The MARCH issue of BookIsh Plaza eZine is out now!
BookIsh Plaza is your online bookshop for Caribbean literature.
In this issue:
BOOKISH PLAZA eZINE nr.49 MARCH 2016
Visit BookIsh Plaza for our new arrivals!
This Saturday September the 7th BookIsh Plaza will be with Caribbean books at the cultural event Plasa Kultural celebrating 150 years of Abolition of Slavery. We’ll be having a fine selection of books related to the slavery period and imaginative writings on the heroes of that time.
Check out BookIsh Plaza
For new arrivals chek out BookIsh Plaza
The Aruban poet Jermin Bell will be making his debut tomorrow at the Biblioteca Nacional Aruba (library).
The poetry book will be soon available @ BookIsh Plaza
by Eneryvibes
BookIsh Plaza is proud to say it was a success yesterday at Arubadag. On this day Arubans honour their flag and the National Anthem. BookIsh Plaza was there promoting culture in books. People came out to meet&greet BookIsh Plaza and browse between the books we have. We sold books by Aruban authors, like poet/writer Quito Nicolaas who was there to sign his books and chat with the fans. We also had books by Caribbean authors available. People were interested in poetry, literature and especially children’s books. It was a great day. Can’t wait for next year around. Check out this photo-impression.
preparing the bookstall
poet/writer Quito Nicolaas waiting on the fans
looking out for the right book
one of the big fans with Bos pa Planta [Constructing Voices] in hand
BookIsh Plaza books
gathered around the books
Destino [Destiny}, als0 in the picture
BookIsh Plaza, the place 2B
people interested in literature
another satisfied customer, glad with Verborgen leegte [Hidden Emptiness]
nearly @ the end. Till next year!
Coming March the 25th Arubans in The Netherlands celebrate the Aruban flag and the National Anthem. This BookIsh Plaza Ezine nr 5, MARCH 2012 Arubadag edition has as theme ‘Promote your culture in books! It contains fiction, non-fiction and children’s books by Aruban authors. And much more.
BookIsh Plaza will have a bookstall at Arubadag March 25th. So Meet&Greet us there. We’ll be also selling other Caribbean writer’s books, among others from Curaçao and St. Maarten.
GREAT BAY, St. Martin (December 11, 2011)—The first semester of the 2011-2012 academic year is winding down with exams and book reports. And one student has something to say about one of the books that her class had to study this semester at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Trinidad & Tobago.
“Nativity should be implemented as a text because it illustrates the shaping of Caribbean culture and identity,” said Kelita Stewart recently.
The undergraduate student was talking about Nativity/Nativité/Natividad by Lasana M. Sekou – her experience with the book and exchanges among her classmates.
By Jacqueline Sample
“Nativity was utilized in the Course Foun1101 Caribbean Civilisation,” said Dr. John Campbell, the course lecturer at UWI’s St. Augustine campus.
The students were required to read, discuss, and write an end-term paper about the Nativity long poem by the St. Martin writer, studied a tone of the region’s premier institutions of higher learning.
The Caribbean Civilization class is taken by students majoring in disciplines ranging from political science to banking and finance. The course is offered on more than one UWI campus.
Nativity “will allow students to appreciate the evolution of the region out of colonialism which is deeply rooted,” said Stewart, an International Relations (Bsc) major.
To Campbell, himself a scholar, and other proponents of Caribbean Civilization studies such as Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, the field for study stretches from pre-Columbian influences to projecting concepts about the very futures that the peoples of the region are determined to build.
The UWI foundation (Foun1101) course may scratch the vast surface but it gives ambitious insights into an exciting area of study emerging in and about the Caribbean region – and may even include what some are calling the Caribbean Diaspora. (This is probably a new name for George Lamming’s term of the region’s “external frontiers.”)
An epic poem like Nativity maybe Sekou’s attempt at an ambitious poem.
In the nine-strophes of Nativity the poet brazenly draws relationships into and from the region, exposes critical details and references. Not even children’s games, Santo Domingo jumbie names, Chinese immigrants, Indian indentured, or “the battery flesh of Brimstone Hill labor” (page 13)are immune from his “journeying” pen strokes.
Sekou shoots out this “bare” globe-hopping data as verse, as if from the Great Salt Pond, “through barren wilds of fields & foundries” (Nativity, page 1).
“Hopefully the UWI students were exposed to interpreting aspects of the elements that Nativity chronicles, elemental to and generative of the peoples, cultures, histories, politics, geographies, and economies that are forging our Caribbean civilization,” said Sekou.
UWI describes the 3-credit course as one “designed to develop an awareness of the main process of cultural development in Caribbean societies, highlighting the factors, … that have fed the emergence of Caribbean identities. To develop a perception of the Caribbean as wider than island nations or linguistic blocs. To stimulate students’ interest in, and commitment to Caribbean civilization and to further their self-determination.”
So is Nativity, with its English, French, and Spanish versions in the one book, along with its extensive glossary, a fitting poem for such a fundamental course? Canadian researcher and author Afua Cooper seems to think so: “If I were to choose a text to teach the African Diaspora, it would be Nativity because it opens up multiple poetic portals into the vast dimension of Black people and their life story.”
“Nativity can be used in courses on poetry, literature, culture, history, anthropology, ethnography, writing, politics, mathematics, religion, romance, performance, dance, architecture, maritime studies, environmental studies, and science.”
“It can also be used as a reference to tell the intersectional global story of Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia,” wrote Cooper in her introductionto the trilingual edition of Nativity.
Professor Conrad James used Nativity in 2010, as a required text in his Latin American and Caribbean Studies class at the University of Birmingham, England.
