Thoughts of a minibus traveller

  Knives Chaitra Navratra 2025 this week and people talking about how the man defend himself against the woman by killing the woman with nuff bullets who had to pick up a knife to defend herself after he slapped her .  Nothing new really as all the men who beat and abuse women are defending masculinity, their honour (she disrespect me'.. she mek me do it'.. ) , 'she look for it' - men who have raped children have said the 'children were seducing them' .   Durga is presented with weapons, all the weapons of all the Hindu male deities apparently and she and her other awatar Kali kill demons, male demons .  The weapons and demons are meant to be virtues and vices respectively.  First time in a TV show, woman is cutting up vegetables for Christmas Dinner. Quiet older white woman. Man knocks her down to the floor as he defends masculinity. Not the first time. She uses the knife and kills him. People are shocked that the man used to abuse her.  Fiction But ...

    A few weeks ago, my friend Daryll did a writing retreat. He wanted to connect writers because Guyana lacks infrastructure and there are not spaces for us.  I attended some sessions and missed several. The most memorable occurred when someone wrote about a man who was a hunter. The writer described in detail the inner-workings of a gun and I found myself leaning in and I knew this writer had experience in this subject area. It felt too authentic to be faked. I wrote a story about a little boy’s fascination with a funeral, the story connected with everyone. Primarily, because it was authentic. The workshop reminded me of the value of being an authentic writer, not one who writes to “show off” superior prose writing and diction. I think this comes with authenticity.  But, what stood out for me the most was a conversation I had with Daryll on the last day of the workshop. He said that I cannot come to the workshop because I am not organized and due to this, I do not ...

When I was little, my mother would accumulate pieces of cloths. Naturally, they were of different sizes, colours and shapes but she doctored them with a pair of scissors then, artfully, stitched them together and, joy oh joy, they became a Comforter, complete and charming, that gave amazing sleep experiences. It was magical.  It was as magical at the Guyanese Writers First Virtual Retreat!  We congregated, as agreed, via phones and lap-tops, of course. We walked with our ‘pieces of cloths’, so to speak, to show them off. We were anxious to show them off and anxious that they should be accepted. The Coordinator, Daryll, invited us to share our ‘pieces.’ We did. What happened for me was amazing! Each piece shared had its peculiar ‘colour’, ‘shape’ and ‘size.’ There were pieces of prose, and pieces of poetry and they were not the same, exactly, yet they each stood-out uniquely handsomely. We talked and talked about the pieces and grew excited over them. And in our strongest momen...

Sometimes it takes a village to foster a disciplined creative's mind.  We all wish to write new forms and lay the foundations for new, exciting concepts that are yet to grace the eyes of our aroused readers but are often lost in the planning phase.  As such, these inventive ideas are often buried in the graveyard of underdeveloped thoughts, the premature concept map never fully developed.  Our inaction to write often forces our creative voices to shrink our uniqueness, to abandon our experimentation with the test subject of our ideas. To avoid this colony of graveyards, Mr. Daryll Andrew Goodchild, founder of the Guyanese Writers' Virtual Retreat has created a remedy for this self-harm of the creative writing process through a series of writing, sprint writing sessions. Ever heard of a military workout course, yes, I'm sure you have, now have you ever experienced it? These writing sprints facilitated by Mr. Goddchild is as brutal as any workout camp, but the fruits of you...

  When my friend Daryll first contacted me about joining a virtual writers meeting, my first instinct was to push the idea aside. These sort of things were for people who actually wrote and shared their work, not those like me who hardly did a thing these days.  But Daryll was insistent in that mild, encouraging manner of his and soon enough I gave in. The first session was very relaxed. A few persons attended and we got to know each other, hearty laughter and jovial comments made here and there. It was a relief to me that these people seemed down to earth and kindhearted.   So I occupied my Sunday evenings with a group of strangers with whom I shared a common passion. We shared and discussed pieces of our work, everyone pitching in helpful critiques and comments that would surely go a long way. I learned not to use adverbs, to show rather than simple tell of an action. I missed quite a few sessions due to my pitiful internet connection. It was quite a shame because I had...

   I've never written for a blog before, so I'm not sure what the expectations are. So I'll just jump right into sharing my experiences over a writing retreat held by a person who has been a confidante of some sorts to me, Daryll Goodchild. It began in the last week of September, an idea birthed out of the need to do more with themselves during the lockdown .     Moving quickly on from my sporadic thoughts. There I was, in my dining room, anxiety-ridden and absolutely frightened out of my mind at what would be expected in this new normal. What was normal anymore? Was this normal? These were all thoughts running through my head as I greeted everyone on the call with a smile and began telling them about myself. "My name is Hannah Singh and I'm 19 years old..." were the first few words that I said. I honestly don't know why I always introduce myself with my name and age. Like yeah, name is a big part of identity but most people say age is just a n...

  If we’d have waited, it wouldn’t have been done. For years, I have heard and made the complaint about the lack of free, safe spaces that encourage creative writers in Guyana. It’s obvious that we wanted it, so why didn’t we have it? I think that’s when I felt ashamed. Since when did the things that I wanted fall into my lap? And did I really expect them to? After making the effort to attend writing seminars, workshops and retreats online during the past few months, I realised that it would be a great idea to do it here, with our writers who experience the same issues, handle the same strain and sometimes feel just as alone as I do. Oddly enough we have each other’s contact information, it’s just a text message or call or email away. Yet, we operate in our little bubbles and tell ourselves we are alone. I needed that to end – at least for me. With self-centered objectives I reached out to the group. Thankfully, their responses helped me to grow that vision into something that was ...

   A nice Sunday night in October. The voice of the writer and poet comes over the Zoom call  "One second.., why are you saying the window is dirty?"  Another writer on the call  had shared a piece in which the morning light was coming through a dirty window and waking up the character.  There was a lot of description of the room. Brief silence, then someone asked.. 'what do you mean?'.  We then talked a few minutes about the use of the word 'dirty', about how this could bias the reader against the character, and other ways to describe the window.  I never imagined that a conversation about a dirty window could be so interesting.. Guyana's First Virtual Writers' Retreat was held over 5 sessions from 27 September to 25 October, 2020. People joined, as internet and electricity allowed, from Berbice , Essequibo and  Georgetown.  I joined since I have this work task to create a 'compelling narrative'  and I thought it was good to learn ...

  Monkey pots Living in a virtual world– the new normal. When fellow writer Daryll Goodchild announced, via a Facebook writers’ group, that he wanted to organize a virtual retreat for interested Guyanese writers, I raised my (virtual) hand right away.   Thanks to Covid 19, and a year of learning to live in the midst of a deadly global pandemic, a large chunk of everyday life has shifted to a virtual dimension.  It’s a little surreal, we really have created these online replicas of the real world; worlds within the world, which we now occupy so comfortably and naturally.   What is actually surprising, at least to me, was how easily we have adapted to this new norm.  We slipped from the physical to the virtual and found it ready and functional.  Easier even, in some ways, to navigate than the physical one. So Daryll could organize a retreat without having to leave his home, without having to think about where to hold it or worrying about such things as c...