Si­mon Lee

The At­lantic un­ruf­fles it­self along the wide sweep of Grand Riv­iere's beach, ham­mer­ing the sand with Shango per­cus­sion.

Stark the dog is on paws, obliv­i­ous in the shade of Mt Plaisir Es­tate's al fres­co din­ing room to the crash of break­ers, the rustling of note­books, mut­ed lit­er­ary con­ver­sa­tions and even Miles Davis' lan­guid In a Silent Way seep­ing through gaps in the wood­en kitchen door, mu­sic min­gling with the aro­mas of the catch of the day fry­ing.

"This is a unique col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween friends who met be­cause of lit­er­a­ture," en­thus­es breeze-blown Monique Rof­fey, award-win­ning nov­el­ist and high­ly ex­pe­ri­enced Cre­ative Writ­ing lec­tur­er, ex­plain­ing the gen­e­sis of the re­cent four-day North Coast Writ­ers' Re­treat.

Over­all win­ner of the 2013 T&T Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val, Rof­fey linked up with friends in let­ters and life, 2012 Bo­cas Po­et­ry Prize win­ner Loret­ta Collins Klobah and Mt Plaisir pro­pri­etor Piero Guer­ri­ni to re­alise an idea which had been ges­tat­ing for a while: "We'd been talk­ing about this for years, and we (even­tu­al­ly) said "Let's just do it."

While writ­ers are known for "fab­ri­cat­ing", Rof­fey's claim about the re­treat's lit­er­ary an­tecedents is strict­ly fac­tu­al, though with a twist which reads like pure fic­tion: Ital­ian star pho­tog­ra­ph­er Guer­ri­ni, com­mis­sioned for a se­ries of pho­to es­says on the rich and fa­mous, comes to Trinidad cir­ca 1992 to shoot a pho­to es­say on No­bel Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott.

He vis­its Grande Riv­iere, falls in love with Mt Plaisir Es­tate, which he ini­tial­ly rents be­fore buy­ing it and es­tab­lish­ing his now in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-known eco ho­tel, a haunt for tur­tle watch­ers dur­ing nest­ing sea­son and the world weary through­out the year.

Guer­ri­ni came to Mt Plaisir with a mind­set which pre­pared him for his new role as host for re­treats with an eco/holis­tic/cre­ative fo­cus. Back in Italy he'd par­tic­i­pat­ed in Um­bria's Free Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ca­traz, run by Ja­copo Fo, son of an­oth­er No­bel lau­re­ate, play­wright Dario.

Wal­cott's project to open a cre­ative cen­tre on Rat Is­land, St Lu­cia was an­oth­er in­spi­ra­tional im­pe­tus.

Rof­fey and Klobah's mis­sion "To come to­geth­er to pro­vide sup­port and men­tor­ing for emerg­ing artists" syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly found an ide­al venue (beach­front sur­round­ed by rain­forest­ed hills plung­ing di­rect­ly in­to the sea) and al­ly at Mt Plaisir, prov­ing that the dreams of "old hip­pies, friends, al­lies and col­lab­o­ra­tors with the same mis­sion and a con­scious aware­ness of the en­vi­ron­ment and the arts" can be more po­tent than projects mount­ed by state bu­reau­crats, who lack both the pas­sion and work­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of those with a shared vi­sion.

Cal­i­forn­ian-born Klobah, "adopt­ed by the Caribbean" and a Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Ri­co's Rio Piedras cam­pus, brought sev­er­al fel­low UPR pro­fes­sors with her as par­tic­i­pants in the re­treat, whose com­ple­ment was made up of as­pir­ing, emerg­ing and es­tab­lished cre­ative writ­ers and vet­er­an jour­nal­ists and ed­i­tors from Trinidad, in­clud­ing for­mer Guardian Ed­i­tor-in-Chief and bi­og­ra­ph­er Judy Ray­mond, po­et and jour­nal­ist An­dre Ba­goo, nov­el­ist, po­et and Sun­day Guardian Arts Re­view Ed­i­tor Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni, along with re­view­er, po­et Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan, singer/song­writer Gillian Moore and de­but nov­el­ist An­na Levi. This An­glo­phone con­tin­gent was aug­ment­ed by Ja­maican po­et Mil­li­cent Gra­ham, whose com­mu­ni­ty-based Draw­ing Room project was an­oth­er in­spi­ra­tion for the re­treat.

For Klobah the re­treat was an op­por­tu­ni­ty "To bring to­geth­er Tri­nis and oth­er writ­ers of the re­gion and to es­tab­lish con­tact be­tween the Span­ish and An­glo­phone Caribbean...Among writ­ers, the de­sire for re­gion­al­ism has nev­er fad­ed–it's very much alive."

Like Rof­fey, Klobah cred­its cy­ber­space and the free plat­form of­fered by so­cial me­dia to grow col­lab­o­ra­tive projects be­tween re­gion­al artists.

