Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

Writer and spoken word poet Brandon O’Brien’s first ever solo show, Distress Signals, will showcase his spoken word poetry and science fiction and fantasy (SFF) writing, as well as a conversation with the artist. The show takes place on July 26 at the Writers Centre, 14 Alcazar Street, St. Clair, Port-of-Spain.

O’Brien has had short stories and poetry published in local and international SFF and literary magazines such as Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, CULTUREGO, sx salon, Reckoning, Anathema, and Apex Magazine, as well as some anthologies, such as Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean. He said he’d dreamed of being a writer by profession since he was in high school. “Now, I get to call myself a science fiction and fantasy writer, a performance poet, a published writer, and it’s so freeing. It’s a wonderful feeling not only to tell the stories that you want to tell, but to know that other people are reading it and hopefully getting something from it, and sharing it with others.”

O’Brien is most widely known as a performance poet, through his work with the 2 Cents Movement. “2 Cents has been really committed to helping poets grow, and using the art form as a tool for outreach in schools and communities. People underestimate the truths that young people have to share, but when you listen to them and let them actually speak for themselves, they sometimes have more radical and important things to say than us older folks. And, when you give them the tools to do so deeply, and healthily, and when you help them turn those tools into other ways to develop, in school and in their personal communication and in other arenas, they truly grow into the kinds of young people we keep wishing young people would become. But it starts with giving them the room to speak, and listening to what they say, and I feel like 2 Cents is part of making that happen.”

O’Brien is the poetry editor of FIYAH Literary Magazine, a US-based Black SFF online magazine which focuses on science fiction and fantasy from across the African Diaspora. The magazine has been nominated for a Hugo Award in the category of Best Semi-Prozine, and O’Brien will be representing the team at the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin. He said one of the things he has learned from being a black, Caribbean speculative fiction writer is that people are definitely eager to hear the Caribbean perspective of the future. “SFF is very good at putting the world in a radical context, asking ‘what if?’ questions about our past and our future that make us reconsider what it means to live in the world that we’re in right now. That means that the genre wants, and needs, as many perspectives as possible, so we can get as many images of the future as possible. We need black perspectives, Caribbean perspectives, queer perspectives, disabled perspectives, as many of them as we can find, so we can imagine all the ways in which we can possibly make our world better. I’ve had the good fortune of meeting many writers, editors, and readers who want to make room for those perspectives, and are eager to read from communities they may not necessarily have ever seen work from.”

He encouraged writers in T&T not only to keep writing, but also to “keep being hungry for it. Don’t ever shake your head at an opportunity and say, “they don’t want to read a Trini story”. They don’t even know what they’re missing. No matter what kind of story you write, send it out there. Send it to every magazine, to every anthology, whenever they put out a call for new work. Aim for every bulls-eye, kick open every door, because people want to hear what you have to say.”

O’Brien said Distress Signals “is me attempting to take some of these kinds of stories about how we see ourselves in the past and the future, how we turn legacies of loss into legacies of hope, both on the national and the personal level, and translate those stories onto the stage. I want to bring the speculative part of me to the stage, and challenge myself to tell those kinds of stories through performance. I can’t wait to share these stories, and rediscover them myself.  I share some of my most fierce and fantastic work, cross through the strange timelines of our life on the island, and talk about what Caribbean science fiction has to offer the world and what poetry has offered me personally.”