Bim LitFest 2014 was an exciting and varied two-and-a-half days of celebrating the written word in Barbados. For those who missed it and those looking forward to the next one, here’s our Festival in 30—a round-up of events in 30 observations including highlights, hurdles, and other happenings.
• Opening ceremony took place Thursday, May 15 at the Warner-Walcott Theatre of the EBCCI. Mega points for Eddie Baugh’s feature address (it was like oxygen for any writer and will be appearing in the next edition of Bim magazine). Also for the wonderful saxophone of Kieshelle Rawlins as part of the accompaniment to Carlyon Blackman’s poem. Those were the highlights. Points off, however, for Icil Phillips as Madre of Ceremonies. The theatre maven was lackluster on the night and, perhaps, a little too deadpan in her delivery for some.
• Workshops. Participants enjoyed the Writers’ workshops. In fact, Erna Brodber extended hers by a full hour after enthusiastic participants begged her to continue. A deeply moved Erna said afterwards, “some of the [written] responses were so good, they brought tears to my eyes. I’m going back [home] stronger.” Erna is a superstar. It’s official.
The Brodber fiction workshop
• Speculative fiction authors Robert Edison Sandiford and Karen Lord facilitated a Fiction Workshop for Bim LitFest 2014. Their chosen genre and publishing success proved key in attracting quite a few participants to the session. One writing exercise was to use Bridgetown locations, chosen by Robert, as writing prompts. A challenge but a rewarding one, he reports, although he did smack his head when he drew the very location he knew he didn’t want: Swan Street.
• Link to Kwame Slusher’s blog on the Festival and the Fiction workshop and find out where Bim LitFest rates in a list of the Caribbean’s top book festivals here.
• And Verna Wilkins is a rock star. Also official. The children’s writer, UK publisher and founder of Tamarind Books, conducted a special NCF Writers’ Clinic as part of Bim LitFest Children’s Fair. Her session, under the festival tent in Independence Square, was supposed to be a workshop but when local writers registered in their numbers and even more turned out on the day, she spun cool-cool so, on dime and delivered a seminar instead right there under the tent, traffic zooming by and t’ing. Now that’s what you call style—with the substance to back it up!
• The theme for Bim LitFest 2014 was Crossings: Breaking Borders—a concept that implies a whole lot of risk-taking. Nowhere was more risk taken this Festival than for Bim Rock Variations, the headliner event for literary readings and performance. Organisers took a chance and decided not to go with repeat appearances by established Barbadian writers from 2012. Instead they experimented by showcasing emerging and raw Barbadian talent on the same stage with established, visiting writers. Did it work? Those who attended the two gala events (Friday evening in Independence Square and Saturday evening at the Waterfront Café) might reasonably respond, No, it didn’t. We don’t want to say “never the twain and never again” for Bim Rock Variations 2016—there’s plenty to be gained by both sides in having established and emerging talent share the same space—but the watchword WILL be quality. And the password will be: young, raw, emerging Bajan writer? Get thee to a workshop or masterclass. Now. Quick.
• Anansi—trickster spider of West African lore, son of the sky god, keeper of all stories, symbol of resistance and survival. Children love him! And how they loved Barbadian actor Neil Waithe who brought the mischief-maker to life beautifully for Bim LitFest Children’s Fair 2014. His spider god costume was made by award-winning band designer Anwar Muhammad. Face paint by Jennifer Fitzgerald of Wacky Expressions.
Anansi the Spider with boat builders and designers (top) and, above, with award-winning junior writer and workshop participant Imani Gaskin
• If coverage in one local paper was anything to go by, the only events happening Festival weekend were a rally at Bushy Park and an auction at Villa Nova. A month on, and the same paper’s headlines are screaming Government’s call for the need to improve written English performance at Common Entrance. Sadly, the Festival was largely ignored by the media while Government actually reduced its funding for the event. The Bim Literary Festival and Book Fair, founded in 2012 by Writers Ink and staged every two years, is precisely about raising literacy awareness and standards through the love of books, reading, and writing. It’s a Festival that runs in May—Child Month. If literacy is not a child welfare issue, then what is? Planning for Bim LitFest 2016 has started. Government and media, we invite you to take a look here and also a peek here and to partner early and more fully with us next Festival.
• Anansi’s WordKeepers. These lovely volunteers at the Bim LitFest Children’s Fair took care of everything from leading the Tuk Parade and assisting Anansi, to helping out at the Word-Art Wall and making sure we had water. Well done and many thanks, ladies!
Anansi’s Wordkeepers: L-r: Dawnte Alleyne, Jana Joseph, Izora Devonish, and Maya Joseph, with Kiara Carvalho, the Fair’s official Book Girl, in front. Not pictured is Aeryn Sandiford.
• A magic moment: The raising of the Chamberlain Bridge and the lyrical commentary of Festival Director Esther Phillips as the Honey Bea II sailed through marking the climax of Bim LitFest 2014. The bridges, the boats, the water, and people in Independence Square lingering after the day’s events, smiling, enchanted by the spectacle.
• Giant Chess—a big hit with visitors to the Bim LitFest Children’s Fair. Many thanks to Dr. Jordan of the Barbados Chess Federation and his team, who also hosted regular-size chess games that day.
Chess, everyone?
• The following authors launched books at Bim LitFest 2014: Vladmir Lucien, Sounding Ground (Peepal Tree); Shakirah Bourne, In Time of Need; Cher Corbin, Virtualis; and Dorothea Smartt, Reader, I Married Him and Other Queer Goings On. We wish them healthy sales and great reviews. The book launch and book fair elements of the Festival are, with the Book Source’s help, already being addressed for 2016.
