Well as it turns out, Ruel is not the only writer who should probably never read his work out loud to an audience, or ever again attempt to promote his own work. Last night, a few other writers made it clear that good writers are not always the best promoters of their work. There were a few writers who read well of course, and I'll mention them in a bit, but first back to Mr. Ruel.
His private book launch scheduled for last Saturday was aborted because the actual book wasn't there (printer screw-up I was told). Now if Ruel had a professional agent or publisher responsible for promoting his work, the fact that the actual book wasn't there would have been a minor problem. As it turned out, the book's absence resulted in the entire event being squashed. A professional agent or publisher would have salvaged the evening by finding alternative ways to celebrate the completion of five long hard years of work. Ruel's failure to launch (as he described it) pointed once again to a glaring need for better representation for the arts and artists in Guyana (and as Dabydeen pointed out, for the entire Caribbean).
(The truth is I've never heard Ruel read his work out loud, and who knows...he may actually be a wonderful reader of his own work, but he is desperately in need of a publisher or agent who can professionally promote his work.)
Last evening's reading event at the Umana Yana was an overall success, despite the few poor readers. I got there a little late and missed Karen-King Aribisala's reading, and I'm truly sick about that, but I did get to hear from some of the other major writers I'd heard would be there.
It went smoothly with each writer/poet following the other in immediate succession, and each one of them was prepared and enthusiastic about sharing his or her work with us there in attendance. Some of the best readers were Berkley Semple, whose Lamplight Teller won the Guyana Prize for best first book of poetry in 2004; Guyanese award-winning writer and actress Pauline Melville; Barbadian writer, Austin Clarke; a Bahamian poet whose name I didn't get; and a Trinidadian poet whose name also eluded me. I didn't get the names because there was no complete list of the people who were to read, since names were not quite decided on prior to the start of the event. Nevertheless, for an impromptu-like affair, it went rather well.
The major part of the success for me was that I left the event with a new list of books to read.
