Commemorating a Young Aruban Resistance Heroe

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On this day May the 4th, we commemorate the fallen of the 2nd World War in the Netherlands. Boy Ecury, a student then in Holland, was one of them. He was active in Dutch resistance and sabotaged trains and bombed German vehicles and equipment. He was betrayed by a friend and paid with his life at the tender age of 22.
It´s been a decade since I wrote this poem to this young Aruban resistance heroe.

Prodigal son

Along the cellar-flap
jack-boots marched,
between striped pyamas,
which cuts through
the pouring rain-drops.

The bom-craters,
decapitated dolls,
chasted animals on the street,
and perforated bodies
strangled my emotions.

My inner life
reasoned the commotion,
against the domination
of soul and mind,
in own country.

As if I never
saw the death with own eyes,
in my letters to my father,
as a prodigal son,
later as a figure-head.

Not in Auschwitzs
but nearby,
the Waalsdorpervlakte.
A friend of merits.
A smile on the face.

© Quito Nicolaas, from: Gerede Twijfels/Reasonable Doubt, 2002

The poetry book Gerede Twijfels/Reasonable Doubt is available @ www.bookishplaza.com

Boekpresentatie ‘Azijn in mijn aderen’

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De roman is in streetwise tempo en met humor geschreven en leest als een satirische meidenroman, maar heeft niettemin een serieuze aanleiding, namelijk zelfmoord onder (Surinaamse) Hindoestanen, zowel in Suriname als in Nederland.

Interview with Caribbean Writers & Poets

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Listen over @ The Spaces Between Words to podcast interviews with (Caribbean) writers of poetry, fiction and non-fiction!
Writers and poets like Tiphanie Yanique, Christian Campbell, Lorna Goodison and Marlon James.
Tune in every two Fridays for a new podcast!

Check it out @ http://www.spaceswords.com/

A re-edition of ‘Masters of the Dew’

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Caribbean Studies Press has just released a re-edition of Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew (translation of Gouverneurs de la rosée by Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook).

This novel, long out of print in English, tells of the traditional rural life and people of Haiti, dominated by the natural world. This is a deeply powerful story of the harsh existence of peasant farmers struggling in a world both beautiful and unforgiving. The tale begins with the return of Manuel, a prodigal son, to his aging parents’ homestead and the realities of subsistence agriculture in a drought-stricken region. He brings new ideas, with the potential to transform the lives of people in the community. He encounters old feuds and resistance to change but he persists, and his determination to bring people together to improve their lives leads to a dramatic conclusion.

JACQUES ROUMAIN is a critical figure in the development of Haitian literature and culture in the 20th century, and this novel, originally written in French, was translated by the noted Harlem Renaissance poet and author Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook, professor and chair of romance languages at Howard University, who also taught at the University of Haiti, in Port-au-Prince.

Source: Repeating Islands, 2012

Fellowship for Jamaican Poet

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Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths courtesy the Poetry Foundation

Jamaican Professor Kwame Dawes has been awarded the 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry. One of the most prestigious fellowships in the world, it was established in 1925 and intended for men and women who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship and exceptional creativity in the arts. The foundation receives between 3,500 and 4,000 applications per year and awards approximately 200.

Dawes said: “I have long regarded the Guggenheim Fellowship as a clear indication of the quality and significance of the work of American artists and artists from around the world. This is a generous award and a tremendous honour. I am grateful to all those writers who wrote in support of this award. My family and I are thrilled.”

The Guggenheim award comes on heels of Dawes being presented with the Barnes and Noble 2012 Writers for Writers Award last month and an Emmy Award in 2009. As a proud son of the soil, his 2004 Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica holds special significance, as his late father Neville Dawes was a director of the institute. A reception for the 2012 Fellows of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation will take place in New York City on May 9. Dawes is editor of the acclaimed literary journal Prairie Schooner and the chancellor’s professor of English at the University of Nebraska.

Dawe’s numerous books include the novel She’s Gone, musical biography Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius and the memoir A Far Cry from Plymouth Rock. Wheels (2011) is the latest of his 16 volumes of poetry. Dawes is also the editor of many other volumes such as the poetry anthologies So Much Things to Say and Jubilation!. Dawes founded the Calabash International Literary Festival Trust in 2001 along with Colin Channer and Justine Henzell.

Source: ARC, April 2012

New book on ‘poesía contemporánea puertorriqueña’

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Among the books presented at Casa de las Américas as part of the Cuban International Book Fair 2012, is a new anthology of contemporary Puerto Rican poetry Red de voces: poesía contemporánea puertorriqueña by writer and crític Áurea María Sotomayor. The collection was published by Casa’s series “La honda,” which specializes in emerging authors as well as uncommon and innovative themes.

In the words of editor Carlos Bernal, this poetry collection gathers the rich and divergent trends of poets like Ángela Dávila María Malavé, Yvonne Ochart, Rafael Acevedo, and Juan Carlos Quintero, constituting 23 different poetic forms.

Read further @ Repeating Islands http://repeatingislands.com/2012/03/02/new-book-red-de-voces-poesia-contemporanea-puertorriquena/

George Lamming ganador del Galardón Cultural ALBA

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El novelista y poeta de Barbados, George Lamming, ícono de la literatura política caribeña, es otro de los ganadores del Galardón Cultural ALBA. teleSUR

Véalo aquí
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Libros de George Lamming obtenible en www.bookishplaza.com

A weekend of Narrating the Caribbean Nation

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Writer/poet Quito Nicolaas will be one of the lecturers this weekend at the conference Narrating the Caribbean Nation: A Celebration of Literature and Orature at the Leeds Metropolitan University, England. He will narrate about the politics of Caribbean Literature in The Netherlands.

