1

2001 • I leave the newspaper I was working at with a baby in my belly, a plan in my head and a rough blueprint in my hand. I call my co-conspirator, Robert Edison Sandiford (who had already left the newspaper), and a few weeks later we convene a session of like-minded souls to see how a newsletter called ArtsEtc might get off the ground. We meet at my home (chowing down on a mean chow mein and some fried flying fish to fuel the flood of ideas) and again, later, in a back room at Queen’s Park Gallery.

Kamau Brathwaite, widely acclaimed as Barbados’ greatest poet, and certainly one of the giants of Caribbean Literature, whose writings spanned literary criticism, drama, history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and more, died Tuesday, February 4, where his navel string was buried.  He was 89 and would have been 90 on May 11.  For decades, many considered Kamau Barbados’ unofficial poet laureate.  Then, in 2018, the nation finally appointed its first poet laureate, Esther Phillips.  In the following editorial, reprinted from the Spring 2018 issue of Kola, No. 30, Vol.

(or 7 days in the life of a creative whose well of dreams is deeper than her pocket)

SHORTLY AFTER Minister John King’s open invitation to the artists' community of Barbados to bombard him with ideas, project proposals, wish lists, I volunteered to respond on ArtsEtc’s behalf.  Of course, I’ve procrastinated. No idea where to begin. But last week after more than seven near-consecutive days of creative adventure, I am beginning to sense what the notes for the draft of that letter might look like….