Alexis “Lexus” Ryan, poetry workshop participant in St. Martin, guest poet at The Jamaica Poetry Festival, 2014 has been a busy year for this determined Anguillan poet. (photo courtesy IrieLife FB)
GREAT BAY, St. Martin (October 29, 2014)—“All poets and spoken word artists from Anguilla, including those studying or living abroad” are invited “to submit up to five poems” for a new poetry book to be published here by the House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP).
“Where I See The Sun – Contemporary Poetry in Anguilla” is the working name for the planned anthology. A wide range of subjects and writings styles are encouraged, said HNP president Jacqueline Sample. The submission deadline is December 22, 2014.
HNP recently issued the “Call for Poetry” online, outlining the guidelines of how Anguillan poets and aspiring poets could get their poems in the new book, at: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152495554957399&set=a. The guidelines can also be requested from houseofnehesipublish@gmail.com.
Information about the poetry book will also be available at the mid-November “Poetry Evening” hosted by the department of Library in Anguilla, said Sample. “HNP is in contact with organizers and supporters of literary activities in Anguilla and is widening the outreach to realize a unique literary volume,” said Sample.
The publisher hopes that young and old writers of poems will see the book project as an exciting proposition from a press that has published literary giants like Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados) and Amiri Baraka (USA), Harvard scholar Marion Bethel (The Bahamas), outstanding Palestinian poet Nidaa Khoury, and the late St. Martin bard Charles Borromeo Hodge.
Rita Celestine-Carty, a fine poet, literary critic, educator, reading at the Anguilla Lit Fest. (Josveek Huligar photo)
“Rita Celestine-Carty and Lexus Ryan are two of the poets with serious material from Anguilla that we’re learning about,” said Lasana M. Sekou, HNP’s projects director and editor of Where I See The Sun – Contemporary Poetry in St. Martin (2013).
“Early cultural forums organized by Ijahnya Christian; visiting author readings linked to Stephanie Stokes Oliver; the Anguilla Lit Fest over the last three years; book club activities involving Coral Reef Bookstore; and poetry readings facilitated by Josveek Huliger, are among a number of internal activities flinging the doors wide open for contemporary writers, especially poets and spoken word artists to write about their Caribbean nation, to be heard, and to become known at home and abroad,” said Sekou.
“All of the poems submitted for the anthology will go through a rigorous selection process by a confidential editorial board. I hope that the idea and challenge of the anthology will inspire poets and aspiring poets from Anguilla to take a chance at getting published in the new book,” said Sample.