town

Issue 4, June 2010

2010-06-11T18:51:00.003-04:00

The fourth issue of Town offers meditations on beginnings and ends, pasts and futures, homes and aways, by four poets and one artist.

Follow the links below to read the contents of Town 4 online, and to download PDFs of this issue’s six broadsides.

Contents

4:1....De Santos (2000), by Holly Bynoe

4:2....Pedigree (2010), by Holly Bynoe

4:3....Requiem for Aunt May, by Ishion Hutchinson

4:4....Carp Fishpond Fable, by Agnes Lehoczky

4:5....Preface, by Valzhyna Mort

4:6....Cherry-Blossom Time, by John Whale

Notes on contributors

2010-06-11T17:55:00.004-04:00

De Santos (2010), by Holly Bynoe

Published in Town issue 4, June 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2010-06-11T17:51:00.004-04:00

Pedigree (2009), by Holly Bynoe

Published in Town issue 4, June 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Requiem for Aunt May

2010-06-11T17:50:00.001-04:00

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A calm sign in the trees of May: she’s dead,
not like this dirge staining the air, her name
recited in the camphor-house where the chalk
figurine, that haberdashery sphinx, reclines,
riddled by the TV. There no one faces the calendar,
river-stone talks go under the bridge of condolences,
and land on the old sofa’s shoulder. I, her water-child,
keep watch over her laminated Saviour, nailed
into the wall, flipping a coin whose head promises
Daedalus. Someone pries open an album, the cocoon
postcards wail on the line, pronouncing, Aunt May –

baker, builder of the yellow stone house, your children
hatched wings while your face was bent in the oven.
The mixing bowls, the wooden spoons, the plastic
bride & groom, knew before the phone alarmed
the night your passing. So you passed, in a floral dress,
a shawl softly tied to your head, the house spring-cleaned.

— Ishion Hutchinson

Published in Town issue 4, June 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Carp Fishpond Fable

2010-06-11T17:49:00.003-04:00

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You insist you must drag me down to the bottom of the pond of the Kyoto garden. You insist we dive. If only I could see that indifferent display of oversize carp under a motionless gloss, as if they too knew that it was, solely, they that rendered this empty pond momentous reflecting motionless looks, capsized, yours and mine. These carp alter their colours according to what the season is. This afternoon, you say, I could see yellow, auburn, orange and beige, striped. It is, in truth, an eventful pond. Incised by the cormorants’ perfect line. A dozen of them. Worshipping the late autumn sun. As if each were hiring a pole like wordless passers-by who rest briefly on stripy deck chairs for a coin while I stand and watch, as if, you say, my fate were that of the deck chair attendant’s . . . Yet you hesitate to mention the pigeon tree at length. That stands so fecund in the middle of the garden shrouded with curvaceous pigeons like apples or pomegranates as if it were the tree of life itself. A life that lasts as long as this sentence withstands.

— Agnes Lehoczky

Published in Town issue 4, June 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Preface

2010-06-11T17:48:00.002-04:00

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on a bare tree — a red beast,
so still it has become the tree.
now it’s the tree that prowls over the beast,
a cautious beast itself.

a stone thrown at its breast is
so fast — the stone has become the beast.
now it’s the beast that throws itself like a stone.
blood like a dog-rose tree on a windy day,
and the moon is trying on your face
for the annual masquerade of the dead.

death decides to wait to hear more.
so death mews:
first — your story, then — me.

— Valzhyna Mort

Published in Town issue 4, June 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Cherry-Blossom Time

2010-06-11T17:46:00.001-04:00

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Sounds travel further now.
Your laughter hovers
over the orchard grass,
crisp and luminous.
It is flower-watching time.
In one another’s arms,
the trees of the poets
open their tight parcels
of petal poems,
their branches spread
against the new space,
in a rich brocade of
red, green, and purple.
This is a parasol
planted by the shogun
and by our poets,
for all lovers to come
in their own time,
their shining springtime.
We could be in the snow
or stuck in the clouds.
There’s nowhere else to go
and no sense of home.
From booths and tea-stalls
the young carry blushes
and the memory
of their kissings
like blossoms.
On one elegant limb
a lover or an old man
(impossible now to tell
in such thin light)
has tied what looks like
a charm, or toy, or hairpin
which catches in the breeze
and makes the music,
the late evening music,
of autumn insects,
the mushi-kiki, mushi-kiki.

