Marian Anderson “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” Samson et Dalila (by Onegin65)

"Poetry which concentrates upon energy — its generation, control and unleashing — generally leaves readers with an exhilarating sense of kinesis, as skiing or flying does, but without a firm conception of content. It lives most fully in the act of reading, and recedes during the process of critical reflection when more tangible problems of ‘meaning’ come naturally to the fore."

D.K. McKay, ‘Aspects of Energy in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath’, 1974, The Critical Quarterly, 16, no. 1.

Amy Winehouse - Back To Black (by AmyWinehouseVEVO)

"… Then the birds
began arriving, and the message was not one
of sympathy, no more than sky is blue
with trying, effortful, to hear with what
we gasp and deafen ourselves: sublime.
Black, black, the vultures seemed to stem like ink
from the nibbed, judgmental mountains. They looked
as proud as raptors, fearless, let me watch
(looking me in the eye) their cooperation."

From ‘Anaconda’ by Vahni Capildeo, Undraining Sea.

Wasafiri special issue

I am honored to have been entrusted with the cover for a special issue  of the international contemporary writing magazine Wasafiri, which is entitled ‘Brighter Suns: Sixty Years of Literature from Trinidad’. Special thank you to Malachi Macintosh and Stephanie Decouvelaere, editors of the special issue. Thanks as well to the entire Wasafiri editorial/layout team, including editorial manager Teresa Palmiero and editor Susheila Nasta for this opportunity. Very special thank you to Vahni Capildeo and Courtenay Williams.

With the cover, I hoped to invoke the deadly but beautiful multi-culturalism within Selvon’s famous novel and also to suggest common themes that bind modern day Trinidad and Tobago; its writing and art.

Am also pleased to say ‘Disappearing Houses’ - a collaboration with the poet Vahni Capildeo - is included in this special issue. ‘Disappearing Houses’ is a photometry collaboration dating back to 2011 in which I create images in response to poems from Vahni or vice versa (hence photometry). My images focus on decaying houses in Port of Spain, Vahni channels common themes we have both telegraphed in correspondence and otherwise, such as the state of being in flux.

This special issue contains writing by Earl Lovelace, Monique Roffey, Lawrence Scott, Amanda Smyth, Sharon Millar, as well as poetry from James Christopher Aboud, Abinta Clarke, Anu Lakhan and Roger Robinson, and more.

Here’s a peek inside at ‘Disappearing Houses’:

Pick up copies of Wasafiri at Paper Based Bookshop or find out more online.

Port of Spain, Trinidad.