Joshua Sur­tees

The dust has set­tled on the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest 2014.

T&T's literati have re­treat­ed from the Na­tion­al Li­brary back to their book­ish en­claves to lis­ten to Bo­cas Ra­dio we­b­casts, some of them suf­fer­ing from what is known as "Bo­cas ta­ban­ca."

The dust is col­lect­ing on old copies of pa­per­back books which had been dust­ed down and nos­tal­gi­cal­ly pe­rused.

Yet there is no fear in this hand­ful of dust. The Caribbean lit­er­ary world has again been treat­ed to five days of fear­less writ­ing and fear­less read­ing. Shiny new nov­els have been print­ed, signed and sold. Po­et­ry has been per­formed, prizes dis­pensed, work­shops work­shopped, films screened.

School­child­ren have come in­to close con­tact with the lit­er­ary genre. A host of au­thors have flown back home, their ap­petite for T&T sat­ed for an­oth­er year, among them Lin­ton Kwe­si John­son, Caryl Phillips and Lor­na Good­i­son, to name a few.

The T&T Guardian spoke to four peo­ple in­ti­mate­ly in­volved in the 2014 fes­ti­val to get their in­side take on how it un­fold­ed.

Nicholas Laugh­lin -Pro­gramme di­rec­tor of the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest

What were your per­son­al high­lights at this year's Bo­cas?

Our Fri­day-night po­et­ry event at Bo­hemia. We had nine po­ets plus two sur­prise guests to com­mem­o­rate the 60th birth year of the late Mikey Smith. It's in­cred­i­ble that we had Lin­ton Kwe­si John­son, Lor­na Good­i­son, Mervyn Mor­ris, Kwame Dawes, An­tho­ny Joseph, Vah­ni Capildeo, and Kei Miller to­geth­er on one stage, plus some ex­treme­ly tal­ent­ed new­er voic­es. It felt his­toric. When Lin­ton read Mikey Smith's icon­ic po­em Mi Cyaan Be­lieve It, I don't think any­one with a his­tor­i­cal sense of Caribbean po­et­ry can have been un­moved.

I felt a qui­eter ver­sion of the same emo­tion the fol­low­ing morn­ing, when a small group of Guyanese writ­ers paid trib­ute to the po­et and ed­i­tor AJ Sey­mour, one of the peo­ple who gave West In­di­an lit­er­a­ture a sense of its own worth in the 1940s and 50s.

The event I en­joyed most was the Sun­day-af­ter­noon dis­cus­sion on Shake­speare, a rau­cous, in­sight­ful con­ver­sa­tion on Shake­speare's rel­e­vance to the Caribbean 450 years af­ter his birth.

And one el­e­ment that ex­cites me every year is the space we make for new, emerg­ing writ­ers.

What feed­back have you got?

What the writ­ers en­joy most is the in­for­mal­i­ty and ge­nial­i­ty of the fes­ti­val, and the chance to meet old friends and ad­mired peers. Our au­di­ence likes the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of the writ­ers. It's re­al­ly easy at Bo­cas to run in­to a favourite au­thor, have a con­ver­sa­tion, pose for a pho­to.

Do you see the same faces at­tend­ing each year or were there new­bies?

It's en­cour­ag­ing to see re­peat vis­i­tors as well as new faces. It's a con­tin­u­ing ef­fort to bring in new au­di­ences and con­vince peo­ple who don't think of them­selves as "lit­er­ary." His­tor­i­cal­ly, books and lit­er­a­ture have been seen as the province of a cul­tur­al elite. That shouldn't be so, and we're al­ways try­ing to imag­ine new ways to break that pre­con­cep­tion.

We've be­gun stag­ing Bo­cas events year-round in South, Cen­tral and in To­ba­go. It's al­so fas­ci­nat­ing to see youth­ful­ness of the crowds that come to the Vers­es Bo­cas Po­et­ry Slam. Lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds had to be turned away from the fi­nals be­cause they could not phys­i­cal­ly fit in the venue.

Ayan­na Gillian Lloyd -Emerg­ing fic­tion writer

The Who's Next show­case was my sec­ond pub­lic read­ing. The first was at UWI's Cam­pus Lit Fest. Both were prompt­ed by the St James Writer's Room led by Monique Rof­fey as part of her pro­gramme to de­vel­op new writ­ers. I was thrilled when Bo­cas asked me to be part of the show­case. It's a well or­gan­ised, care­ful­ly thought out event, I left feel­ing en­er­gised and near eu­phor­ic.

I found all the writ­ers re­al­ly ap­proach­able and will­ing to share ad­vice with new writ­ers. Some of my per­son­al high­lights were meet­ing Lin­ton Kwe­si John­son, Lor­na Good­i­son and Kei Miller. Be­cause Bo­cas is so small and in­ti­mate there's no huge di­vide be­tween es­tab­lished au­thors and new writ­ers. I've made good friends at Bo­cas who have be­come men­tors. The best ad­vice was from LKJ: don't stop!

