When Sovereignty Is Not a Choice

Protests in Russia against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.  Photo Copyright © 2022 by The Punch. 

 

SOME BARBADIANS have criticized our Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley, for condemning publicly Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine February 24.  Her comments came swiftly following the Russian president’s bombing of the country, including its capital, Kyiv.

In her statement, Mottley said in part:

21 Quick Facts about Bajan Lit

 

1. The Frank Collymore Literary Award, launched in 1998, is the most lucrative writing prize in Barbados, with the top “Colly” winner receiving BDS$10,000.00 (US$5,000.00).

2. The National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) Literary Competition produced its first Winning Words anthology of medal-winning entries in 1999.

The 2022 IndyList

 

NO, YOU HAVEN'T missed a thing.  We've shifted the presentation of the ArtsEtc Independence Reading List to the top of the upcoming year instead of leaving it at the end of the previous one.  So you're in the right place: this is the offering for 2021 moving into 2022.  Or, more simply put, for the next twelve months.

To recap, the IndyList, as we like to call it, is a selection of 12 Barbadian books to make friends with over the coming year.   This is its eleventh edition.

Republican Reflections

My patriotic, festive TV stand, Christ Church, Barbados, December 2021.  Photo Copyright © 2022 by Robert Edison Sandiford.

 

IT’S BEEN YEARS I’ve been doing this. Started sometime around when my daughter, Aeryn, was born in 06. Fifteen years ago. Possibly longer. A more hopeful time by any current estimate, though we were about to become mired in the Great Recession (2007-2009). I would have been seeking to inspire my students, then as now.

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.  

Dear Mia, come lewwe talk…

Table talk, everything in one. Illustration Copyright © 2021 by Izora Devonish.

 

DEAR MIA,

May I call you Mia? Madam Prime Minister? PM? Not Aunty Mia. I know who my aunts are and have been, and that would confuse our relationship, or what it is supposed to be.

How to begin?

Passing On, Lifting Up: Remembering Horace I. Goddard

Montreal writer, educator and community activist Horace I. Goddard had a commitment to community first nurtured in Barbados.  Photo Copyright © 2020 by Kola.

 

HORACE I. GODDARD was to many a well-regarded Montreal writer.  Among his books were the novel Child of the Jaguar Spirit (2009) and The Long Drums (1986), a poetry collection. His short story “In the Light of Darkness” appeared in Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today (2011), edited by Cyril Dabydeen.

Vigilance: An Editorial for World Press Freedom Day

UNESCO poster reminds us there's still work to be done to protect freedom of speech and journalists, maybe now more than ever.  

 

RESPONSIBLE.  Accurate.  Reputable.  Truthful.  Fair.  

These terms are often associated with good journalism.  News stories we can trust in whatever medium.

Letters to Foreign Friends: A Good Day for Poets

Cloaked in hope: American poet Amanda Gorman reading at the Inauguration of President Joe Biden, January 20, 2021.  Photo Copyright © 2021 by Rob Carr/Getty Images.

 

MORNING, SUNSHINE, 

Barbados a Republic: Three Times a Charm?

Prime Minister Mia Mottley speaking at the United Nations in 2019.  Barbados' first Prime Minister, Errol Barrow, declared in a December 1966 address to the UN that the newly independent country would be "friends of all, satellites of none." Photo Copyright (c) 2019. 

 

"Beware....  He'll pour a honeyed potion in your ear, and you'll wake up one day and all you'll say is 'Republic!  Republic!  Republic!'"  Gladiator

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