Winning Words: If Only on the Outside/If Only on the Inside

 

 

If only on the outside
I am fat
so I cannot accept that
I am worthy
I know deep down
my bulging belly labels me obese
and I see
my heavier hips generate the most stares
I realize
my body is riddled with cellulite
and I understand
the mirror can only present its truth
I acknowledge that
my value is measured primarily as a number on a scale
so no one can make me believe
I am beautiful
if only on the inside

Latest Winning Words Focuses on "Our Uncertain Times"

....Like the world, and its words, are on fire.  This edition's cover is again by Kai Miller.     

 

The following is from the back cover of The ArtsEtc NIFCA Winning Words Anthology 2019/2020.

THESE ARE NOT normal times we’re in.  And they are changing fast.

Winning Words: Exhaustive Listening

 

 

So this dumbass asked me the other day
“Why does Black History Month always have to be about
Death and Rosa Parks and Malcolm X and MLK?
Why can’t y’all get over it and just find some happy shit to say?”

I had to summon the sarcasm of seventy generations 
To say:
Oh I’m sorry
Sorry my history is about as convenient for you 
As it is for me
Sorry our blood ain’t blue enough for you
When you spill it in the streets

Winning Words: Dear White People

 

 

Dear white people… 
I’m not here to fight, I’m not here to bargain, I’m not here to scream. 
You’re here to listen. 
The place you call home, The Land of the Free. Was constructed by People of Colour.
Mechanized by your predecessors and ancestors who used genocide, violence 
    and slavery as fuel.
Undisputable.  Undeniable.  Unforgivable. 

Linda M. Deane 2020 Frank Collymore Literary Award Winner

2020 Frank Collymore Literary Award winner Linda M. Deane.  Photo Copyright © 2021.

 

THE 23rd FRANK COLLYMORE LITERARY AWARDS were presented entirely virtually for the first time on February 14, 2021. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the ceremony was aired via a live stream that used prerecorded readings by the winners in various locations across the island.  

All of the winners were poets this year, with the Prime Minister’s Award going to a prose writer for a YA novel.  

A Review of Riff: The Shake Keane Story

Riff: The Shake Keane Story (Papillote Press, 164 pp., paperback, 2021) is the biography of the Vincentian poet-jazz musician Ellsworth McGranahan “Shake” Keane (1927-1997). Keane is St Vincent’s best-known (perhaps its only) poet with an international reputation. Less known is the fact that he is most likely St Vincent’s most accomplished jazz musician. Written by Barbadian-based Vincentian author Philip Nanton, this biography, though brief, is thoroughly researched, and is erudite in content and style.

Ode to the Christmas Breeze

 

Dear one, when I recall
how hot an ting this August did
and den wid all de other nameless ting it had
in all this covid 
You be most welcome den.

I must admit it had me fraid.

Who did not fraid? I ask myself,
and not a soul to hold onto.
So love had to be said
and comfort taken where it will.

And you know how we mout does don't have cover.

Collage

Photo Copyright © 2020 by John Robert Lee—socially distanced.

for Ann-Margaret Lim

 

“To the saints who are in Ephesus.”  Ephesians 1:1

Castles

 

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