An Idea

One of the benefits of being in the public eye as a writer in a society that is for the most part ambivalent about its literary people is that you become a lodestone for other writers. Granted that most of the people who come to you and say "Please take a look at this for me" actually have shit to show you, you still have the odd moment where you discover some genuine talent or some pedestrian writer who with prodding and encouragement could produce some decent work.

People surprise you. There is always some hot young thing who you look at think I would love to fuck her passionately all night and have breakfast and a discussion about whether she thought Lolita was merely high artistic indulgence from a master at his craft, a critique on American innocence and splendor in contradistinction to European debauchery and decline, or an audacious outlet for Nabokov's own nympholepsy/pedophilia. And then she hands you a poem that she is inordinately proud of and you have a Stupid Migraine, i.e., an intense headache brought on by someone, or something done by someone, so incredibly stupid as to short-circuit the logic centres of your brain.

Then there was one case where I kept running into this guy who looked like Akon on steroids. About my height which is about 5' 11" (no, no I'm 6 feet all) with arms almost as big as both of mine put together. After an introduction one night in a club to a luscious looking cousin of his (and a migraine inducer with her speech alone, but...) we became sort of friends and one day he casually mentioned to me that he wrote poetry. Now I'm thinking, he's a cool person but no way on earth is this muscle-bound deportee a poet: I was fucking wrong. He might have been a diamond in the rough but this guy was a diamond nonetheless - all the pain of an abusive childhood at the hands of his mother, their reconciliation, his foray into criminality, all the frustration at being away from his wife.

Now with the increased visibility coming from the launch of Fictions, I have been meeting all sorts of interesting people who write, or at least try to, and what I've come up with is that we have the talent here. I have the idea, which I've already floated, get some of these people together to do an overnight retreat at The Guyana Heritage Museum at Kastev on the West Coast of Demerara.

The idea basically is to get as many people together, which for all practical reasons might be no more than ten, who are willing to commit about two nights, Friday and Saturday, and two days, Saturday and Sunday towards meeting with other writers, sharing work, critiquing and receiving criticism. It would be something very informal, a very loose format. Gary Serrao is a good friend of mine and I am sure would be willing to give a small discount on regular rates for rooms and food.

I spent the last few days of writing Fictions, Volume I, there and I can tell you it was fucking inspirational. Kastev is a windy village close to the seawall, about half an hour's drive from Georgetown, and the Museum and Toucan Inn (check pictures here) is a nice little cul de sac in the middle of it. Anybody interested in participating can feel free to make contact with me on ruel.johnson[a]gmail.com or 696-1840. This is something that I am extremely excited about, albeit with its inherent capacity for deflation. I am going for the weekend retreat anyway - but if it could be a writers' retreat, it would be fucking awesome.