BIM (magazine)


BIM was a distinguished "little magazine" first published in Barbados in 1942, being one of two pioneering Caribbean literary journals to have been established in the 1940s, the other being A. J. Seymour's Kyk-Over-Al in British Guiana in 1945. According to the Barbados National Register, on the submission of 16 volumes of BIM magazine together with the associated Frank Collymore Collection of correspondence in 2008:
The founding editor of BIM was Frank Collymore. Subsequent editors have included A. N. Forde, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, John Wickham and E. L. Cozier. The current editors are Esther Phillips and Curwen Best.

History

The first issue of BIM appeared in December 1942, after which it continued regular publication until 1996. Many of the Caribbean writers who later received international recognition in the 1950s and '60s published work in BIM in its early years. Notable contributors included Michael Anthony, Ian McDonald, Sam Selvon, and George Lamming. Lamming wrote : "There are not many West Indian writers today who did not use Bim as a kind of platform, the surest, if not the only avenue, by which they might reach a literate and sensitive reading public, and almost all of the West Indians who are now writers in a more professional sense and whose work has compelled the attention of readers and writers in other countries, were introduced, so to speak, by Bim."
After a decade of silence, BIM was relaunched in 2007. The magazine frequently produces special themed issues, for instance, one on Haiti in 2010.
Now subtitled "Arts for the 21st Century", BIM is published twice a year by the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination, the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Bridgetown, Barbados, in collaboration with the Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Barbados.