Bookish Radio Interview

On this week’s episode of Bookish Radio, Charlotte Henay shares her profound work with us, talks ritual, mentors, some of her early influences, and holding each other up as BIPOC in community.

A Botanical of Grief

Problematizing our ties to the land and the neat boxes that traditionalists might wish to shove the vast world of poetry into, are the unapologetic works of Yasmin Glinton and Charlotte Henay.

“A Botanical of Grief” (2018), displayed in subtle silver script bearing powerful words of great weight, exists between – like so many of us in the Caribbean. The work is between voices: of the authors, of their ancestors, of poet and of artist, but it also exists in a liminal space physically as it spans the high walls of the stairwell of the 1860’s-old bones that make up the Villa Doyle. Stairs are between places, and so are we as children of the Caribbean. We are between Africa and Europe, between India and China, we come from Arawaks, Tainos and Caribs with difficult access to those mother tongues – and most importantly, we are an amalgam of any and all combinations of these continents.

ROOM Magazine: We Got Next: Emerging Black Writers You Should Be Paying Attention To

At Room, we don’t just look to the past but we also look to the future and it’s looking very bright. Here are some of our favourite black emerging writers who you should be paying attention to. 

The power of imprisonment through Language

As 2017 passed into memory this last week, it seems important to think about how we see ourselves in the future. Spirituality could play a large part in this vision, or we could simply choose to continue along what seems to be a road paved with consumerist joy.

The paradise myth is part and parcel of that consumerism: where beaches and bodies of paradise that we need to survive can be bought, sold, bartered, negotiated away and given to other sovereign states for their own devices. The opening of “Medium: Practices and Routes of Spirituality and Mysticism” at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) on December 14, 2017 presented a moment for reflection, but also for a new focus. When we can celebrate Bahamian ‘masters’ Tony McKay aka “Exuma” or “The Obeah Man,” Amos Ferguson, Wellington Bridgewater and Netica “Nettie” Symonette, along with a boat-load — used intentionally — of other artists, we are saying that perhaps we are changing the way we see ourselves.

Read the full article here.

Sitting With The Dead

Tie a black piece of cotton around the child’s wrist.
Don’t walk outside at night without covering the child’s head.
Be careful how you come into the house at night.
Wipe your feet off well.
Cover the mirrors with cloth. 
Open the house if the coffin comes by, let the spirit travel through.
Rosemary helps keep away bad-minded things.

The Blank Canvas: January 11th – Charlotte Henay and Angelique V. NixonJanuary 11, 2017

Taking over from our regular host, Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett will be filling on the “Blank Canvas” to interview Charlotte Henay (left) and Dr. Angelique V. Nixon (right), who both have work in the current National Exhibition (N8), which this year includes not only visual artists but also writers and poets.