Guyanese writer, Professor David Dabydeen has called for the establishment of a Caribbean publishing house, saying it is long overdue.
“We need to stop being flatulent, [spewing] rhetoric about ethnic diversity and set up a press,” Dabydeen said, during a presentation at the ‘Caribbean Culture at the Crossroads’ symposium on Sunday. “It is something that Caricom should do,” he told the audience, which included Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo and CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington.
Dabydeen noted that there was a “golden age” in the 1950s when regional writers helped each other to get published. During that time, he said, there was a boom in the publishing industry in the UK and many Caribbean writers benefited. He lamented the decision by publishing houses McMillan, Longman and Heinemann to discontinue their long-time efforts in the region, while major publishers are looking for money and are unwilling to take a risk on emerging writers unless they have already won literary prizes.
At the same time, Dabydeen pointed out that there has been talk of a regional publishing house since the days of the West Indian Federation, but governments have failed to bring it into reality. He said a proposal puts the cost of setting up a regional press at US $100,000 a year, but projected that within six to seven years it could be self-sustaining.
Local writer Ruel Johnson, who has had to self-publish his works, was sceptical about the viability of the proposal, pointing out that there has been a “maligned neglect” of the arts across the region. In an invited comment, he said governments in the region have a record of failing to commit the financial resources necessary for sustaining cultural development, particularly progressive ventures. He also considered the figure quoted by Dabydeen to be too small and drew attention to the fact that the scattered populations and the insularity that permeates the region are also a disadvantage.
Johnson thought a regionally owned publisher would likely run into loss without the support and funding of a parallel arts council or a special arts fund. The youngest winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature, he was recently the recipient of a special publishing grant awarded by local telecommunications giant GT&T to assist the publication of his second short-story collection, “Fictions,” for a CARIFESTA launch. A panel selected the work from a number of submissions by writers. Johnson said while he was grateful for the grant, there needs to be a way to create opportunities for as many writers as possible. In this vein, he said had there been an existing arts fund it might have been possible to directly finance more publications or indirectly by facilitating assistance from interested corporate citizens, like GT&T, willing to help publish. He also suggested that the funds allocated for the Guyana Prize for Literature but are not awarded could be channelled into publication for local writers.
Certainly, Johnson does not believe that there is no money for the arts. He agreed with Derek Walcott’s assessment that the region’s governments have simply not been showing an interest. “That whole argument about not having the money is complete” rubbish, he argued, calling attention to the Guyana government’s financial misallocations. “How many millions of dollars go into white elephants?” He said a fraction of the funds that have been wasted on such failed projects so far could have been used to sustain an annual residential writer’s workshop for half a century.
He said too that while there have been initiatives to support institutions, there also needs to be support for creators. He pointed out that while the Theatre Guild renovation attracted state and private funding, there are no modern Guyanese plays being written for the stage. “The Theatre Guild went into disrepair because it went into disuse,” he said, suggesting that there be awards of writer’s grants that would stimulate more creative output. “You give any proper writer the space to do their work and it will be produced, because it is inside them,” he added.
Although Johnson sees the need for governments to make a serious commitment to the arts, at the same time he warned of the danger of political control of cultural support institutions. He said regional or national councils ought to be made up of independent personnel, to guard against the creation of cultural bureaucracies used to impose political censorship.
He believed writers in particular are vulnerable to political repression, if their works attempt to challenge the status quo.