— John Whale

Published in Town issue 4, June 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Notes on contributors to issue 4

2010-06-11T17:36:00.004-04:00

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Holly Bynoe is a Vincentian visual artist and writer, based in New York City. She is a recent graduate of Bard College|International Centre of Photography, where she earned her MFA in advanced photographic studies. Her work has been shown in the Caribbean and internationally, her latest as a part of the New York Camera Club Conversations series. The works included in this issue of Town are from her Compounds series.

Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. His work has appeared in LA Review, Poetry International, The Caribbean Review of Books, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. Peepal Tree Press published his first book of poetry, Far District, in early 2010. He currently holds a Vice-Presidential Scholarship to the University of Utah. He was writer in residence at Alice Yard in January 2010.

Agnes Lehoczky is a Hungarian-born poet and translator who is currently studying for a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has two short poetry collections, Station X (2000) and Medallion (2002), both published by Universitas in Budapest, Hungary, both written in Hungarian. Her first English collection, Budapest to Babel, was published by Egg Box Publishing in 2008. She is the recepient of this year’s Arthur Welton Award and is currently working on her next collection of poems in English.

Valzhyna Mort, born in Minsk, Belarus, made her American debut in 2008 with the poetry collection Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press). She is a 2010–2011 recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. She was writer in residence at Alice Yard in January 2010.

John Whale was born in Liverpool in 1956. He is co-editor of Stand magazine. His first full-length collection, Waterloo Teeth, will be published later this year by Carcanet.

Issue 3, February 2010

2010-02-26T16:22:00.004-04:00

The third issue of Town engages with the Paramaribo SPAN project, a survey of contemporary art and visual culture in Suriname.

Perched on the shoulder of the South American continent, Suriname is in the zone of intersection between the Caribbean, the Atlantic, and Latin America. It is home to the descendants of indigenous Amerindians, Dutch and English colonisers, enslaved Africans and free Maroons, indentured Indians and Javanese, and immigrants from China, Portugal, and the Middle East. The cultural collisions and collusions of all these peoples have been often fruitful, sometimes anxious, and occasionally violent.

Co-curated by Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier and Dutch curator Thomas Meijer zu Schlochtern, Paramaribo SPAN is conceived as a bridge: between histories, social groups, countries, cultures; between realities and aspirations.

This issue of Town is also a sort of bridge, or the fragments of a possible bridge of imagination and understanding. It connects poems by a writer from Guyana, Suriname’s neighbour to the west; images by a Dutch artist of Surinamese ancestry, which reflect on the ironies of colonial history; a self-portrait by a young Surinamese artist, a work of both self-representation and self-assertion; and a deliberately mysterious photograph of the monument memorialising one of the most tragic events in Suriname’s recent history. The three Afaka characters atop the Moiwana Monument spell out “Kibii Wi”: Sranan for “Protect Us”: a hope, a wish, a lamentation, a charm, a song.

The broadsides for this issue will be posted first in Paramaribo, later in Port of Spain — making another bridge, this time between two cities.

Follow the links below to read the contents of Town 3 online, and to download PDFs of this issue’s six broadsides.

Contents

3:1....Call Me the Need for Rain, by Mahadai Das

3:2....Lucky, by Mahadai Das

3:3....The Dream of a Thousand Shipwrecks #33 of 144 (2009), by Patricia Kaersenhout

3:4....The Dream of a Thousand Shipwrecks #40 of 144 (2009), by Patricia Kaersenhout

3:5....Self-Portrait (2009), by Dhiradj Ramsamoedj

3:6....Kibii Wi (“Protect Us”), based on a photograph by Christopher Cozier of the Moiwana Monument, designed by Marcel Pinas

Notes on contributors

Call Me the Need for Rain

2010-02-26T16:20:00.002-04:00

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Call me the need for rain.
For I am in want of a shower of truth.
I am starved for bread and the milk is too dear.
Call me the need for rain.

