Antilles: the weblog of the CRB

Antilles has moved

2010-06-05T10:58:00.002-04:00

Dear Antilles readers,Since the relaunch of the CRB website in May 2010, Antilles has moved to a new location, and resumed (more or less) regular posting. Here’s the new address:http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/antilles/If you currently subscribe to our old RSS feed, please update the subscription to:http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/antilles/feed/rss/orhttp://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/antilles

Yawning and stretching

2010-03-22T13:42:00.001-04:00

Dear readers,No, the CRB hasn't expired. We've been in a phase of aestivation, withdrawn from some metaphorical dry weather, and slowly rethinking our hows and whys.The good news is that we're preparing to relaunch the magazine in May (our sixth anniversary), with a completely new website and our first online edition. More on that very soon.Meanwhile, in the coming weeks the rusty wheels of

Small Axe Literary Prize winners

2009-10-20T17:36:00.002-04:00

The editors of Small Axe have asked Antilles to help announce the winners of their first annual Literary Prize for "poetry and short stories from emerging writers whose work centres on regional and diasporic Caribbean themes and concerns."Short fiction:First place: Ashley Rousseau, St Andrew, JamaicaSecond place: Alake Pilgrim, D'Abadie, Trinidad and TobagoPoetry:First place: Monica Minott,

New MEP blog

2009-10-01T11:14:00.003-04:00

Dear Antilles readers,The Caribbean Review of Books' long-time publishing partner, Media & Editorial Projects Ltd (MEP), has just launched a new blog at http://meppublishers.blogspot.com, consolidating posts from each of its individual publication blogs (Discover TnT, Caribbean Beat, and some posts from the Antilles blog).We invite you to join us for news and views from MEP's suite of

Soon come

2009-07-14T19:44:00.003-04:00

Dear readers,As you've probably surmised, Antilles is on hiatus, while I make some crucial decisions about the future of the CRB.(The CRB website hasn't been updated for quite some time either--never fear, a new site with the magazine's complete archive is in the works.)Meanwhile, why not check out Repeating Islands, which is doing a rather better job of covering Caribbean literature, art, music

Talking to Nicolette Bethel

2009-06-12T16:35:00.003-04:00

Many Antilles readers are familiar with tongues of the ocean, an online poetry journal based in the Bahamas, which was launched in February 2009. Edited by poet and playwright Nicolette Bethel, and focused on poetry from the Caribbean and its diasporas, tongues plans to publish three issues per year, with the contents of each issue appearing gradually week by week.Soon after the second issue of

Freedom to write

2009-05-03T14:35:00.003-04:00

On 3 May, 1991, a group of African journalists at a UNESCO conference in Namibia issued what has come to be called the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom. "The establishment, maintenance, and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press," it reads, "is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation." Two and a half years later, the United Nations General

A message to CRB readers

2009-04-01T14:57:00.002-04:00

Dear Caribbean Review of Books subscribers and readers,You must have noticed by now that your February 2009 CRB hasn't arrived. I'm writing now to give you an update on the status of the magazine.There is bad and good news. The bad news is that the CRB's finances continue to be shaky. As a small literary non-profit, we've struggled to cover our costs over the last five years. And like many

Links, links, links

2009-01-04T13:12:00.001-04:00

Happy new year, dear readers--I hope 2009 is treating you well so far. After my year-end break, I'll gradually ease myself back into regular posting here over the next few days. A handful of literary links, to start.- Weekend America spoke to Derek Walcott recently about politics and poetry--specifically, about Barack Obama's interest in poetry. Walcott described the process of writing "Forty

2008 CRB books of the year

2008-12-31T18:00:00.001-04:00

Where, dear readers, did this whole gallumphing year go? Does our perception of time change as we get older, so that the days and weeks and months speed faster and faster downslope--or is that apparent acceleration unique to your humble Antilles blogger?It doesn't seem so very long since I posted the CRB's list of 2007's most noteworthy books, but indeed it was exactly one year ago. Now it's time

Not a blogger was stirring

2008-12-18T13:37:00.001-04:00

Your Antilles blogger is not on vacation, dear readers. The opposite, rather: this last week I've been haunted by the ghosts of deadlines missed, and other year-end monsters. And much pre-occupied with CRB fundraising, to see the magazine through the next year, and also with Commonwealth Writers' Prize reading--there are dozens of books in my yet-to-read pile, and more to come. So now is perhaps

Links, links, links

2008-12-11T10:50:00.000-04:00

- Another end-of-year best-books list, this time in the Washington Post, including Lorna Goodison's memoir From Harvey River and (inevitably!) Patrick French's The World Is What It Is.- At the Harper's Sentences blog, Wyatt Mason reads V.S. Naipaul's introduction to A House for Mr. Biswas and reflects on virtuosity.- Geoffrey Philp points us to a poem by Fred D'Aguiar in Poetry:The shoemaker’s

"Like Kamau Brathwaite, or Martin Carter...."

