By: Staff Writer
June 1, 2021
A Florida International University (FIU) professor will be hosting an erotic poetry workshop at the June 4-6 Caribbean Literary Conference (CARICON), something she knows is taboo for Caribbean people but states that eroticism is in the Bible and will be discussed too.
Dr Donna Weir-Soley, associate professor in English at FIU, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that she is “happy” to be presenting at this year’s CARICON and have done work with the event’s organisers in the past.
She said: “I have worked (as both consultant and a presenter) in 2019 and 2020 on CALIFEST, the festival that preceded this one.”
The Virtual Caribbean Literary Festival, CALIFEST, is the brainchild of Steve Russell and Dr Juanita Coleman-Merritt, which has now morphed into the CARICON also being held virtually June 4 to June 6.
The CARICON will bring together authors and writers from around the Caribbean diaspora in an effort to showcase their works and create discussion points for aspiring writers to build on their craft and find inspiration to complete their individual projects.
Dr Weir-Soley’s contribution to this inaugural CARICON will be with Erotic Poetry, where she said: “We will be looking at the ways in which Japanese forms such as the Haiku and the Haibun can be adapted to erotic themes, as well as Caribbean images and languages.
She added: “Caribbean people have made peace with the erotic in other areas such as Caribbean musical forms, festivals, carnival, everyday speech acts, dress, even in African derived religious ceremonies. Why not poetry?
“We need to understand that there is a difference between the erotic and the pornographic, as Audre Lorde points out in her essay ‘Uses of the Erotic.’ The latter is surface-level, exploitative, objectifying, and divorced from real feelings and connections. The erotic is “an assertion of the life force” and connects us to what is ‘deepest, and strongest and richest within each of us’ (“Uses of the Erotic”- Audre Lorde)”
Erotic Poetry is taboo for many Caribbean people and Dr Weir-Soley admitted this is the reason why she is hosting this workshop and she gleefully reminded us that there are “erotic verses in the Bible,” particularly the Song of Songs and Proverbs that will also be discussed in her workshop at the CARICON.
Dr Weir-Soley wishes to encourage young poets in whatever genre they decide to join up with like-minded individuals and always get involved. She said: “The best ways to get your work published: (a) become part of an active poetry community (b) submit your work to poetry journals and contests (c) attend poetry workshops/retreats, etc.”
Making a living out of the arts can be difficult, even in the very diverse music industry where there are many struggling artists not hitting the “big time” like Barbados’s Rihanna or Jamaica’s Bob Marley and there are no easy answers Dr Weir-Soley can provide either.
She said: “I am not the best person to ask this. My life is my life and I use poetry to help me manage, interpret and express experience, ideas and desires. There are some writers who make a living from poetry. I make my living from teaching. It helps if you can win a MacArthur Fellowship or a Ruth Lilly Poetry prize.”
Dr Weir-Soley is the current vice president and incoming President of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (http://www.acwws.org/). She is also an associate professor of English at FIU specializing in African Diasporic and Women’s literature as well as Post-Colonial and Black feminist theories. Her publications include Caribbean Erotic, an anthology coedited with Opal Palmer Adisa, Eroticism, Spirituality Resistance in Black Women’s Writings, a scholarly work, and two books of poetry, First Rain and The Women Who Knew.