Books by Drisana Deborah Jack

The Rainy Season / Skin

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Skin

Poems by Drisana Deborah Jack

Skin News Release

GREAT BAY, St. Martin (January 22, 2006)—St. Martin’s newest book, Skin, by poet/painter Drisana Deborah Jack, was released in The Hague, The Netherlands, on Saturday, January 21, 2006.

“Drisana is now the first St. Martin writer to release a new book in the Netherlands,” said Jacqueline Sample, president of House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP).

Skin, Jack’s second collection of poems, was published in St. Martin last week by HNP. Within hours, copies of the title with its strange cover design, was on its way from the Caribbean to the Dutch city. Jack was there to participate in the Winternachten International Literature Festival on January 20 and 21.

Plans for the book release started in November 2005 with the author, festival principal Ton van de Langkruis, and HNP. “We thought it would be a great idea to launch at Winternachten. Especially since Drisana was appearing on both festival days, discussing language politics, Caribbean women in literature, and reading her poetry alongside famous writers like Austin Clarke, Frank Arion, and Breyten Breytenbach,” said Sample.

“We expected that The Hague release would give Skin an immediate new audience and sales beyond the home base.”

HNP was also busy securing international attention for Skin before its history-making feature for the St. Martin book. According the South African writer and critic Darryl Accone, “Skin is compelling.”

To Jacqueline Goffe-McNish of the State University of New York, “Skin takes us through  … the textures in this land of Lokhay; gritty salt …  continues the tradition of poets like E.K. Braithwaite, Mervyn Morris and Dennis Scott.” That’s no small comment.

For a clearer picture of how serious Jack’s work is being taken, one has to read the Introduction  to Skin by the New York-based Diaspora scholar Dr. Hershini Bhana Young. She calls the slim volume a “wonderfully sensual, fluid and powerful collection of poetry, born out of the Caribbean’s flux and flows.”

According to Jack on Sunday, “all went well at Winternachten,” where St. Martiners in the Netherlands were invited to attend the book release in the foyer of the Theater aan het Spui.

Jack, an MPC graduate and university assistant professor, hails from Cole Bay, where she is a member of the Bells, one of St. Martin’s oldest families.

By the way, the attention Jack’s artwork is getting is also jumping off the pages.   Dr. Young’s new book Haunting Capital (2005), dedicates an entire chapter to interpreting and comparing Jack’s art to a fellow artist. “This is tremendous,” said Sample.

“I am told that this is the first St. Martin painter to get this type of extensive critical evaluation in a scholarly book.” In her poetry and art, Jack has been developing salt as a St. Martin cultural/historical metaphor. She is also unique among the island’s writers and artists for her treatment of the “presence” of the hurricane, linking it often to the Middle Passage.

To author/literature expert Fabian Badejo, “It is clear from her writings that Dr. Young is impressed with Debbie’s work.

“When a young artist is fortunate to have a major scholar writing critically about his or her work it just ads immeasurably to the already endless possibilities of good art.” Jack is one of two St. Martin writers to end up in at least three important books published in the USA and in England in December 2005.

Badejo pointed out last Sunday on the Culture Time radio magazine, that we should read something remarkable in the fact that Skin is the second St. Martin book published in January 2006, in less than one week after Cul-de-Sac People by Mathias S. Voges and by the same publisher.

Drisana Deborah Jack is available in St. Martin at Van Dorp bookstore and  House of Nehesi and over the next few days at Amazon.Com  and in other bookstores.

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Reviews

Compelling ... We are all migrants now, children and foundlings of diaspora.
—Darryl Accone, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

Skin takes us through blanket of night, seaweeds, the embrace of the sea, interrupted sky, and rain storms.
—Jacqueline Goffe-McNish, State University of New York

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Contents

Source: skin © 2006 by Drisana Deborah Jack •House of Nehesi Publishers • Philipsburg, St. Martin Caribbean • www.houseofnehesipublish.com

Contact: Jacqueline Sample / House of Nehesi Publishers / 599.542.4435

D. Jack: drisana@mac.com / www.houseofnehesipublish.com / P.O. Box 460 / Philipsburg, St. Martin  Caribbean / Tel/Fax (599) 542-4435 / E-mail: Offshoreediting@hotmail.com

update 3 August 2008