In December, Sonia launched Current Books at The Current Art Studios at Baha Mar during the exhibition “Pattern”.

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Formulated during her summer residency in the art space, Current Books is a publishing project exclusively for The Current Art Studios at Baha Mar. Publishing limited edition chapbooks and ephemera, Current Books promotes cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary collaboration in the realm of design using a variety of mediums and resources.

The inaugural books produced under this publishing project were poetry chapbooks by the summer resident writers, Yasmin Glinton (At the Shore) and Sonia herself (Now That I Change) who also edited, designed, printed, and bound the limited editions.

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Bahamian poet Yasmin Glinton composed the poems in At the Shore during her summer residency at The Current. They were inspired by the artwork from the Fairwind exhibition on display in the Baha Mar Convention, Arts & Entertainment Center. Like the artwork in the exhibition, Yasmin’s poems expose Bahamian-driven narratives beneath thick layers of paint or glossy photographs, writing poignant love letters to the creative spirit that endures in the Bahamian landscape. Read an excellent interview with Yasmin by Kevante A.C. Cash about her book here.

Now That I Change: (This is Not) an Interview with the Creative Arts Director is part of Sonia’s forthcoming poetry collection The Best Estimation in the World, a series of poems that examines the effect of the tourism industry on Bahamian identity using text extracted from interviews that are run through voice recognition software. Some of these poems were written while Sonia was a writer-in-residence at The Current during the summer of 2018. Her chapbook was accompanied by a recorded reading of the poem by John Cox, the Creative Arts Director of The Current:

Sonia and Yasmin read from their collections during the exhibition opening “Pattern” in The Current Art Gallery. Their books were featured alongside work by fellow summer artists-in-residence Attila Feszt, Kendra Frorup, Ivanna Gaitor, and John Paul Saddleton.

Watch Sonia introduce Current Books and read the beginning of one of her poems:

Watch Sonia introduce Yasmin and hear Yasmin read the beginning of one of her poems from At the Shore:

The books can be purchased at The Current’s retail store. Please contact  thecurrent[at]bahamar[dot]com for purchasing information.

Eternally grateful to Manfred Ginter for the videos.