Call me the want of sunlight.
For I am hungry for a star but the swine eat husks.
This leprous air.
I am starved for flowers and stars.

Call me the need for rivers in my eyes.
For the pain is so deep tears will not come.
And the want of love is upon me.
Call me the need for eyes.

Call me the need for hills in my heart.
For the land is so flat it is flooding.
And the pestilence is sharpening its teeth.
Call me the need for hills.

Call me the need for storm!
A slant force of angry waters.
Baring my breasts, laying naked my soul.
Call me the need for storm!

— Mahadai Das

Published in Town issue 3, February 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Lucky

2010-02-26T16:19:00.001-04:00

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Down at the bottom of the river, the fishes
swirl around his ears. Lucky hunts for gold.
Away from the teeming world of city streets
and crying wives, he meditates on God and his world.

The white man from England tugs twice
on the water-hole of his mask. Simultaneously,
God tugs Lucky. An electric eel, smoothly, snakelike
touches him.

A current moves like lightning
from the back of the eel’s head to his ankle.
“Ouch!” is torn from my father’s lips. He
swims frantically up towards shore.

— Mahadai Das

Published in Town issue 3, February 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2010-02-26T16:18:00.003-04:00

The Dream of a Thousand Shipwrecks #33 of 144 (2009), by Patricia Kaersenhout

Published in Town issue 3, February 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2010-02-26T16:16:00.003-04:00

The Dream of a Thousand Shipwrecks #40 of 144 (2009), by Patricia Kaersenhout

Published in Town issue 3, February 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2010-02-26T16:13:00.002-04:00

Self-Portrait (2009), by Dhiradj Ramsamoedj

Published in Town issue 3, February 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2010-02-26T16:10:00.001-04:00

Kibii Wi (“Protect Us”), based on a photograph by Christopher Cozier of the Moiwana Monument, designed by Marcel Pinas

Published in Town issue 3, February 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Notes on contributors to issue 3

2010-02-26T16:09:00.002-04:00

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Mahadai Das (1954–2003) was a Guyanese poet, actor, dancer, and teacher. During her lifetime she published three collections of poems: I Want to be a Poetess of My People (1977), My Finer Steel Will Grow (1982), and Bones (1988). In March 2010, Peepal Tree Press will publish her collected poems, A Leaf in His Ear, including many previously uncollected pieces and unpublished work.

Patricia Kaersenhout is a Dutch artist with Surinamese roots, based in Amsterdam. She recently participated in the Wakaman Project, a series of exchanges between Surinamese artists working at home and abroad. Her book Invisible Men, reproducing a series of works on paper, was published in 2009. The two works reproduced in this issue of Town are from a new series in progress.

Dhiradj Ramsamoedj, born in 1986, is a Surinamese artist, and one of the participants in Paramaribo SPAN, with his Adjie Gilas project. He is a graduate of the Nola Hatterman Institute and has shown his work in several group exhibitions.

Marcel Pinas is a Surinamese artist based in Moengo. He was born in 1971 in the Ndjuka village of Pelgrimkondre, and studied at the Nola Hatterman Institute in Paramaribo and the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica. He has shown his work widely both in the Caribbean and internationally, and has established a cultural and contemporary art centre in Moengo. He designed the Moiwana Monument memorialising the massacre of the inhabitants of the Maroon village of Moiwana in 1986, during Suriname’s civil war. The photograph of the monument in this issue of Town was taken by Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier, who is the co-curator of Paramaribo SPAN.

Issue 2, January 2010

2010-01-06T12:05:00.004-04:00

The second issue of Town might be read as an oblique (and rather belated) response to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Port of Spain last November. Or else simply as a collection of poems and images by five writers and one artist based in or connected to a number of countries around the world that happen to belong to the postcolonial entity called the Commonwealth: Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, Gibraltar, Guyana, India, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom.

Follow the links below to read the contents of Town 2 online, and to download PDFs of this issue’s eight broadsides.

