What's more crushing than COVID-19?  Illustration Copyright © 2020 by Aeryn Sandiford.

“How does a culture withstand the onslaught of a pandemic? We survive first of all with the presence of culture within us. It is to our inner culture that we turn, the culture we carry in us through years of unconscious osmosis and conscious acquisition.” Ben Okri

MY 13-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER is afraid to die.  Some days, it’s an abstract fear: the thought of not being here, of being nothing, is an unfathomable void.   There are days—today—it is COVID-19.  

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.

ArtsEtc contributing editor Racquel Griffith (first from the right) and friends exploring the rich experiences Chinese culture has to offer earlier this year.

Linda M. Deane receiving her journalism diploma from The Honourable Billie Miller at the graduation ceremony held at the Hilton Hotel, June 1982.  At the podium, partly hidden, is Harold Hoyte.  Photo Copyright © 1982 by the Nation.

WHO was it said: “You can change your mind, but you can’t change your fate?”

Dancing with respect: a member of Dance Strides Barbados shows how it's done.  Photo Copyright © 2018 by Dance Strides Barbados.

(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….

Welcome to Deane’s List. Mostly about the literary arts in and outside Barbados, but also about other art forms and issues shaping culture and community. Mostly informal and about what’s noteworthy and toast-worthy. But not above or beyond a gripe or a swipe. A randomized threading of the personal with the universal. A web, if you will, in the shape of a list. Spun as an occasional blog for ArtsEtc by one of its editors, a sometime-ish writer whose name is Deane.

Barbadian spoken-word artist Adrian Green: following in the tradition of pioneering Bajan writers A.N. Forde, W.S. Arthur and Karl Sealy.  Photo Copyright © 2013 by Fresh Milk Barbados.

Connecting and reconnecting at Carifesta: longtime colleagues and bibliophiles Nailah Folami Imoja of Barbados' contingent and Andy Taitt of The Book Place.  They were in adjoining book stalls at Carifesta XIII held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in Barbados from August 17-27, 2017.  Photo Copyright © 2017 by Graham Bannister.

“…AND WHEN I RUN, I feel His pleasure.”

ArtsEtc intern Racquel Griffith: touching the dragon with one hand while still grasping The Broken Trident with the other.  Photo Copyright  © 2017.