Ix-Chel Poot is a published author from Belmopan, Belize, who works full-time as an ageing specialist for the National Council on Ageing. As a writer, she is also attempting to build a writing community in Belize, to generate more home-grown Belizean literature, give writers the confidence to get their work out there and grow an audience of interested, engaged readers. We interviewed Ix-Chel to find out more about her work as a writer, what life is like for authors in Belize, and what she thinks IAF could do for Belizean and Caribbean authors.
Ix-Chel, a graduate in English Literature, writes “predominantly poetry” and “socially conscious pieces” addressing social issues in Belize, particularly those that surround families. Her prize-winning short story, ‘Mama’, is about intergenerational family dynamics, and she has an anthology of stories published. She organises an annual programme called ‘Rhythm and the Lyrics’, for live music and poetry, for which “I would get two seasoned poets and myself, and one emerging poet. I only do this in my local community. The shows have been able to generate anywhere from 50 to almost 100 persons and it’s not always paid for. Sometimes it’s just a donation and there’s a tip jar and all the performers split that.”
Like many writers, Ix-Chel does not support herself financially from her writing, and has a full-time job. Indeed, she could think of only three dedicated full-time writers in Belize, a country with a population of just half a million: “Nia Arthurs, a romance writer with an entire section on Amazon. She’s skipped trying to write for local markets completely, she doesn’t write or publish most of her stuff locally, but as e-publications on Amazon.” There’s also Khaila Gentle who “recently started blogging about her journey to make a living as a writer, through writing.”
“I started the Writers’ Circle because I didn’t have the consistent community of writers and I find that sometimes it becomes difficult when you’re trapped in your own mind with something that you’re writing and you need a new perspective, you need somebody to bounce ideas around with.” This was what motivated her to start the Writers’ Circle, a free three-hour writing session at a local coffee shop, which attracted up to 18 writers at a time. However, Ix-Chel’s ambition with the Writers’ Circle doesn’t stop there.
“The challenge was that I wasn’t getting completed work or having opportunities for us to move the work into publication. I have been looking at where there are opportunities to submit works for publications so that they can submit internationally for prizes.” She has also asked a local publishing house about publishing a small collection of the Circle’s short stories “so that the writing culminates into something, and you have a greater incentive to dedicate more time to your craft.”
The visibility that the Writers’ Circle initiative has given to Ix-Chel has included talking about it on a national TV show, which has led to requests from people looking for poets and writers, requests for sessions from schools and even being asked to be a panellist on the Ministry of National Security’s writing prize for police officers, showing that writing is relevant and alive in society. Ix-Chel says that “we don’t have publishing houses that will take you on as a writer and will publish and promote your book. Most times it’s a printing press, putting the onus 100% on you to try and market and move your book forward.”
Ix-Chel won the Belize literary prize in 2015, meaning her was published and widely distributed by Cubola, and also put on the University of Belize syllabus, giving her many keen readers, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to help other writers to get their work out there. Ix-Chel considers Cubola to be the most influential publishers in Belize. Of the experiences she has heard reported by fellow writers, publishing contracts aren’t great either, with most writers being offered a one-off payment for short stories, and no royalties.
What remains of indigenous forms of storytelling in Belize is today, according to Ix-Chel, mostly confined to tourism. “I am Mayan by descent, and I have been to Mayan ceremonies where they are doing traditional Mayan storytelling as well. It’s really within the context of providing for tourism.” She says that her 14 year old nephew has no idea about the “stories my grandfather always told us, and it never occurred to me that there was no one really telling him this kind of story or tradition.” In terms of generating an enthusiastic readership, the younger generation is a hard win. “In Belize we do not have a strong culture of reading”.
However, Ix-Chel thinks that the International Authors Forum (IAF) could bring benefits to Belize and Caribbean nations in general. “I think it helps to create a global network and perspective on what’s happening in the world. One of the challenges I face in my field in ageing is that I have a lot of organised counterparts in Latin America, so I have a strong Latin American network, but when it comes to a more Caribbean voice in ageing I consistently fall short.” She thinks this goes for writing too. “If you are a writer within the Caribbean, you might be facing something similar, so how do you take all these people who are creating on the outskirts and try to bring them in. I think something like the IAF offers that kind of opportunity, so you don’t feel that you are out on a limb by yourself, paddling, paddling, paddling, but there’s a larger network that can help.”
Even for working writers, she doesn’t feel they are well-equipped to understand or benefit from their rights. “I personally am still not 100% sure of some things. Even though I’ve seen contracts I’m still kind of on the fence about how much I should charge for this or how do I count the rates…or if somebody wants to use my story to develop a television show, I’m not sure how that process should work. I definitely think there are doubts.” Indeed, she thinks that the lack of certainty about rights and the fear of rights infringement hinders authors from sharing their work. “There is definitely a need for authors to understand their rights as writers and to understand the larger process of publication and the responsibilities they have for protecting their craft and their pay checks.”
Writers in Belize are just as susceptible to threats posed by new technologies. Ix-Chel is concerned about artificial intelligence and has been since 2004, when as a teacher, 10 of45 poems submitted to her were plagiarised. “I had 10 teenagers insisting to me that they had written these poems themselves. And I said, if I put them in google, it will bring this poem up for me. And now that you have AI you can give it five lines of criteria and it gives you back an entire short story or essay. To me that’s very scary.”
Ix-Chel Poot