She al­so refers to lit­er­ary fes­ti­vals like the Bo­cas, Ja­maica's Cal­abash and St Mar­tin's Book Fair or­gan­ised by Ne­he­si House pub­lish­er Lasana Sek­ou, as an im­por­tant net­work base. "I'm about pos­i­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion," Klobah ex­plains: "I put my thoughts and en­er­gy in­to pos­i­tive is­sues. The peo­ple in the work­shops (po­et­ry and life writ­ing) have treat­ed us re­al­ly well. It's been very pos­i­tive. This is the kind of en­er­gy lit­er­ary friend­ships de­vel­op in. It's not just the re­treat, now we're all con­nect­ed on Face­book."

Klobah's thoughts about the po­ten­tial of such col­lab­o­ra­tive projects like the North Coast Writ­ing Re­treat are es­pe­cial­ly per­ti­nent in the con­text of the cur­rent down­turn in the econ­o­my and the con­tin­ued emp­ty talk of "di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion" and the de­vel­op­ment of cul­tur­al in­dus­tries.

As Klobah says, "This (kind of col­lab­o­ra­tion) could be hap­pen­ing all over the Caribbean. It could lead to ex­pe­ri­enced writ­ers in T&T set­ting up their own projects." She and Rof­fey are al­ready plan­ning the next re­treat in Is­abel, Puer­to Ri­co, but she points out that here in T&T "What would help would be some gov­ern­ment en­dorse­ment," pos­si­bly from the Tourist Board, to de­vel­op Grand Riv­iere com­mu­ni­ty-based writ­ing projects (eco and wildlife writ­ing based on the tur­tle sea­son).

She men­tions Mil­li­cent Gra­ham's Draw­ing Room project in Ja­maica, which in­cor­po­rates pub­lic read­ings by writ­ers along with in­ter­ac­tion with the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, who bring their arts, crafts and foods to the col­lab­o­ra­tion, gen­er­at­ing in­come for the com­mu­ni­ty.

Klobah al­so high­light­ed the ben­e­fits of the re­treat for peo­ple at dif­fer­ent stages in writ­ing. "It's good for de­vel­op­ing writ­ers to meet more ex­pe­ri­enced writ­ers, who func­tion as com­men­ta­tors and men­tors. In my work­shops every­one got in­di­vid­ual time. These re­treats have a lev­el­ing-off ef­fect. Out there it's com­pet­i­tive, there are is­sues of rank­ing, ego, pub­lic per­sona. The re­treat gives writ­ers a chance to con­cen­trate on craft; how to do it on the page." De­spite her two de­grees in Cre­ative Writ­ing from Iowa Uni­ver­si­ty and her Bo­cas suc­cess, Klobah ad­mits "I go to re­treats when­ev­er I can af­ford it. It's nec­es­sary if your writ­ing is not go­ing to reach a plateau."

Par­tic­i­pants in the re­treat unan­i­mous­ly cel­e­brat­ed its suc­cess and rel­e­vance. Bren­da Dominguez, Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at UPR Baya­mon, agreed: "My ex­pec­ta­tions were sur­passed. The beau­ti­ful, tran­quil and iso­lat­ed beach set­ting plus the ex­cel­lent work­shop pre­sen­ta­tions...were con­ducive to a very re­ward­ing week­end. The Trinida­di­an par­tic­i­pants were a spe­cial bonus and made me and my hus­band feel very wel­come."

Her UPR col­league, Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish Nali­ni Natara­jan, waxed lyri­cal: "The ocean near­by, lap­ping up to our very rooms, the sup­port­ive spir­it and good Qi of the group and the amaz­ing food lov­ing­ly pre­pared and served...by Piero, are things I re­al­ly liked."

News­day jour­nal­ist and po­et An­dre Ba­goo was equal­ly ful­some in his praise: "An ex­cel­lent chance to learn, work­shop and to share work and ex­pe­ri­ence in a beau­ti­ful place with beau­ti­ful peo­ple. I gained tremen­dous­ly from po­et Loret­ta Collins Klobah and writer Monique Rof­fey who shared crit­i­cal in­sight in struc­tured and fo­cused ses­sions. I par­tic­u­lar­ly en­joyed en­coun­ter­ing new work and meet­ing the amaz­ing po­ets and writ­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed."

Emerg­ing writer, 65-year-old Mooti­lal Boodoos­ingh, found him­self flex­ing mus­cles from a life­time ago: "Al­though I'm pri­mar­i­ly a short sto­ry writer, I was mo­ti­vat­ed to write my first po­em in 48 years", while an­oth­er emerg­ing play­wright de­clared: "I think I fi­nal­ly got my po­et­ry mo­jo back", and MFA stu­dent An­na Levi, whose de­but nov­el Mad­i­nah Girl is hot off the press, de­scribed her ex­pe­ri­ence as "a kind of re­nais­sance...I felt brave to write hon­est­ly about painful and glit­tery top­ics. To own your shame in writ­ing is to over­come and con­quer it."