Barbadian-born writer Austin Clarke is a seminal voice of the Caribbean short story, and when I recently edited Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today (TSAR Publications, 2011), I felt the anthology would be incomplete without Clarke’s work. I had had the same sentiment when editing A Shapely Fire: Changing the Literary Landscape (Mosaic Press, 1987); then his Canadian publisher, Jack McClelland, called me on the phone to grant permission, and I was delighted.
Clarke’s stories echo with his inimitable form and style. I recently reread Austin C. Clarke: A Biography by Stella Algoo-Baksh (ECW Press, 1994) searching for new insights into his Barbadian-cum-Canadian élan; and, indeed, Clarke has influenced some of my own stories (see the Black Jesus and Jogging in Havana collections). His pioneering voice is resonant with a quintessential Bajan flavour. George Lamming’s own fictional form and technique also come into the picture for one like myself—I’d listened to him at his seminar at the University of Miami and at Carifesta years ago—though I could not forget that Sam Selvon, John Hearne, Roger Mais, and V.S. Naipaul were all fine Caribbean short-story writers.
These thoughts came to me when I attended the 12th International Conference on the Short Story in English in North Little Rock, Arkansas, in late June and spoke about Beyond Sangre Grande. I looked closely at relatively new writers like Horace Goddard in Montreal (again, originally from Barbados) when I edited that anthology. I had combed through the recent short-story special issue of the Journal of Caribbean Literatures edited by Velma Pollard. I eventually received copies of Robert Edison Sandiford’s stories, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall (The Independent Press/Empyreal Press, 1995) and The Tree of Youth and Other Stories (DC Books, 2005), and stories like “Mistress” and “What Changes” in the second collection quickly caught my eye, the former no doubt reflecting the oral tradition, and the latter, a textured quality.
The earlier collection captures shifting landscapes: Caribbean immigrants’ lives in Montreal from a Bajan perspective, which Haitian-born writers such as Dany Laferrière and Max Dorsinville have long echoed in their own work.
Yes, the state of the contemporary short story was very much in discussion at the Conference, which was coordinated by Dr Maurice Lee, Dean of Arts at Central Arkansas University and a champion of the short-story form, with its focus on a global perspective, and how the form is developing in advancing new narrative techniques, and the pedagogy of it. Keynote speakers—writers—such as Alistair McLeod and Clark Blaise took the lead, being simultaneously instructive and inspirational.
At the Conference, I discussed aspects of editing an anthology like Beyond Sangre Grande before an international audience as ideas and influences flitted back and forth. How does one define the Caribbean, bearing in mind the Diaspora? What Derek Walcott said is worth repeating: the Caribbean is beyond the geographical archipelago but includes those beyond its borders due not least to history and social factors alluded to in my Introduction to my anthology.
The short story is always a challenging form as it tries to capture the quality of an experience, often with a quiet intensity in style and manner perhaps seen in a writer such as Mark McWatt. But the Caribbean writer’s manner encompasses a unique rhythm, or cadence, aligned to voice and emotion, and different ways of seeing the world. Distinctive points of view and characters are imbedded in what is contrived. Conferences such as the one in Arkansas help writers to see the world with new perspectives in mind, especially in comparing one’s work with other writers’ visions. What, for instance, is being done in Ireland, the UK, China, India, Singapore, and the USA, with its particular southern presence in iconic writers such as William Faulkner.
Henry James’ maxim “Show, don’t tell”—timeworn as it is—needs to be repeated here in becoming a good short-story writer, aiming to capture emotional energy without being shrill. Solid imagery, as in a poem, is what counts, what I looked for in choosing authors to include in Beyond Sangre Grande. With a follow-up edition, capturing a wide berth of writers, some published in literary magazines such as Poui, will be key. The challenge the short story poses for writers everywhere is ongoing. Postcard fiction and other shorter fictional narratives are very much in mind. Faulkner (or Hemingway) no doubt was correct in saying that novelists are frustrated short-story writers: the challenge is to write that six-word story, with a poem’s tightness, “putting words into orbit,” as one like Seamus Heaney would have it.
