A home for writers

To be a writer one has almost always needed to live in the metropolis or access publishing houses in Europe or the USA or Canada.

Where else does one publish a new novel or collection of poems if one lives in Trinidad and Tobago or any other of the Anglophone islands, or in most of the other language regions of the Antilles? In years gone by New Beacon Press, run by John La Rose, who hailed from Arima and lived in London, was a home for writers and indeed intellectuals.

The great Trinidadian filmmaker Horace Ov? chronicled La Rose’s life and activism in 2005 in a beautiful film entitled Dream to Change the World.

John La Rose was a black activist publisher, writer and founder of New Beacon Books, which published such pioneering and key works as Erna Brodber’s Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home and Wilson Harris’s influential Tradition, the Writer and Society.

His bookstore in London was a place of community for writers and activists and was the only bookstore that over the decades one could be sure to find new books or any books by Caribbean writers.

His death left a lacuna in the lives of those for whom Caribbean literature is a vital part of the process to self-representation in the region.

But, again, La Rose worked in the UK, like Jeremy Poynting, the founder and publisher of Peepal Tree Press. In fact there is a strong connection between the two.

Both recognised that in order to have a vibrant literature it is necessary to have a community of writers and artists. This idea of community and indeed conversation between those producing artistic works within the Caribbean region and its diaspora was at the heart of the discussions at the Narrating the Caribbean Nation conference in Leeds at the end of February.

As it was pointed out several times during this conference, bodies such as the Beacon group, which existed prior to independence, or little journals, like Bim and Savacou, enabled writers and painters and musicians to communicate and interact with each other across and within the Caribbean region. It also gave visibility to their works.

This older generation of writers talked to each other and indeed critiqued each other’s works through these groups and journals, so that to write about Walcott, Wilson Harris, Kamau Brathwaite, Dionne Brand or George Lamming is in fact to first of all note that their works speak to each other and influence each other. These conversations, such as one finds in Walcott’s Omeros, shaped the literature as we know it today.

Despite the growth of Caribbean economies and the fact that populations are increasingly affluent, there has been no sustained attempt to recreate such social interactions for writers in Trinidad and Tobago, other than the Bocas Lit Fest perhaps and events such as Literature Week at the University of the West Indies.

But more important there is still no outlet for publishing within our islands. Even academics must often source publishing houses abroad and contend with the market forces that govern publishing.

We have one great problem in the region in that there is no support for such enterprises. Peepal Tree functions and exists as a successful publishing entity because it is supported by funds from the British Council. I know of no such facility in the Caribbean. Peepal Tree publishes many of our own writers, for example Jennifer Rahim, James Aboud and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw and in so doing contribute to the growth of the industry.

As Poynting pointed out during the two days of readings, discussions, presentations and congratulations, there would be very little poetry published if the hard fact of actually making a profit from the sale of books of poetry were the only and primary consideration.

And yet poetry is a distillation of our experience and often, as in the work of Eric Roach, critiques the society and points us in the right direction. Poetry in fact shapes and constructs an image and an idea of who we are and who we should be.

So perhaps as we move further into the new year and now that the price of oil is increasing, we might consider investing in the literature industry as a way of promoting writers, but also as a way of giving filmmakers material for creating film scripts. We might do this by growing a home industry of publishing houses that is funded by government.

Yes. Poetry is unlikely to make us rich in material terms, but fostering the talent of writers within their own space and place would do a great deal to provide jobs and develop the self-esteem of those currently in limbo land.

As George Lamming has put it, there is s o m e - t h i n g c a l l e d the sovereignty of the ima g i - nat ion.

L o n g may it reign.