Thursday, July 30, 2009

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Writing Institute for Bahamians begins after Monday opening By STAFF WRITER ~ For the Guardian: Thirty years ago a Caribbean American writer, Audre Lorde, told audiences that "poetry is not a luxury" but the words we need in order to survive and build the worlds in which we want to live. The founders of the Bahamas Writers Summer Institute, Bahamian writers Helen Klonaris and Marion Bethel, have created a writing program which believes in writing as vital to the survival and growth of Bahamian communities. BWSI opened last night, Monday, June 29 the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (NAGB). Writers Telcine Turner Rolle, Ian G. Strachan and Anku Sa Ra, celebrated with us, reading and performing their works. The five-week program, in collaboration with COB's School of English Studies, and sponsored by the Cable Bahamas Cares Foundation and the National Endowment for the Performing Arts, will bring together beginning and advanced writers to explore the craft of writing intensively, through five workshops in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting and screenwriting. Additionally, students will come together in seminars to study and discuss the particular perspectives of Caribbean critical theory and journey through the deep and wide worlds of the Caribbean literary imagination. Students will read and discuss the writings and ideas of authors in the Caribbean literary canon, including Bahamian writers Marion Bethel, Robert Johnson, Patricia Glinton Meicholas, Patrick Rahming, Ian G. Strachan, Lynn Sweeting, Marcella Taylor, and many others. BWSI is also excited to have among its teaching artists n See Bahamians on L10 and scholars award winning writer and director Maria Govan, as well as outstanding playwright, poet and scholar Nicolette Bethel, writer and scholar Angelique V. Nixon, writer and scholar Krista Walkes and renowned poet Obediah M. Smith. Twenty years ago Telcine Turner Rolle, speaking of Bahamian Old Story in the introduction to the book Once Below a Time: Bahamian Stories, warned that "the Bahamas Islands are in danger of losing a great part of their cultural heritage." She was lamenting the onslaught of packaged entertainment which had taken Old Story's place, in the form of videos and satellite TV - entertainment which no longer needed the use of memory and imagination, or the community itself by whom and to whom these stories used to be told. What was once the "cement of the society" was fast fading into the realm of the forgotten, and Bahamians would be poorer for the loss. Story takes many forms; our visual artists have known this for some time and have made use of canvas and colour and images to tell complex stories about who we are and might be. And our writers have been telling stories in poems and prose for many generations, on stage and off, and more recently in film, where a moving canvas of words and visual images join to create yet another powerful medium. Today more than ever, Bahamian artists of all genres are taking themselves seriously and gathering to make their voices heard, locally, regionally, and internationally. In the world of Bahamian literature, Telcine Turner Rolle's words are finding freshly turned soil ready to nurture and grow story out of the old as well as the new. BWSI is dedicated to the cultivation of the Writer's Voice. Particularly that voice, those voices finding themselves at the intersection of diverse cultures and communities, such as we are in the Bahamas and the Caribbean at large. BWSI is compelled by the call to honor memory and imagination and to resurrect the knowledge and spirit of Old Story in poetry, in fiction, in creative nonfiction and writing for the stage and screen, and to grow it into new forms that speak to who we are individually and collectively in these times. We are dedicated to creating vibrant community for and amongst writers, emerging and established, in which to share and exchange ideas, passions, and insights, and from which to dialogue with our brother and sister writers and artists across the region and in other parts of the world. In addition to the workshops and seminars, BWSI has coordinated a series of craft talks and literary readings at The Hub, East Bay Street, to which the public is invited to attend. Below is a calendar of events: Saturday, July 4 7-9pm @ The Hub "Witness": Nicolette Bethel, Maria Govan, Keith Russell Facilitator: Marion Bethel Monday, July 6 7-9pm @ The Hub "A Way With Words: How to get Published or Otherwise Make a Living as a Writer": A Conversation with Marion Bethel, Obediah M. Smith, Patricia Glinton Meicholas Facilitator: Nicolette Bethel Monday, July 13 7-9pm @ The Hub "To Blog or Not to Blog? The Power of Publishing on the Web": A conversation with Nicolette Bethel, Ian Fernander, Angelique Nixon, and Lynn Sweeting Facilitator: Helen Klonaris Saturday, July 18 7-9pm @ The Hub "Witness": Marion Bethel, Angelique V. Nixon, Asha Rahming Facilitator: Obediah M. Smith Monday, July 20 7-9pm @ The Hub "'I Come to get Me': Sources of Influence Beyond the Word": A Conversation with Marion Bethel, Maria Govan, Helen Klonaris, Asha Rahming, Obediah Smith, and Lynn Sweeting Facilitator: Angelique V. Nixon Saturday, July 25 7-9pm @ The Hub "Witness": Helen Klonaris, Obediah Smith, Lynn Sweeting Facilitator: Maria Govan Friday, July 31 7pm @ The NAGB BWSI Closing Night BWSI Student Reading and Performance Tuesday, June 30, 2009