Bahamian poet wins prestigious Small Axe literary prize

Sat, Jan 14th 2012, 08:50 AM

Bahamian poet, writer and publisher, Sonia Farmer can now add winner of the poetry component of the 2011 Small Axe Literary Competition to her list of achievements. Small Axe is a Caribbean art and literature journal out of Columbia University in New York and the competition is held every year.

"It's a pretty big deal for Caribbean writers," said Farmer. A humble poet and writer, Farmer is deeply entrenched in the Bahamian art and culture scene. "So in April, Christian Campbell had his book launch at the College of The Bahamas and he asked me and Emile Hunt to open for him," Farmer said.

"He said he wanted to give emerging writers a chance to share their work. It was really wonderful of him to support us." Campbell's book 'Running the Dusk' has racked up numerous international accolades and awards, so opening for him, said Farmer, was a great honor. "So I shared poems from my as of yet unpublished manuscript named 'Infidelities' at that opening and it went quite well," she remembers.

"Then, Christian at the end told me 'You are going to enter Small Axe, right?'" Farmer's winning 10 poems are taken from her collection, 'Infidelities', which explores how desire affects identity, gender and place through the mythology of the female pirate Anne Bonney. In her 10 winning poems the dual urges to both destroy and fiercely cling to loaded identities of Caribbeanness and femininity play out in lines rife with complex emotions of longing, jealousy and reserved grief.

After submitting poems from her collection with other Caribbean journals such as Poui, The Caribbean Writer, tongues of the ocean and The Womanspeak Journal, Farmer said she didn't feel that she had any more poems left. "He (Campbell) insisted I enter whatever I had left so I told him ok, I'd do it," remembers Farmer. "He even sent me an email double checking if I'd done it.  So I just sent in 10 pages because you can submit up to 10 pages of poetry and I left it at that. So in reality, I thank Christian for giving me that push to believe in myself."

The announcement of the winners was made in October. During this time Farmer said she changed her email, only checking it rarely. "When I heard the winner of Small Axe was being announced I double checked it and didn't see anything, so I thought, oh well I knew this was going to happen; they were my 'B poems' and that's fine." Two weeks later, Farmer said she was double checking her email again and found a representative of Small Axe asking for her address for the check for the prize money.

"I e-mailed him back giving him my address, and asked, 'Did I win?' And he e-mailed me back to say 'yes' and I freaked out," Farmer said. Farmer won on a joint first place prize sharing the honor with Danielle McShine. She won $750 in addition to the opportunity to share all of her winning poems in Small Axe's upcoming July 2012 magazine. "It's reassuring," Farmer said, "because it means I feel like I can send my manuscript out this year and get it published."

She said she's been getting great feedback from the creative community in The Bahamas and those outside of it as well. Adding to this good news was the announcement that two other Bahamian writers - Phillip Armbrister and Janice Lynn - were shortlisted for the poetry prize.

"It's exciting not only that I won, but two other Bahamian poets were shortlisted for the poetry prize. I'm proud of myself obviously, but I am also proud of all of us," she said. "The Bahamas has been left out of the publishing scene of the Caribbean for a long time because often times either we excluded ourselves or the Caribbean excludes us for not being Caribbean enough.

"We're really trying to develop our voice now within an already well developed voice of the Caribbean. "It's really exciting that we've all gotten to this place," she said.

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