shortlist: Ronan Blaze's For Love of Aidana Soraya and Michael Gilkes's Last of the Redmen.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony on 23 August in Georgetown. This is the twentieth anniversary of the Guyana Prizes--still the only national book prizes in the Anglophone Caribbean.

Links, links, links

- Who invented rock and roll, asks Marlon James--why couldn't it have been Jackie Brenston?

- Geoffrey Philp reviews Crystal Rain, the new speculative fiction novel by Tobias Buckell, set in a futuristic world borrowing many details from the Caribbean.

- Imani wonders why better-made editions of classic Jamaican writers like Roger Mais aren't in print:

The Jonathan Cape omnibus of the novels was a hardcover and probably did not have any typos (though I suspect I’ve just forgotten them) but the pros stop there. It’s clear that that the publisher simply got three separate copies of the three novels, each with completely different fonts (not even the same size!) and stuck them together. *lifts hands into the air*

- Andre Bagoo is offering weekly "bedside books" updates:

Derek Walcott’s The Prodigal climbs to the top of my ‘active zone’, taking pride of place alongside his Collected Poems. The wonderfully produced American hard-cover edition of Zadie Smith’s bulky White Teeth caused some difficulty with the delicate balance that I have going....

- Kwame Dawes on reading Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "The Windhover" as a young man:

For a poet living in a world in which language was constantly subjected to mutation, stretching, punning, and weighted with political and ideological meaning--and here I am speaking of the world being influenced and shaped by Rastafarians who forced us to take every word seriously, to test it for its possible implications and to see language as hardly locked in by tradition, but open to transformation, Hopkins’ poetry resonated for me--gave me permission, then to think of language, the Jamaican language I was learning, in different ways.

"I started writing poetry to become a better fiction writer"



Jamaican writer Kei Miller at the Reader's Bookshop, Port of Spain, Wednesday 4 July, 2007. Photograph by Georgia Popplewell

Those of you, dear readers, who missed Kei Miller's reading hosted by the CRB and the Reader's Bookshop last Wednesday evening in Port of Spain can hear Kei read two poems from his forthcoming book ("For the Girl Who Died by Dancing" and "In Praise of the Contribution of Pots"), and answer a few questions about his work, in the Caribbean Free Radio podcast I recorded with him yesterday, produced by CFR's Georgia Popplewell. (See more photographs from Kei's reading on Wednesday, also by Georgia, at Flickr.)

There Is an Anger That Moves, Kei Miller's second book of poems, will be published by Carcanet in October 2007. In early May, he did an online interview for Antilles.

"I have a feeling for ritual"

It is not an easy thing to do, to live by reason alone, and in every culture there are mysterious regions that are beyond reason. Relics of the past, perhaps not always explicable, but precious to the people who possess them. All rituals are mysterious. To do away with them is to strip people of their identity (and identity is precious) along with their ritual... I have no faith but I have a feeling for ritual. I feel it leads me to the old world. It gives me a past.

--From V.S. Naipaul's lecture on contemporary India delivered last month at a summit in London organised by the Indian magazine Tehelka. An excerpt is published under the title "The Land of Wrong Wars" in the current issue of the magazine.

A Conversation with Kei Miller

Presented by The Caribbean Review of Books and The Reader's Bookshop

The Jamaican writer Kei Miller--whose short story collection The Fear of Stones was recently shortlisted for a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize--will read from his fiction and poems, and discuss his work with Caribbean Review of Books editor Nicholas Laughlin.

Wednesday 4 July, 2007, 7.30 pm, at The Reader's Bookshop, 1 Middle Street (at Patna Street), St James, Port of Spain.

Admission is free, and all are invited. Copies of Miller's books will be on sale. For further information, contact The Reader's Bookshop at 628-7221, or email crb@meppublishers.com.

***

"Kei Miller ... writes with passionate understanding of bruised, repressed, and deprived selves seeking, achieving, or failing to find release and freedom."
-- Edward Baugh, reviewing Miller's debut books of fiction and poems in the February 2007 CRB

Kei Miller is the author of The Fear of Stones (2006), a book of short fiction, and Kingdom of Empty Bellies (2006), a book of poems, and the editor of New Caribbean Poetry (2007), an anthology showcasing eight poets from across the Caribbean. His second book of poems, There Is an Anger That Moves, will be published later this year, and his first novel will appear in 2008. The Fear of Stones was shortlisted for the Best First Book award, Caribbean and Canada, in the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prizes.