The organizor Peepal Tree Press is celebrating its Silver Anniversary through highlighting its own authors and other significant Caribbean and Black British authors making a contribution to this body of work. Peepal Tree Press are working in partnership with Leeds Metropolitan University (Faculty of Arts, Environment and Technology, and the Carnegie Research Institute) to celebrate this event.

The aim of the conference is to provide a space for academics, specialists and other people interested in the field of Caribbean literature to come together, share and discuss, amongst other topics, how the writing of the past twenty-five years connects and relates to the foundational and classic texts of Caribbean writing; and how issues of nation, region and diaspora, gender, ethnic, cultural, and sexual identities, connect within the Caribbean whole. Further, it aims to explore the relationship between writing in the Caribbean and Black British writing of Caribbean heritage, as well as offering an opportunity to hear new writers, and to watch them in performance.

The conference aims to encompass enough scope for academic interest though will also offer space for less formal presentations to raise the profile and create a heightened awareness of Caribbean writers and their work. The conference will be of interest to people from the Caribbean, people interested in Caribbean literature, and encourage new readers to this body of work. The conference gives Leeds based Peepal Tree Press, the foremost publisher of Caribbean literature, a platform to showcase new and classic works in print and in performance from its authors around the world.

NARRATING THE CARIBBEAN NATION
Conference Program http://www.peepaltreepress.com/images/Narrating%20the%20Caribbean%20Nation%20PROGRAMME.pdf
14-15 April, 2012, Leeds Metropolitan University

R.I.P. Nydia Ecury

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On March 2, 2012 the multi-talented Aruban artist Nydia Ecury passed away in Curaçao at the age of 86. Ecury was born in Aruba on February 2, 1926 but lived in Curaçao since 1957. Peter Jordens reports:

Nydia Ecury was a true performing artist in the Caribbean tradition. She co-founded the Thalia drama group, she translated famous foreign plays into her native language Papiamentu, and she was an actress. She wrote prose, poetry, and children’s stories in Papiamentu, Dutch, and English. She also worked as a translator. She published six collections of poetry, including Bos di Sanger [Voice of Blood] in 1976 and the bilingual Kantika pa Mama Tera / Song for Mother Earth in 1984.

Ecury was an ambassador of Dutch-Caribbean literature. She represented the Netherlands Antilles more than 20 times at literary festivals in the Caribbean, Venezuela, the Netherlands, and the United States. She was best known for her poetry recitals, often performed with musical accompaniment. She appeared as Mama Grandi in the film Almacita di Desolato (1986) produced by Norman de Palm. She also gained fame with her one-woman show Luna di Papel [Paper Moon] in 1980.

For her cultural contributions she was awarded a Netherlands Royal decoration three times. Curaçaoan pianist Wim Statius Muller composed the waltz ‘Nydia’ in her honor. In the last few years of her life, Ecury had Alzheimer’s disease. But in 2011 she appeared on Di Fiesta, the Christmas CD of Curaçaoan jazz and world music diva Izaline Calister, singing the lead vocals of ‘Un Niño Krioyo.’ And this year Ecury appeared on the personalities’ calendar of the New India Assurance company, which was designed by her daughter Caresse Isings. Ecury is also survived by her son, Alexander Isings. Nydia, sosegá na pas, rest in peace.

Source: Repeating Islands, March 2012

The Negritude Movement in Historical and Cultural Context

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Another new book presented at Havana’s International Book Fair was Cantos de Negritud (Arte y Literatura, 2012) by Mirta Fernández Martínez.

In the framework of two commemorations to be held in 2012 —the bicentennial of the conspiracy led by José Antonio Aponte and one hundred years after the massacre of the Independents of Color— Mirta Fernández Martínez presents her enlightening book Cantos de Negritud [Songs of Blackness].

She addresses figures of great importance in Caribbean arts, politics and thought—such as Haitian Jacques Roumain, Guyanese Léon Damas Gontran, and Martinican Aimé Césaire—with analyses, quotes, and poems, mostly translated by Fernández, providing the book with a perfect symbiosis of pleasurable reading and essential information, which brings the reader closer to the Negritude movement in its historical and cultural context. José Martí, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Nicolás Guillén, Alejo Carpentier, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Leopold Sédar Senghor, to name a few, are quoted extensively in the text, offering a varied approach to the phenomenon of racial discrimination.

Read further @ http://repeatingislands.com/2012/02/19/more-from-havanas-international-book-fair-mirta-fernandez-martinezs-cantos-de-negritud/

New book on the texts by Cuba’s Writer Alejo Carpentier

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At Havana’s 2012 International Book Fair, Emilio Jorge Rodríguez presented his Crónicas caribeñas .

Crónicas caribeñas brings together a selection of texts by Alejo Carpentier that tackles many issues related to Cuba and the Caribbean from his journalistic collaborations in various types of media, spanning from 1922 to 1980. Readers can learn about his interest in regional authors, his research in Afro-Caribbean cultures, and his sustained effort in delving into the peculiarities of these co-existing worlds, establishing bonds of affinity and comparison. Carpentier thus moves beyond national boundaries to demonstrate the close ties of relationship between the diverse islands and the continental land that have framed them, with their similarities and differences, as part of a larger unit.

It is striking how he approaches the Caribbean and Latin American cultural universe and expresses the need to seek ways of integration beyond language, for although they are bearers of culture, there are in the region similar historical experiences that link these countries. Thus, researcher and essayist Jorge Emilio Jorge Rodríguez, who was in charge of the selection and prologue to the book, highlights how advanced Carpentier’s vision is, because he was not only opposed to the “linguistic boundary schemes in the region, but was also presenting an island-continental articulation.”

Read complete article @ http://repeatingislands.com/2012/02/19/havanas-international-book-fair-emilio-jorge-rodriguez-launches-three-books/