Winning Words: A Bajan Love Story

 

 

“TYRONE, YOU HEAR DAT?”

He grumbled and turned his back to her. 

“Tyrone,” she hissed again. “Get up, somebody outside de house.”

“Alright…alright,” he mumbled as he scratched his chest sleepily and crawled from beneath the bedsheet.

Winning Words: Resurrection 1

 

 

No kites up in the air this year
No singing angels’ majestic climb
No raging bulls
No dancing round-kite
Square-kite
Box-kite
Not a bat-kite in the blue sky

Little ones
Distracted by a different story 
Backs turned to this ascension 
Too busy
Plugged into their PlayStations
YouTube fingers google walking portable brains

Winning Words: If Only on the Outside/If Only on the Inside

 

 

If only on the outside
I am fat
so I cannot accept that
I am worthy
I know deep down
my bulging belly labels me obese
and I see
my heavier hips generate the most stares
I realize
my body is riddled with cellulite
and I understand
the mirror can only present its truth
I acknowledge that
my value is measured primarily as a number on a scale
so no one can make me believe
I am beautiful
if only on the inside

Winning Words: Exhaustive Listening

 

 

So this dumbass asked me the other day
“Why does Black History Month always have to be about
Death and Rosa Parks and Malcolm X and MLK?
Why can’t y’all get over it and just find some happy shit to say?”

I had to summon the sarcasm of seventy generations 
To say:
Oh I’m sorry
Sorry my history is about as convenient for you 
As it is for me
Sorry our blood ain’t blue enough for you
When you spill it in the streets

Winning Words: Dear White People

 

 

Dear white people… 
I’m not here to fight, I’m not here to bargain, I’m not here to scream. 
You’re here to listen. 
The place you call home, The Land of the Free. Was constructed by People of Colour.
Mechanized by your predecessors and ancestors who used genocide, violence 
    and slavery as fuel.
Undisputable.  Undeniable.  Unforgivable. 

Winning Words: Heinz 57, Maybe?

 

 

MANY BARBADIANS consider me white.  At CBC, the late Terry Mayers said no matter what I do or how I think and feel I’ll always be treated as white.  This was in no way a bad thing, he was putting a name to a mindset I was already aware of!  Like me, he knew I was anything but.  I’m more mixed than Heinz 57: African-Danish-Italian-Carib-Portuguese-Scots, etc.  I said to him my mother’s birth certificate says she is Coloured.

Winning Words: An Open Letter to the Prime Minister, Re: #NelsonMustGo

 

 

In plenty and in time of need 
When this fair land was young 
Our brave forefathers sowed the seed 
From which our pride is sprung 
A pride that makes no wanton boast 
Of what it has withstood 
That binds our hearts from coast to coast 
The pride of nationhood

DEAR PRIME MINISTER,

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.

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.  

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