Highlights from ArtsEtc's 4 Love of Barbados event at Spice of Life, November 2024.
 

Have you ever had an idea that started as a small thing, a seed, barely an imagining and then watched it as it grew legs, wings—a mind, even, of its own?

That’s what ArtsEtc has experienced over the last few months with its storytelling and publishing project 4 Love of Barbados.

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.

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.

Pupils of St Margaret's Primary in St John show their best "lightning bolts." We would use Usain Bolt's trademark pose and other fun stretches to prepare for our storybook travels. (Photo: S. A. Devonish)
 

The drive to Glenburnie takes you east to a part of St. John that is so far flung it is practically in the ocean.

I made it my escape every Tuesday for six weeks to read to schoolchildren there.

ARTSETC is known mainly for its involvement in the arts in Barbados but we love it when we also get to explore the “et cetera” side of what we do.