The concept of publishing has reached a very gray area in the digital age. At a time where a book can be both physical and electronic, literary journals and newspapers are transforming into online-only entities and individuals can share their thoughts on public blogs and social networks, formal publishing as we know it - by large, authoritative entities driven mostly by profit - faces complete revolution.
Bahamian writers, who have been somewhat excluded in the publishing world by these large authoritative publishers, are poised to take a major part in this new digital age that has essentially democratized publishing, points out Bahamian writer, anthropologist and cultural critic, Nicolette Bethel.
"The Internet has changed us. It changes the way we think, the way we look at and live in the world," she says. "Publishing is resisting because publishing is firmly anchored in the print world and the print world is passing away."
"It's hard to challenge the idea that print changed the world - the ability to free thought, to multiply it, to master it. It created revolutions," she continues. "But that's the age we're living in now because of the Internet - revolutions and shifts are happening. People who have the same thoughts and the same experiences can communicate with each other no matter where they are on the planet, at no cost; they don't have to know each other, and that's never been able to happen before."
Rather than feel threatened or confused by the digital age as a writer, Bethel has been taking advantage of what the Internet offers her - in 2007, she launched an online-only literary magazine "tongues of the ocean" and maintains several blogs, on one of which she shares her famous insights into Bahamian culture, "Essays on Life". She's also been known to live-Tweet important readings, critical conversations and gatherings shared by the cultural community at home so that interested Internet readers - many of them part of the Caribbean diaspora - can take part.
Bethel's latest venture is the release of "Lent/Elegies", a modest but powerful collection of poems, in a revolutionary way - through a 'nanopress' and available for all to see for free online.
The concept of a nanopress, explains Bethel, came about as an idea by another writer, Nic Sebastian. The two are online friends who admire and feed off of each others' written work and blog work. While Bethel started "tongues of the ocean", Sebastian through her own blogs explores how poetry can exist in the technological age beyond the written word as either a recorded reading or even as a series of images in a video.
Sebastian then came up with the idea of a nanopress when she explored self publishing her own work. As Bethel points out, self-publishing has always been a complex concept for writers, rife with stories of self-made success but with ten times as many failures and vanity projects.
"She didn't want to self-publish so she thought and researched and started some dialogues, and she found the big difference between self-publishing and publishing yourself is the role of the editor," explains Bethel. "And this where she came up with the idea of a nanopress. She wanted to publish a chapbook collection but she decided she needed an editor."
From this, she published her book "Forever Will End on Thursday" which exists in as many publishing formats that are available today - as a physical book ordered from Lulu.com, as an e-book ordered from Smashwords, as a PDF that can be downloaded from an online source, as a recording, and finally, as a blog. The blog exists only to be her formal book, not only redefining the role of a blog but making the book free to read by all.
The nanopress is the press name that is used once and once only by the manifestations of this book. Suggested by it's name ("nano", a prefix meaning "a billionth", comes from Greek for "dwarf") a nanopress is essentially a moment - it recognizes the ephemeral nature of modern publishing and stands in complete opposition to the giants of publishing that for so long held influence over the sensibilities of entire populations.
When Sebastian put out a call for writers who may want to publish their collection of work the same way, Bethel paired up with the same editor she had used before on her previous book, "Mama Lily and The Dead'", and applied to publish "Lent/Elegies" under the nanopress, A Place Without Dust Press.
The collection of poetry grouped under to sections of "Lent" and "Elegies" explores grief in the wake of the loss of Bethel's mother, Dr. Keva Bethel. Through the loaded routines surrounding Lent and Easter, Bethel meditates on the passing of time in the wake of tragedy. Through the poetry form of the sevenling, Bethel constructs lists of fleeting moments in both the physical and emotional landscapes, juxtaposing memories of her mother in her final days with her present absence in order to once again find hope in the future.
Bethel explains that she was inspired to use the sevenling form from her online poetry group - another way that she as a writer took advantage of the Internet. As often the task of creation can seem stifling and within a vacuum in such a place as a small island in The Caribbean, Bethel found audience, inspiration and community in online poetry forums where writers around the world could exchange and comment on each other's work.
"My approach to poetry is that it is a craft. I came to poetry really in the beginning to master all the nuances of English for the purposes of writing prose, and then I stick with it," explains Bethel. "But it's always been about craft and it's been really challenging and exciting craft because you're using these constraints to express what it is you're trying to say.
"It's more than that though - there's alchemy that happens in poetry that doesn't always happen in prose, and it happens on all these different levels that if you study the human mind you find is really linked deep into the human psyche, the conscious and linear mind. To reach that relationship though, to reach that level, you really have to master the craft."
To her, these forums essentially changed the face of poetry by providing democratic forums in or to develop poetry. With involvement in the group Poetry Free For All - where she first met Nic Sebastian - Bethel began delving into poetry again, honing her voice and craft. In fact, the poems which appeared in "Lent/Elegies" were inspired by exercises by PFFA, including the assignment during National Poetry Writing Month (NAPOWRIMO) to write a poem a day for a month.
"The process was cathartic for me," says Bethel. "I decided I would use the mold of NAPOWRIMO just to write through this period. And when you're writing a poem every day, when you're looking for them, you see things you normally wouldn't; you surprise yourself."
"As a writer, my poems are about death. They all deal with that theme," she admits. "In these poems I had no thought about the audience - the audience is myself. If I got them to where I was while I was writing them, that's all they can be."
"Lent/Elegies" by Nicolette Bethel is available to view online at http://lentelegies.wordpress.com. E-book copies can be downloaded for free or a book purchased from lulu.com on the same webpage.
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