If you go to any bookstore, independent or chain, it will seem as if you are inundated with magazine choices. But often the best magazines cannot be found on those shelves. Caribbean Interview is an important magazine that needs to read, looked at and enjoyed with its mix of visual and literary arts infused with politics and spirit that reaches from the Caribbean throughout the world. A stunning format features extended interviews with the writer or visual artist followed by a sampling of their work. It is an adventure, exploration, and poultice for the heart. Opal Palmer Adisa, who imagined this magazine and then set out to create it took some time to answer a few questions about this extraordinary publication.
“While I value the role of the critic, I think writers and artists can offer the greatest insight about their own work.”
Caribbean Interview is wonderful. What possessed you to take on this ambitious project? What are you hoping to accomplish with this adventure?
Call it madness or like most things in life, my deep desire that says I can and I will. I love journals and magazines, and have edited a few, but wanted one that spoke to the issues and place that I love most dearly. I love literature and art and I love the Caribbean. I wanted to create a coffee-table journal that combined all my loves, but most importantly I wanted to create a forum where writers and artists are talking about their own work and production. While I value the role of the critic, I think writers and artists can offer the greatest insight about their own work. My goal is to just showcase, throughout the Caribbean and its Diaspora, the creative producers of this region in dialogue with me and themselves. By doing two issues, I think I have already accomplished my goal — that my dreams and desires matter and that I can and must create a platform for others to share their work with the world.
What do see as the value of interviews with artists who tend to use their own art form as their primary way to express themselves?
“I want readers of the journal to feel as if they are in dialogue with the artists”
“Chopped Hands” Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming: “Chopped Hands” grew out of my struggle to understand the violence that permeates my Caribbean”
I love speaking to artists about their work and life. I remember sitting in the studio of artists like Leroy Clark, or hanging in the studio while painters painted, one summer in Paris with Raymond Saunders or watching Gene Pearson making these amazing ceramic sculptures, or in Haiti, sitting outside watching men chisel life from a piece of discarded wood, and then asking them questions such as, if they knew what they were making when they began or did the clay or wood or canvas speak to them. As a writer, it has been invaluable when asked a question about my work. It forces me to really reflect on what I have done, and whether or not my initial intent was met, or did I veer off and end up somewhere else, quite surprising, but wonderful nonetheless. When writers and artist send me their work, I read it from my perspective, obviously –It speaks to me and as a result I frame question about the work. I want readers of the journal to feel as if they are in dialogue with the artists, to have the work as one unit, but also to hear the artist speak about the work as another unit, which to me enlarges the landscape of the work.
The theme of intellectual property rights, which you interpreted very creatively from the idea of law to the idea of person as property taking back themselves and their rights was he first issue. The second focused on the theme of violence, again in a range of permutations. Why did you select these themes and what is the theme for the next issue?
“Carmen” El’Roy Simmonds: “I just want to keep working and creating.”
In this era of technological boom and sampling or borrowing or downloading, it seems artists’ rights to their own creation is often violated and down-played. My work has been published without my permission, without any compensation, and I know this has happened to many artists. This is a gross violation. I want artist to come together to put a stop to this, to say to those pirates that our intellectual property is our life, our work, and we will not be pimped anymore.
The second issue is equally important. The wide-spread violence throughout the world, the internalization of this violence and how it maims and stifles our growth is scary. We have to confront these issues really consciously and creatively now; we have to create positive alternative. The next issue will be a celebration of Caribbean culture and our daily Olympian feats of survival.
How can people submit their work? What kind of Caribbean connection must the work and/or author have?
We accept work between June and September. We send announcements out via social media, with the guidelines. All work is submitted via email. We want the work to reference the Caribbean, but authors and artists can be from the Caribbean Diaspora or just be affiliated. In this second issue we have folks from Europe, North America and even Asia — the Caribbean is everywhere. Join us on Facebook to stay in the loop.
How can people buy a digital or print edition?
Easy and please do. Go to this link IC is a 2 persons operation, where no one is paid — it is all about the love and desire. The price is determined by the fact that it is in color and the number of pages. We only get 15% of every issues sold, and that goes back to the three awards we offer annually.
For more on Opal Palmer Adisa you can read my interview with Opal speaking about her own writing and creative process and also go to her site and read some of her work.
Pingback: My story is no longer mine to keep