Contents

2:1....Easter Monday: The North Side, by Nicolette Bethel

2:2, 2:3, 2:4....And Evil Eyes Can’t Even See Their Own Hell, Holes 2, and Holes (all 2008), by Sandra Brewster

2:5....Contemporary Poetry in the UK: An Introduction, Part 1, by Ken Edwards

2:6....Commonwealth of Bees, by Alex Houen

2:7....Lightning in the Fall, by Ian McDonald

2:8....Sickness Brings Not Understanding, by Vivek Narayanan

Notes on contributors

Easter Monday: The North Side

2009-11-16T20:34:00.005-04:00

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This Atlantic: bluer than sacrament, brighter than pain,
supplier of buoy-pots, candlewax, quilt-scraps, wrecks,
ballastbricks for chimneystoves, old tyres for shoes,
string and winecasks and even, maybe, bones —
the things ships cast off when passing by
or sinking down.

The resurrection side.

A blue hole swallows the unwary, offers up
its perfect mystery. A thousand feet from shore
a shelf dives undersea a thousand fathoms deep.
The North Side ridge looks down. The water’s stripes
bleed turquoise, blue, and indigo.

You stare into the risen sun until you know.

— Nicolette Bethel

Published in Town issue 2, January 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2009-11-16T20:33:00.005-04:00

And Evil Eyes Can’t Even See Their Own Hell (2008), by Sandra Brewster

Published in Town issue 2, January 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Contemporary Poetry in the UK: An Introduction, Part 1

2009-11-16T20:31:00.004-04:00

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Hi, my names Sean Dumbell and im 15 from Liverpool, i just felt like sharing my work as it is how i channel my feelings, i think that by sharing my feelings i will prevent an build up of emotions inside me, thanks

Hello, I am Chinese Contract Hire female human expert, Ling Valentine.
I am unique in the UK!
I bring you best UK car takeaway poetry menu!

You need a cat, or music.
Beauty is very brief.
Food is like that, too.
The dumpling is a forever food for me.

I got some sort of blue stuff inside.
I am no longer human.
I sleep in the air, setting a course at night
across the offshore wind, agoraphobic
frumps need not apply.

A man from Surbiton in the Compton Stand fumbles past a damp copy of The Daily Telegraph and retrieves his third scotch egg of the day.

— Ken Edwards

Published in Town issue 2, January 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2009-11-16T20:30:00.004-04:00

Holes 2 (2008), by Sandra Brewster

Published in Town issue 2, January 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Commonwealth of Bees

2009-11-16T20:29:00.006-04:00

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These days now anyone know where they from

..banking up power lines making home
out of outdoor hammocks & boxes of spells
..backing up traffic “set off” by lightbulbs & smells
of cologne or any time she fries some eggs
..they hurt bad bad ah up on meh neck

These days now anyone know where they from

..holding her hostage in her own home
whipping barred fur up for “clienteles”
..the sight of dead dogs dotting the capital
with their tiny jaws with their tiny legs
..like lies like honey for an ex’s hex

These days now anyone know where they from

..bit by jaw combing a home
greeting meh housebound husband delusional
..he don’t know anyone never can tell
where they from as they wave wings & flex
..flex him so jumpy he thinks he sex

These days now anyone know where they from

..maybe “Africanised” the way they home
home in on the head of queeny as coral
..coral bleaching & running weal & larval
truck with trading even moons to wax
..for the money is all on the honey of facts

These days now anyone know where they from

— Alex Houen

Published in Town issue 2, January 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Lightning in the Fall

2009-11-16T20:27:00.010-04:00

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From morning light I stayed out in the fall air
never wanting to come in, to miss anything,
how the sun shone, how the clouds travelled across the land
the cold land and the golden trees
once were green pastures of quiet.
I walked abroad as far as I could
I was surprised at the calmness of people
in this sepulchre of bright days
this burial ground of lions.
Everything was ordinary, only a murmur on the wind
and two strangers, bent old women, walking
slowly raised thin hands in triumphant style.
All the day long history had cleared its throat
preparing at last to cough out long-collected phlegm.
I stayed outside to wander in the night
to see what beauty might still be hidden
after the day had gathered in its toll of deaths
and marvelling, marvelling at the stars
and, suddenly, a leap of lightning in the sky.

