NGC Bocas Lit Fest at Seven

Part of “Caribbean poetry’s new wave”: Ishion Hutchinson, Safiya Sinclair and Rajiv Mohabir.  Photo Copyright © 2017 by Bocas Lit Fest.

 

MAKE NO MISTAKE, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest out of Trinidad’s Port of Spain is big. It describes itself in this, its seventh year, as “the Caribbean’s biggest festival of words, stories and ideas.” Each year that the festival flexes its literary muscles, they are larger than they were in the previous one. 

Seeing is Believing

 

You might doubt their existence

our brown hares are rarely seen.

Yet I’ve heard their bewitching

half-human early morning scream.

 

One evening as I cycled by, a hare

standing in a St Thomas lane

offered me a one-eyed stare.

 

                                          Stillness and camouflage its defence

 

                       Closer and closer I came

 

                                           Stillness and camouflage its defence

 

Bugger that, no way

THE QUESTION IS…

I DOUBT, KAMAU, you will remember this incident that I feel compelled to relate in this small tribute for your 85 years.