2008-12-10T23:34:00.000-04:00

Two minutes and forty-one seconds well spent: the UK Guardian posts a video of Linton Kwesi Johnson reading "If I Woz a Tap Natch Poet".

Reminder: support the Signifyin' Guyana short story competition

2008-12-09T13:24:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to those Antilles readers who responded to my appeal last week to support the Signifyn' Guyana short story competition for Guyanese writers. To recap: Charmaine Valere of Signifyin' Guyana, the competition organiser, is trying to raise part of the prize money via ChipIn, which makes it easy to donate online. If you haven't taken a look at the competition announcement yet, please do--

Walcott on Omeros

2008-12-08T16:37:00.003-04:00

The BBC World Service is currently running a lengthy question-and-answer session with Derek Walcott in its World Book Club series.Fielding questions from a studio audience and listeners around the world, Walcott insists that Omeros is not a reworking or transformation of Homer in a Caribbean setting, as so many commentators have assumed. He has some interesting technical points about the metrical

"The book is the ideal tool"

2008-12-08T11:21:00.001-04:00

Culture on a global scale concerns us all. But it is above all the responsibility of readers--of publishers, in other words. True, it is unjust that an Indian from the far north of Canada, if he wishes to be heard, must write in the language of the conquerors--in French, or in English. True, it is an illusion to expect that the Creole language of Mauritius or the West Indies might be heard as

More Naipauliana

2008-12-06T09:15:00.001-04:00

V.S. Naipaul's Room, from the Writers' Rooms series, by Eamonn McCabeI've been posting so much Naipauliana here of late, dear readers, I may as well continue. First, Pico Ayer reviews The World Is What It Is in Time:The central question the book raises is how much inhumanity is justified in the cultivation of a talent--especially in an age when (as Naipaul is shrewd enough to realize) writers are

"These days, authentic art is international"

2008-12-05T12:54:00.000-04:00

Wilfredo Prieto didn’t travel outside his native Cuba until 2000, when he was a 22-year-old art student in Havana. During an international artists’ workshop on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, he put an ornamental plant in a wheelbarrow and took it on a walking tour of the island, in a performance piece that he called Walk. “That trip was my first experience with the capitalist world, and it

"Horse-trading and gamesmanship"

2008-12-05T11:08:00.001-04:00

In his column in today's Newsday, Kevin Baldeosingh responds to the discussion about literary awards hosted by the CRB and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize last month. He draws on published comments by various Booker Prize judges to make the point that "there are no rigorous standards in literary judgements":Last September, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize, the London Guardian

A few links

2008-12-03T18:30:00.001-04:00

- The December issue of The Latin American Review of Books is online.- Arlene M. Roberts reviews the Trinidad Noir anthology at the Huffington Post.- The books editors of the New York Times have refined their list of the hundred most "notable" books of 2008 down to their ten books of the year. One is The World Is What It Is, Patrick French's biography of V.S. Naipaul; another is Joseph O'Neill's

Support the Signifyin' Guyana short story competition

2008-12-01T23:45:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I posted a link to Charmaine Valere's announcement of the Signifyin' Guyana short story competition for Guyanese writers. This is a bold attempt on her part to give tangible support to writers living in Guyana, where opportunities to earn money from creative writing are very few. (And writers need to eat and pay rent just like the rest of us.) The winners of the competition will receive

On Valmiki's Daughter

2008-12-01T14:20:00.002-04:00

Trinidadian-Canadian Shani Mootoo's new novel, Valmiki's Daughter, was recently published in Canada; reviews have begun to appear in various newspapers and other media. A sampling:If the premise of Shani Mootoo's latest novel wasn't so sad it might easily read as farce: A handful of gay spouses in a conservative community pretend to be straight, while their partners pretend not to know.The action

Tongues of the Ocean: call for submissions

2008-12-01T13:27:00.000-04:00

This morning I got an intriguing email from Nicolette Bethel--writer, anthropologist, and blogger--announcing the launch of a new online poetry journal based in the Bahamas: Tongues of the Ocean (if I'm not mistaken, the title refers to the super-deep undersea trench off the coast of Andros). The journal is associated with the still-evolving Bahamas International Literary Festival, and is edited

Book of the week: Horses in Her Hair, by Rachel Manley

2008-11-30T23:44:00.001-04:00

Rachel Manley's trilogy of memoirs of her extraordinary family--which began with Drumblair and continued with Slipstream--is now completed by Horses in Her Hair: A Granddaughter's Story, the Antilles book of the week. It tells the story, from an intimate perspective, of Edna Manley, one of Jamaica's major cultural icons--artist, art patron, wife of a premier and mother of a prime minister.From

"Beyond juju of any kind"

2008-11-30T16:05:00.000-04:00

The January 2009 issue of Tatler, the British society magazine, is not yet online, but the London Times has had a preview, and one particular article caught the eye of the paper's arts editor: a report on a visit by V.S. Naipaul to a Ugandan "witch doctor" some months ago, written by--none other than--Lady Naipaul.Born in Kenya, where she was a child during the Mau Mau troubles of the 1950s, she