I read an ex­cerpt in­spired by the events af­ter the death of my moth­er. It dealt with the ex­pe­ri­ence of dress­ing her body in the fu­ner­al home. Hard to write and hard­er to read. Fic­tion, even when in­spired by life events is still fic­tion, though.

The treat­ment, the se­lec­tion of the nar­ra­tive voice, the causal re­la­tion­ship be­tween scenes is still crit­i­cal. Its not life vom­it, it's not ther­a­py, it's art.

I come from a fam­i­ly of read­ers, teach­ers and mu­si­cians. About two years ago I start­ed work­ing on my writ­ing more se­ri­ous­ly, get­ting down the sto­ries that had been liv­ing in my head.

It's dif­fi­cult to say whether there even is a young lit­er­ary scene in T&T. Spo­ken-word events are more pop­u­lar with young peo­ple than text-bound po­et­ry.

Any­one who is se­ri­ous­ly in­ter­est­ed in de­vel­op­ing as a writer in T&T comes to Bo­cas. Hope­ful­ly in fu­ture there will be more lit­er­ary agents at­tend­ing, in­clud­ing those not known for pub­lish­ing Caribbean writ­ing. And it would be great to see pan­el dis­cus­sions of the work of young lo­cal writ­ers.

Idrees Jali Saleem -Win­ner of the Vers­es Bo­cas Po­et­ry Slam Fi­nals 2014

Last year I placed fifth in the spo­ken-word com­pe­ti­tion. This year I was part of the open mic events and was im­pressed by the way every­thing flowed and was held to­geth­er by a small band of big hearts.

I met great writ­ers, Earl Lovelace, Gillian Moor and Vlad­mir Lu­cien amongst oth­ers. There were con­ver­sa­tions about prob­a­ble per­for­mances abroad and en­cour­age­ments to con­tin­ue along my path.

I per­formed a piece on claim­ing and cre­at­ing my iden­ti­ty as a per­former. While em­u­lat­ing and ac­knowl­edg­ing the greats, I seek my own print in spo­ken-word his­to­ry. It was per­formed in the form of an ex­change of ban­ter be­tween my­self and a ro­bot who claims he is re­spon­si­ble for my lyri­cal prowess.

I have loved writ­ing for as long as I can re­mem­ber and I was al­ways a per­former, it runs through my fam­i­ly on both sides, but I didn't love the stage. Anx­i­ety was my biggest is­sue. But I was in­tro­duced to the stage thru the St Au­gus­tine dra­ma club sev­en years ago. Two years lat­er I was in­tro­duced to spo­ken word through Muham­mad Muwak­il of Free­town Col­lec­tive. He was pres­i­dent of an open-mic fo­rum on cam­pus by the name of U.We Speak.

The stage is a drug. When you add "I have some­thing to say" to that mix, it be­comes some­thing ex­hil­a­rat­ing. The feel­ing of com­pe­ti­tion, es­pe­cial­ly when you know how fiery these com­peti­tors are, can make your heart ex­plode. Your com­po­sure must be that of a monk's. But al­though I was ner­vous, the sup­port was ex­tra­or­di­nary.

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Vladimir Lu­cien -St Lu­cian au­thor of Sound­ing Ground

I've al­ways had this strange vi­sion of how na­tions come in­to be­ing: peo­ple mov­ing around in the same space, shoul­ders brush­ing, ears catch­ing the var­i­ous voic­es and through some cu­mu­la­tive process, the na­tion is born. This is sim­i­lar to how I see Bo­cas. A place where Caribbean lit­er­a­ture is reaf­firmed by the nu­mer­ous events but al­so just be­ing in that space, walk­ing be­tween events, lim­ing.

I met sev­er­al writ­ers, in­clud­ing Kwame Dawes, who edit­ed my col­lec­tion, Kei Miller, who is a plea­sure to meet and a phe­nom­e­nal po­et. Lin­ton Kwe­si John­son's pres­ence was pow­er­ful for many of us in many ways. Caz Phillips is most cer­tain­ly one of my he­roes. Mervyn Mor­ris is a pres­ence that is both soft and stur­dy. Lor­na Good­i­son is a beau­ti­ful pres­ence. Younger writ­ers like Ma­li­ka Book­er, An­tho­ny Joseph, Lau­ren Al­leyne, Gaiu­tra Ba­hadur, No-Vi­o­let Bu­l­awayo, Roland Wat­son Grant. So many amaz­ing hu­man be­ings.

Sound­ing Ground pays trib­ute to all kinds of in­flu­ences. I re­flect on the life and death of Wal­ter Rod­ney. There's a po­em writ­ten when I vis­it­ed CLR James' grave a few years ago. The po­ems flit about the lan­guage com­plex/con­tin­u­um of St Lu­cia. I feel im­mense­ly priv­i­leged to have a book un­der that cat­e­go­ry: Caribbean lit­er­a­ture.