• This is how we do it! There was a lot of working together to make it work for Bim LitFest 2014. Children’s Fair emcee Keoma Mallett became a roaring tiger to help Deanne Kennedy tell her Anansi story. For her “Black Belly Sheep” poem, Deanne also had company on stage in the shape of Representative for St. John Mara Thompson. Actress Varia Williams assisted poet Philip Nanton with his dramatization of Maco’s Revenge. Children helped costume designer Anwar Muhammad decorate his Festival boat—the appropriately named Words Need Love II; writer Sandra Sealy jumped in to lend Sarah Venable a hand at the Word-Art Wall; and Days Books teamed up with Oxford University Educational Press’ Project X to encourage junior readers onto the Festival stage.
• In the run-up to the Festival, Director Esther Phillips generated much interest and goodwill for the event in A Word View, her bi-weekly column for the Sunday Sun. Read what she wrote about the Bridgetown Literary Tour here and look out for her Festival review column in the Sunday Sun on June 29. A taste-tester meanwhile…
• “Not to support an event that aims to promote love of literature and improve the nation’s language and analytical skills, is a near-tragedy….We understand that in difficult economic times, bread becomes a priority. But while a hungry man is an angry man, an illiterate one may prove more dangerous to a society.”—Esther Phillips, A Word View.
• Partners, sponsors, friends and supporters of Bim LitFest 2014—We salute and thank you!
• “Woodville”, the home of the late Frank Collymore, was one of the highlight stops on the first ever Bridgetown Literary Tour, itself a standout event of the Festival. Click here to learn more. In this photo, Colly’s widow Mrs Ellyce Collymore greets visitors; and in this photo, co-tour guide Victor Cooke reads an excerpt from Kamau Brathwaite’s “South” at the Roundhouse, the poet’s birthplace on Bay Street.
Ellyce Collymore receives the tourists at “Woodville”
• The Waterfront Café’s Red Room—perfect setting for featured readings by the Festival’s headline guest writers Erna Brodber and Edward Baugh. Sadly, the Bim LitFest events are most likely the last to be staged in the Red Room, which will be shortly closing its doors. The Waterfront Café, a partner of Bim LitFest 2014, continues meanwhile.
• You’ve got to hand it to Peter Laurie. One minute the former diplomat, columnist and author of Caribbean cookbooks, is in the National Library discussing identity as part of a Bim LitFest Crossings panel. Next minute he’s reading from his Mauby the Cat series to children as part of the Bim LitFest Children’s Story Parade. Writers wear many hats and we switch ’em with style.
• And while we’re on the subject, kudos to coordinators of the four Crossings discussion panels, committee members Christine Barrow and Phillip Nanton. The sessions (on Panama, Race and Ethnicity, Sanity & Insanity, and Sexualities) were nicely structured, lively, and provocative.
• Visiting author Ramabai Espinet tried to keep it short when she read Friday night Bim Rock Variations in Independence Square but the audience (making up in attentiveness what it lacked in numbers) wouldn’t hear of it. Ramabai’s words were lyrical and intense, powerful and startling. More, more! Keep reading! came the calls, and so she did.
• Esther Phillips (left) translates for Haitian poet Evelyne Trouillot at Bim Rock Variations—a double treat hearing Evelyne’s words in French and in English.
• One complaint about Bim LitFest 2014 was that information was slow and late in coming—particularly where the programme was concerned. There were problems with the website, unfortunately. Next time, advertising and communications will get a severe overhaul. We are listening to ya!
• On the upshot, there was plenty of general information available online and many of the authors and other individuals involved in the festival provided Time outs—intriguing insights into their favourite books and authors. Read some of those Festival Time Outs here or...
• Consider this from Maya Joseph, aged 14 of the Lodge School, who was one of Anansi’s WordKeepers at Bim LitFest Children’s Fair: “I read Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack by Austin Clarke between the ages of six and eight. It grabbed me because it gave me a view of a young schoolboy’s village life in Barbados in the 1940s and 50s. My favourite book is Ti-Jean and His Brothers by Derek Walcott, and my favourite author is Derek Walcott.”
• Or this from Ingrid Persaud, a Crossings discussion panelist and author of If I Never Went Home: “For comfort reading, I go to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” and it always inspires. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as a young teenager and after that was hooked on the author. I have not actually reread the book for decades so not sure what it would mean to me now. How do I show words love? If I love a word and it’s a new relationship, I try to play it cool—maybe smile when I see it or give a secret wink. And when I type that word my fingers are gentle on the keyboard. Yes, I may be an old-fashioned romantic.”
• Bajan writer folk! Committee members, book launchers, booksellers and other members of the literary community after the Friday book launch.
Back row, l-r: Committee member Robert Edison Sandiford, book launcher Cher Corbin, committee member Linda M. Deane, book launcher Shakirah Bourne, writer Sandra Sealy, committee member Theo Williams. Front row, l-r: Erica Hinkson of Book Source, poet Robert Gibson.
(• Thanks to the following who took photos of the Festival and so generously made them available for our use: Sandra Sealy, Carol George-Gaskin, Mark McWatt, Sharon Hurley Hall, Jeniece Skeete, Ayesha Gibson-Gill. See the full Bim LitFest in 30 photo album here.
• Thanks also to everyone who helped transform Independence Square for the Festival. As one visitor who arrived while the Children’s Fair was in full swing remarked, the Square never looked so colourful and inviting, filled with so many laughing children and happy people. Barbados is beautiful!
• And, yes, the dates for Bim LitFest 2016 have already been decided. As we take on board the constructive criticism and build on the highpoints, stay tuned to this spot for news of an even bigger and better festival.
