Gillian Moore

In a ca­reer that has spanned decades, Earl Lovelace has won two Caribbean writ­ing prizes. The es­teemed au­thor was award­ed the first Grand Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture by the Re­gion­al Coun­cil of Guade­loupe ear­li­er this month, for his new book, Is Just a Movie. The last re­gion­al ac­co­lade he re­ceived was the In­de­pen­dence Lit­er­ary Prize in 1965, which he won for While Gods Are Falling. In an in­ter­view at his Cas­cade home he said: "I don't think there has been a prize for lo­cal writ­ing since." He called for the so­ci­ety and the me­dia to do more to recog­nise pos­i­tive ac­com­plish­ments: "It's al­most like we have a prob­lem with suc­cess." The new lit­er­ary prize, worth &eu­ro;10,000 (US$15,000), was cre­at­ed in No­vem­ber, 2008 by the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Writ­ers at the in­au­gur­al meet­ing of the body, which was held un­der the pa­tron­age of Derek Wal­cott. The group took the de­ci­sion to ho­n­our a Caribbean au­thor writ­ing in French, Eng­lish, Span­ish or Dutch. Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion's Web site, the prize was to re­ward "an au­thor who clear­ly demon­strates an open Caribbeaness." It would pay "trib­ute to a dis­tin­guished ser­vant of fine Caribbean lit­er­a­ture" for "a work in which dif­fer­ences are tran­scend­ed and the log­ics, lan­guages and imag­i­na­tive worlds of a com­mon Caribbean iden­ti­ty are ex­plored." Is Just a Movie, with its themes of iden­ti­ty, di­ver­si­ty and be­long­ing, writ­ten in Lovelace's lyri­cal and com­pas­sion­ate prose, ev­i­dent­ly fits the bill.

'Lit Fest tremen­dous'

Com­ment­ing on the up­com­ing Bo­cas Lit Fest, which will al­so of­fer a mon­e­tary prize for Caribbean writ­ing, Lovelace said: "I wish it well. I think it's a tremen­dous thing. "For writ­ers who live in the Caribbean, there are very few prizes they can qual­i­fy for, by them­selves." He has been asked to be one of the fea­tured read­ers at Bo­cas Lit Fest, which will take place at Nalis on Aber­crom­by Street, from April 28 to May 1.

A lot more to come

As Lovelace fans will know, his lat­est work has been long in com­ing; his last nov­el, Salt, for which he gar­nered the Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers' Prize, was pub­lished in 1997. So now that Is Just a Movie is out and do­ing well, what's next for the 75-year-old au­thor? "I have a lot of things to do ac­tu­al­ly," he says. "Among them is a nov­el which I have been work­ing on for a lit­tle while-an au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, which I have pret­ty much fin­ished a first draft of. "I have a screen­play to com­plete and I have some plays which I have to at­tend to, so I have a lot to do."

Matu­ra in­spi­ra­tion

Lovelace made the trip to Guade­loupe for the an­nounce­ment of the prize, for which six re­gion­al writ­ers had been short-list­ed. The event was ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Mar­tini­quan po­et and writer, Edouard Glis­sant. "There were about 70 peo­ple," he said, "in­clud­ing writ­ers, pub­lish­ers, schol­ars, press, aca­d­e­mics." He re­counts: "We had to trav­el far to get to the place where the cer­e­mo­ny was held. It was in an es­tate house up on a hill; it was quite love­ly. It showed you what a rur­al set­ting can be like.

"We al­so went to (Guade­lou­pi­an writer) Si­mone Schwarz-Bart's coun­try house. It was a very love­ly place; it gave you a sense of space." He said the rur­al beau­ty of the spaces gave him some in­spi­ra­tion for an­oth­er ma­jor project, the Matu­ra-based Earl Lovelace Foun­da­tion. The or­gan­i­sa­tion aims to build a re­search cen­tre, li­brary and mul­ti-pur­pose fa­cil­i­ty, and to host fes­ti­vals and work­shops for young re­gion­al writ­ers. "We just got the pa­per­work done for the reg­is­ter­ing of the com­pa­ny," Lovelace said. "We're about to be­gin work, meet and re-en­er­gise plans. Some­times you have all the en­er­gy, every­thing is work­ing, then you hit a bump. But we're about to go for­ward again." "I think it will be very im­por­tant. That is one of the things I re­al­ly look for­ward to see­ing done, both for my­self but cer­tain­ly for the com­mu­ni­ty."