— Ian McDonald

Published in Town issue 2, January 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2009-11-16T20:26:00.004-04:00

Holes (2008), by Sandra Brewster

Published in Town issue 2, January 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Sickness Brings Not Understanding

2009-11-16T20:24:00.006-04:00

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Memory (submerged in the world’s
will) irrigates another’s land.

The street below is mine
if I still want it.

Each habitat must produce
its own sonic disturbance.

— Vivek Narayanan

Published in Town issue 2, January 2010. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Notes on contributors to issue 2

2009-11-16T18:38:00.007-04:00

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Nicolette Bethel is a Bahamian playwright, poet, and anthropologist who served as director of culture for the Bahamas government for five years. Her work has been published in a variety of print and online publications, including Calabash, The Caribbean Writer, Trespass, qarrtsiluni, Anti-, and The Caribbean Review of Books. She is the editor of the literary journal tongues of the ocean.

Sandra Brewster is a multimedia artist whose work explores issues concerning identity and representation. Referencing old photographs, and using storytelling and portraiture as sources of inspiration, she draws, paints, and pieces together her visual narratives. Based in Toronto, of Guyanese parentage, she holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from York University. Her images in this issue of Town are from a 2008 series called Strip, inspired by a poem by spoken-word artist Joseph Daly.

Ken Edwards’s books include the poetry collections Good Science (1992), eight + six (2003), No Public Language: Selected Poems 1975-1995 (2006), Bird Migration in the 21st Century (2006), Songbook (2009), the novel Futures (1998), and the prose work Nostalgia for Unknown Cities (2007). He has been editor and publisher of the small press Reality Street since 1993. He was born and grew up in Gibraltar; after thirty-five years in London, he now lives in Hastings, on the south coast of England, where he plays bass guitar with the band The Moors.

Alex Houen is co-editor of the online poetry magazine Blackbox Manifold. He has published poems in a number of magazines, including PN Review, Stride, origami condom, Great Works, Shadowtrain, and Snorkel. Born in Australia, he now lives in Britain.

Ian McDonald was born in Trinidad and has spent most of his life in Guyana. His novel The Humming-Bird Tree was published in 1969 and made into a film by the BBC in 1992. He has published several collections of poems: Mercy Ward (1988), Essequibo (1992), Jaffo the Calypsonian (1994), Between Silence and Silence (2003), and Selected Poems (2008). He has been the editor of the literary journal Kyk-Over-Al since 1984.

Vivek Narayanan is consulting editor for the online journal Almost Island and an associate editor for the Boston-based poetry annual Fulcrum. He normally works in Delhi at Sarai-CSDS, but is currently on sabbatical in Chennai. He has published a book of poems, Universal Beach (2006), and his poetry has appeared in anthologies such as 60 Indian Poets (2007), The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008), and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (2008).

Issue 1, October 2009

2009-10-02T21:09:00.007-04:00

The first issue of Town starts at home, with contributions from four Trinidadian writers (two of them based abroad) and a Trinidadian artist. It features poems by the magazine’s three editors — putting our own writing on the line, or at least on the wall — as well as a piece of short fiction and three haunting images. Follow the links below to read the contents of Town 1 online, and to download PDFs of this issue’s seven broadsides.

Contents

1:1....A World, by Vahni Capildeo

1:2....A Fable about a Transformation, by Kelvin Christopher James

1:3....How to Say This, by Anu Lakhan

1:4....A Place to Start, by Nicholas Laughlin

1:5, 1:6, 1:7....Images from The Dimming series, by Nikolai Noel

Notes on contributors

A World

2009-10-02T16:22:00.020-04:00

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In which the hands of people changed to things like flowers
for which new, uneasy forms of consideration
by which that iron-suited man, foolish and careful,
negotiates crowds, his two wrists bearing red hibiscus
necessarily bruised, a little raised, a little forwards,
a rivelled fountain their corollas accompanying him.
How approach the cockroach-gripped revoker of contracts?
How approach him whose sand crab hands try running askew?
How approach him? or how near the one mobbed by seagulls,
helpless to pull a glove on leaking packets of corn?
Ah whose iced hands disappear, condense, remade droplets . . .
instant, lasting blister-silk, should he once touch a heart:

— Vahni Capildeo

Published in Town issue 1, October 2009. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2009-10-02T12:05:00.001-04:00

From The Dimming series, by Nikolai Noel.

