Editorial
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Well, this month we launch our third edition of tongues of the ocean and thereby complete the first annual cycle of the journal. We’ve made some strides in the meantime!
The first of these is that Nadine and I are pleased to welcome Sonia Farmer, a contributor of poetry and an editor in her own right, as our new Prose Editor. She will be accepting submissions of fiction and creative non-fiction. For this edition, she’s given us six works of prose, two of which we’re putting at the very front of the issue!
We have also managed to establish enough of a presence in the region to begin to get some enquiries about possible submissions, and to get some poems from more of our established Caribbean poets. We’re particularly pleased to be able to feature a poem in this issue by one of our Bahamian rising stars, Christian Campbell.
And I’m pleased to say that our continued emphasis on and call for spoken word pieces resulted in the submission of a very interesting set of dramatic pieces from Philip Nanton in Barbados. These are his words:
“I read ‘your recent-ish interview with Nicholas Laughlin in Antilles and followed the link to your on-line poetry journal ‘tongues of the ocean’ which lives up to its billing. But I’m responding specifically to your June ’09 blog/letter ‘waves and murmurs’ where you explored some differences and possibilities of interaction between spoken and written word poetry. Your writing on this interested and excited me because in May ’08 I released a spoken word CD ‘Island Voices from St Christopher & the Barracudas’ which I wrote and produced using actors, sound effects etc all done in Barbados where I live.
My CD in its own way tries to achieve the sort of spoken word/written word interaction that I understood you to be writing about. Essentially it’s a take on island life in a mythical island state in the Caribbean. It takes the form of dramatic monologues, dialogues offered by a range of island characters encouraged to promote their island. The ‘voices’ include a coconut water vendor, gardener, taxi driver, radio DJ, bar owner, lawyer, wives of wealthy Caribbean men etc . There are 16 tracks. They are introduced by St.Christopher’s Chief of Police (Retired) Emanuel ‘Fish-head’ De Freitas.”
We’re very proud to be able to feature two of the tracks from that CD in this issue of tongues!
And last but not least, this issue coincides with the first annual Sea Grape Literary Festival, otherwise known as the Bahamas International Literary Festival, with which tongues of the ocean is affiliated. That’s the reason for the seagrapes on our cover, by the way – they’re in honour of the Festival, which premieres this November in Nassau, and they come to us courtesy of Eric Rose.
Nicolette Bethel
October 2009
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tongues of the ocean 