Writers Shakirah Bourne & Brian Franklin along with AE Editor Robert Edison Sandiford: only part of the Bajan Posse @ Bocas 8 in Trinidad and Tobago. Photo Copyright © 2018 by Brian Franklin.
"Imagination is our region's greatest resource." Gregory Camejo, One Caribbean Media Group Executive—Corporate Services
MULTIPLE award ceremonies. Dozens of writers. An explosion of workshops, readings and panel discussions. Movies and calypso and theatre performances, too. And family in Barataria. My first Bocas Lit Fest, I thought the best way to get it down (oh, and there was a children’s fair!) was to take it day by day.
DAY 1/ April 25, 2018
It’s great to feel a welcome as a writer—to be in a place where one does feel a welcome. It’s the festival, yes, but also the place, Port of Spain.
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Not that finding one’s purpose or meaning as a writer becomes any easier with experience. The singular role we once saw for ourselves can often shapeshift with the needs of our society, personal desires or agency playing bit parts.
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Class acts only look easy. The Burt Awards and official festival launch at the new Writers Centre on Alcazar Street in St Clair is convivial, with citations read by judge Janet Smyth (UK-based Alex Wheatle and Barbadian Karen Lord were the two others) and opening remarks by festival founder Marina Salandy-Brown sprinkled over the mingling. Then Nicholas Laughlin, the festival’s program director, tells me a story about a workshop facilitator that morning who was an “absolute jumbie”—disorganized in her thoughts and presentation, dismissive of the rules of engagement as given to her by festival organizers. Running overtime with no sign of stopping, he had to hijack the mike from her. “You think you’ve seen or know everything that can happen after eight years of Bocas.”
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Friends can be forgiving. Philip Nanton taps my shoulder. “Hi, Robert.” We shake hands like two comrades who haven’t seen each other in a while. “Don’t worry. I won’t hold it against you. For long.” He laughs and smiles. “I appreciate that,” I say. We get the potentially awkward moment out of the way. I was a non-fiction judge for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. He entered Frontiers of the Caribbean. There was no overall winner this year in my category and only two nominations, not three. His title wasn’t among them. We talk as we have come to over the last nearly twenty years when at such events. Trying not to take ourselves too seriously while still maintaining a sense of occasion.
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Imam Baksh, from Guyana, takes the top Burt Award for his YA novel The Dark of the Sea. Second time for him. Barbadian Shakirah Bourne with My Fishy Stepmom and Bermudan Elizabeth J. Jones with A Dark Iris, both also novels, are two highly praised finalists.
Day 2/ April 26, 2018
“Island state of mind.” Along with YA lit and archiving, another main theme at this year’s Bocas. Panel thoughts in the Old Fire Station: We create, others appreciate. We could better value our own. Should. Don’t. Why not? Great “icons”—in all our countries. All, for the most part—across all fields—are either underused and misunderstood or abused. The same misgivings we have in Bim exist in TT and St Vincent…Jamaica, too…. Pan taken for granted. (Who would’ve thought?) Rote teaching needs reducing. Leadership needs teaching, life skills. Beware the cult of personality. Corporate Caribbean can do more (but has been doing).
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“That was funny.”
“A treat!”
“You missed something!”
Overheard from students, writers, teachers after their encounter with YA writer Alex Wheatle and his work.
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More forgiveness and understanding. I talk quite unexpectedly to Ronald Bickram. (There’s no such thing as an innocent introduction.) He was an entrant in the non-fiction category for the Bocas Prize. He admits his work needed more vigorous editing. “I went back and found a mistake on every page!” We have a frank talk about the need for work to be in the best place possible before being released to the world, and for judges and entrants to have conversations similar to ours. “For writers like me to know what to do—how to make the work better,” he says. We shake on this, and he tells me he has a relative in Black Rock, St Michael, not far from where my mother grew up in Barbados. She has a Chinese restaurant with local flare, Wing Kwong. “Tell Rene you met me!”
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Films from the Pacific, specifically Papua New Guinea and Tonga. The discussion is not just about “images of ourselves.” It’s about what those images say about us and about our control over their representation. With narration and endings that are not “conventional” or typically Western, the series of short films screened stay true to the people doing the storytelling and to the stories being told.
Day 3/ April 27, 2018
Calypso in Costa Rica. Who would’ve thought? But, honestly, some of the best of who and what we are as a people has been preserved elsewhere. Here, in the form of a 99-year-old calypsonian named Walter Ferguson. Calypso is part of Costa Rica’s National Intangible Heritage. And in TT?
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Books bought at the festival: Curfew Chronicles by Jennifer Rahim (winner of the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize), Mad Woman by Shara McCallum, Ricantations by Loretta Collins Klobah, Doe Songs by Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, The Art of White Roses by Viviana Prado-Núñez, Children of the Spider by Imam Baksh….
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Books to buy after the festival: Brother by David Chariandy, The Hidden Keys by André Alexis, Reef by Romesh Gunesekera, The Rainmaker’s Mistake by Erna Brodber, Everyone Knows I am a Haunting by Shivanee Ramlochan, Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar, Visible Instruments by Michael Kelleher, The Strange Years of My Life by Nicholas Laughlin, Giant by Richard Georges….
Day 4/ April 28, 2018
A rumbling, retreating sunrise. There’s a crescendo of cars on the street below my third-floor room in the Kapok Hotel. A Caribbean greyness recedes into a pasty hue. Four hours to today’s start of Bocas.
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The greyness returns, dimming the world in warm, even measures. Fifteen minutes to pick up for my last Bocas soirée.
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Remember to thank Marina, Nicholas, Shivanee, Natacha, Gem, Candice—all of Team Bocas, very much including all the kind, helpful volunteers, and the National Library and hotel staff….
DAY 5/ April 29, 2018
I visit my cousins in Barataria. First time in twelve years we’re seeing each other. We sit on the edge of kitchen chairs and footboards, drink and talk. My second mum Cousin Joyce can no longer see but easily recognized my voice coming up the steps. I promise her and her children and grandchildren not to wait another decade before making my way back.
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Needed: More Translations. Loretta Collins Klobah puts it persuasively during one of her sessions when she suggests translations of Caribbean Literature for the region matter if we are to understand better the federation we already represent as writers.
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Did I say there was the right balance of the casual and the curated? Of writing being hard work, of literature being fun?
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“There are always at least a couple of versions of Bocas,” notes the artist moments from preparing for her return flight.
Let this be mine.
Last modified May 20, 2018.