Published in Town issue 1, October 2009. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

A Fable about a Transformation

2009-10-02T12:04:00.001-04:00

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A practice of his every visit was using, without sanction, the electrical outlets of Best-Buddies’ homes for recharging his portable communicative gadgets — of which he sported every latest example.

An opportunistic personality, Tom-ii regularly attended Celebrity parties and spoke eloquently about current trivia like national politics, or exotic diets that created superior fingernails, or the daily potable water requirements in tropic climes.

Then one evening, upon self-examination, his soul was forced to cringe and tremble at a disgusting hobgoblin of under-achievement found cowering there.

Inspired by current Carbon Footprint notions, Tom-ii turned his acumen towards establishing the concept of one’s “Psychic Footprint” with the practice of “Generosity” as its driving philosophy. He suggested “Forgiveness” to be a significant factor.

As consequence, he is now so much “in demand” that Tom-ii has come to burying his “contact devices” under bedclothes, then retreating to a cavernous walk-in clothes-closet and lying there on the lush Peace & Quiet carpet to collect some.

Tom-ii keeps his other ambitions busy by constructing a fantasy that appearance fees have made suddenly affordable: this is a solar-powered eco-house on a small Caribbean island with “only appropriate” flora and fauna — leafy trees with delicious fruits aplenty, colourful birds, and playful butterflies. No mosquitoes, gnats, or sandflies. Maybe a few moths and a small bat or two.

Moral: Enlightenment may also reveal the Mundane.

— Kelvin Christopher James

Published in Town issue 1, October 2009. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2009-10-02T12:03:00.001-04:00

From The Dimming series, by Nikolai Noel.

Published in Town issue 1, October 2009. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

How to Say This

2009-10-02T12:02:00.001-04:00

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How to say this:
I am broken nerves and sandy laugh,
I am gravel underfoot and hot,
I am accidentally fatal and
very far from the sky
I am lightning glass and fragile
I am silk spoken and softening
I am unintentionally sober and
looking past the lens
I am undreamed of hoping
I am witness for the defence
I hope to confuse the audience
I hope there are stars tonight
I have tamed the feral hours and
drowned the evidence.

— Anu Lakhan

Published in Town issue 1, October 2009. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

2009-10-02T12:01:00.001-04:00

From The Dimming series, by Nikolai Noel.

Published in Town issue 1, October 2009. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

A Place to Start

2009-10-02T12:00:00.001-04:00

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If this were a Chinese poem.

Imaginary spiders drinking real tea.
Imaginary parrots drinking real milk.

A poem preferring maps to photographs.

This is not a diary, acrobat.
Stop looking for your name.

Someone thought this poem was a good idea.
Someone thought you were a good idea.

— Nicholas Laughlin

Published in Town issue 1, October 2009. Download the PDF broadside here.

See notes on contributors to this issue here.

Notes on contributors to issue 1

2009-10-02T09:51:00.000-04:00

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Vahni Capildeo was born in Trinidad and has lived in Britain since 1991. She works in both poetry and prose. Her latest book of poems is Undraining Sea (2009). Recently teaching fellow in creative writing at the University of Leeds, she is developing a new MA at the University of Sheffield. She is a contributing editor for The Caribbean Review of Books, on the international advisory board of the Journal of Indo-Caribbean Studies, and freelances for the Oxford English Dictionary.

Kelvin Christopher James is the author of three novels, Secrets (1993), A Fling with a Demon Lover (1996), and The Sorcerer’s Drum (2009), as well as a short story collection, Jumping Ship (1992). He has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in literature. Born in Trinidad, he lives in New York.