According to James, “Nativity is a quintessentially Caribbean work. It is partly this commitment to understanding the Caribbean in regional rather than narrow national terms, which accounts for the brilliant erudition of the text” by Sekou.
Buy NATIVITY/NATIVITE/NATIVIDAD @ BOOKISH PLAZA
Rubber Orchestras is a new collection by Trinidadian–born British poet Anthony Joseph, released this month by Salt Publishing. It is also the title of Joseph’s third album with The Spasm Band, which was released earlier this year.
Taking its name from a poem by American surrealist Ted Joans, Rubber Orchestras is an energetic, sensuous and intriguing collection of poems, written over a period of four years with an (as yet) undisclosed method of composition the writer calls Liminalism. This collection was selected from 100 poems written using this method. This is the poets’ most radical work so far, in parts psychedelic, surrealist but always engaging. [. . .] The book is divided into three sections: Precious and Impossible — a selection of poems influenced in subject and style by calypso and jazz; The Colony of Light — poems concerning Caribbean history and society; and Grotesquerie, in which there are darker, more obscure poems.
Read full article @ Repeating Islands
BookIsh Plaza will have a bookstand on friday november 25th at the very first Meet & Greet Dutch Caribbean Artist In Amsterdam.
We’ll be selling books by Caribbean authors. So come by and have a look at our assortment of books.
More information on the poster. See you there.
The BookIsh Plaza Team is proud to announce that our very first BookIsh Plaza Ezine is out; the new ezine on (Caribbean) literature, poetry and non fiction books. This ezine will be coming out each month with interesting books and news on the (Caribbean) bookfront. In this issue we have news of a booklaunch coming up this week, new arrived books at BookIsh Plaza, the developments around the novel Verborgen leegte, the upcoming UniArte Expo, in depth poetry in Spiel di mi Alma and much more.
We are sure you’ll enjoy our first issue. Do let us know what you think of this new ezine, by sending us an e-mail at info@bookishplaza.com.
Next month we’ll be bringing you a special issue for the Christmas Season.
Feel free to pass the ezine on to persons who may be interested.
If you want to subscribe to our ezine, send an e-mail to info@bookishplaza.com
Check out the ezine here BookIsh Plaza Ezine nr 1 nov. 2011
The BookIsh Plaza Team
New Book: “Cadáver de bailarina”Described as “a disturbing collection of poems, ideal to read before going to the bed (or the grave),” Cadáver de bailarina y otros poemas [Body of a Dancer and other poems] (Lulu, 2011) is a new book by Rosalina Martínez González.
Description: A dancer who returns from death to complete the mise-en-scène. Centuries-old night owls meditate about their craft: blood; oriental spirits who tell of their adventures from the body of their victims, and conversations with more or less famous dead people. Cadáver de bailarina y otros poemas reflects on various phenomena surrounding the death, dark feelings and emotions contained from the perspective of the beings that take center stage. A collection of poems of improbable post-mortem experiences, ideal to read before going to bed (or the grave).
Read full article @ Repeating Islands
BookIsh Plaza just received two books by the Aruban poet Rosabelle Illes. Her latest is called Spiel di mi Alma [Mirror of my soul] (2010) in Papiamento* where she reflects on society, her own role and appeal to others to make the step for change. Her poetry are made to be performed. That is what she also does.
Last year at the book launch of Spiel di mi Alma it was a complete performance using different disciplines of the art. See an impression of the night @ eneryvibes’s blog The book is beautifully illustrated by different contemporary young artists.
* Papiamento/u is the language spoken on the islands of Aruba, Curaçao & Bonaire.
BookIsh Plaza also has her debut poetry book Beyond Insanity that is written in English. In this publication she explores the state of being insane and beyond that. What are the limits if you go there. It’s all about letting go and explore the unknown borders of the mind. The book is richly illustrated by one of the finest contemporary artists of Aruba, Nigel Matthew.
Rosabelle Illes is currently studying psychology and a minor in creative writing in The Netherlands.
Both works are available now @ Bookish Plaza
Watch the introductory text to the book entitled Spiel di mi Alma, performed by Rosabelle Illes.
BookIsh Plaza has just received the latest poetry book Voetstappen op de rots [Footsteps on the rock ed.] (2011) by Frida Domacassé. The author is a native of Aruba, who lives a long time in The Netherlands. She is inspired by nature on the island, but also themes like feelings and emotion are very real in her poems.
BookIsh Plaza has also other books by the author on display like:
a collection of short stories Fontein en andere verhalen [Fontein and other stories ed.] (2009), published in the Dutch language.
a poetry book Kurason kibrá Kurason hinté/Heel mijn gebroken hart [All my broken heart ed.] (2007), in Papiamentu and translated into Dutch.
BookIsh Plaza, the online bookshop, has some interesting poetry books by St. Maarten writers (Caribbean).
One of the well known poets in the region who is trying to bridge the cultural differences in the region is Lasana M. Sekou. His latest poetry book Nativity/Nativité/Natividad is Sekou`s 13th book, it is his first title in English with the French and Spanish translations in one volume. References range from Middle Region to Concordia; from Morant Bay uprising to Congo Square dancing in New Orleans; from ancient Mexico to ancient Ethiopia; from Hakka Chinese to Hosay in Trinidad; from maroons in Colombia and Venezuela to white indentured; from jumbie characters to children`s traditional games; from the Haitian quake to insisting on the discipline of science and technology as essential to liberation.
Other interesting books are:
Guanahani, My Love by Marion Bethel
Eva / Sión / Es by Chiqui Vicioso
Skin by Drisana D. Jack
Take a look at BookIsh Plaza for some amazing books.
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