Zahra Gor­don

Nov­el­ist Earl Lovelace found it fit­ting to use per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence when he spoke on be­half of 22 au­thors who re­ceived Life­time Lit­er­ary Awards from the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (Nalis) dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day night.

The awards were pre­sent­ed in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence and Lovelace was al­so a fit­ting re­cip­i­ent. In his re­marks, he not­ed that he was "very much a writer of the In­de­pen­dence era," since his first work was pub­lished in 1962.

The crux of Lovelace's re­flec­tion on writ­ing, how­ev­er, came through his dis­cus­sion of the con­tri­bu­tion au­thors make to the so­cial and cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion. He is one of a few Caribbean writ­ers who has not mi­grat­ed to the US or Eu­rope.

"What be­ing here has meant is that I have been present to wit­ness the Caribbean un­fold, to see in in­ti­mate de­tail the strug­gles be­tween the forces that have been or­gan­ised to sup­press our imag­i­na­tion and those who have been con­cerned with free­ing the imag­i­na­tion to en­vi­sion and yield a bet­ter world," Lovelace said.

Through the evo­lu­tion of fash­ion, he added, one can eval­u­ate suc­cess. Ac­cord­ing to Lovelace, the clothes that once rep­re­sent­ed "ex­pres­sions of our unique selves," such as the dashi­ki and Nehru jack­et and the out­fits im­i­tat­ing John Wayne and Humphrey Bog­a­rt, have been re­placed by tuxe­dos and sag­ging pants like those of dance­hall star Vy­bz Kar­tel.

"We have to ques­tion whether we are los­ing them both to a lack of imag­i­na­tion or if what we are wit­ness­ing are the re­hearsals of a bad­ly script­ed play...This is where our writ­ers come in, to help us to see that imag­in­ing a bet­ter fu­ture lies ex­act­ly in front of con­fronting the present," he said.

And while Lovelace ob­served that the num­ber of Caribbean writ­ers in­ter­ro­gat­ing the present has grown con­sid­er­ably since his ear­ly days, he hoped they would be ap­pre­ci­at­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

"I wish that we grasp how im­por­tant they are to us and that we pay at­ten­tion to their de­vel­op­ment at least as much as we pay at­ten­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of crick­eters and ath­letes, un­less we be­lieve that the ideas of what the world should look like are to be pro­vid­ed, like the tuxe­dos, by oth­ers," he said.

Oth­er speak­ers at the cer­e­mo­ny in­clud­ed Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, Nalis ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Lu­cia Phillip, Bo­cas Lit Fest founder Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown and Her­itage Li­brary act­ing di­rec­tor Mar­guerite Anne.

Life­time Lit­er­ary Awards

An­dre Alex­is

Michael An­tho­ny

Robert An­toni

Neil Bis­soon­dath

Ralph de Boissiere

Willi Chen

Rosa Guy

Joanne Haynes

Dr Mer­le Hodge

CLR James

Earl Lovelace

Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj

Balkr­ish­na Naipaul

Shiv­ad­har Sriv­inasa Naipaul

Sir Vidia Naipaul

Dr Lak­sh­mi Per­saud

Mar­lene Nourbese Philip

Dr Eliz­a­beth Nunez

Prof Ken­neth Ram­c­hand

Lawrence Scott

Samuel Selvon

John Stew­art