Anu Lakhan is a writer of fiction, poems, and essays about books and food. She lives in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Her fiction and poems have been published in magazines and journals such as BOMB, Calabash, and The Caribbean Review of Books. Her illustrated survey of Trinidad street food will be published in late 2009.

Nicholas Laughlin is the editor of The Caribbean Review of Books. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Poetry Review (UK), Poetry Wales, The Warwick Review, and tongues of the ocean, and he writes frequently on Caribbean literature and art. He is working on a book about Guyana, part travel narrative, part cultural history. He was born and has always lived in Trinidad.

Nikolai Noel was born in 1976 in Belmont, Trinidad, and studied at the John Donaldson Technical Institute and the University of the West Indies. He began exhibiting his work in 2000. He participated in the Galvanize programme (2006) and has worked collaboratively on several projects with other emerging contemporary artists. He continues to live and work in Trinidad.

Coming to Town....

2009-08-16T12:11:00.002-04:00

The Town project is currently at the concept stage. The magazine will be launched shortly, and our first issue will appear in the next few weeks. If you’ve stumbled on this page, feel free to bookmark it and check back ’round the end of August--or drop us a note with comments and suggestions at writetotown[at]gmail[dot]com.

About Town

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Before there were magazines, there were broadsides: sheets of paper printed on one side with verse, essays, news articles, song lyrics, items of gossip, or pictures, and posted on public walls to be read by an audience of passersby. So neither our medium nor our method is particularly original.

Town is a literary magazine appearing in both print and pixels at irregular intervals — every six weeks or so — based in Port of Spain, Trinidad. We publish poems, very short prose, and artists’ images in broadside editions of a few dozen. These are simple 8½-by-11-inch sheets, produced using an ordinary desktop printer and a photocopier.

Every issue of Town contains four or five pieces or images, and each of these is printed on a separate sheet. Most of these are posted in and around Port of Spain on walls, fences, lampposts, notice-boards, and the like. A few get slipped under doors, into postboxes, or into books in bookshops.

The printed sheets include the address of the Town website. Here you will find the full contents of each issue, biographies of the writers and artists, and a link to a PDF version of each broadside. We encourage you to download these, print them out at home, and become an associate publisher of Town by posting your own printed sheet anywhere you like — at home, at your office or school, on your own wall, fence, or lamppost. Or slip it under someone’s door.

Town is a modest independent project supported by volunteers. Our minimal costs come out of the editors’ pockets. We are one of several creative initiatives associated with Alice Yard, and the broadsides are printed with the help of Sean Leonard.

What does the name mean?
Whatever you want it to.

Where can I find your printed broadsides?
At random and changing locations in and around Port of Spain, but especially in the vicinity of Alice Yard (80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook); our two favourite bookshops in the city, Paper Based (Hotel Normandie, St. Ann’s) and The Reader’s Bookshop (cor. Middle Street and Patna Street, St. James); and the National Library (cor. Hart Street and Abercromby Street, downtown).

Masthead

Editors: Nicholas Laughlin, Vahni Capildeo, Anu Lakhan
Contact: writetotown[at]gmail[dot]com

Participate in Town

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Become an associate publisher

You can help us publish Town by posting printed broadsides in your own neighbourhood. The full contents of the magazine appear on this website. Each item is accompanied by a link to a PDF of the broadside. We encourage you to download these, print them out, make as many copies as you like, and post them in your house or office or school, on walls, fences, and other public locations, and leave them in library books, on trains, in coffeeshops, etc. Even better, take a photo of your printed broadside wherever you’ve posted it, and share it with us at writetotown[at]gmail[dot]com.

Submit your work

Town is happy to consider submissions of short poems and very short prose. Please email them (maximum five items per submission, and only one submission at a time) to writetotown[at]gmail[dot]com, accompanied by a brief biographical note. We prefer that you paste your pieces into the body of your email and also attach them. We'll try to respond within four or five weeks.

Remember that every piece we publish must fit comfortably on an 8½-by-11-inch sheet, so length is very important. We can only consider poems of up to 24 lines, and prose of up to about 300 words.