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
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.
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.
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.
“Everything that happens in the universe has an impact on who I am, how I live, and what I write: thought, word, deed. Everything I think, I write, I speak has an impact on the world; like the...