Rox­anne Man­nette

The Small Axe Lit­er­ary Com­pe­ti­tion car­ries an un­de­ni­able cul­tur­al ca­chet–and this year, three of its four ma­jor prizewin­ners are T&T women.

Por­tia Sub­ran claimed first prize in the short fic­tion cat­e­go­ry for her sto­ry Man­go Sea­son. Fol­low­ing her in sec­ond place in the same cat­e­go­ry was Ayan­na Gillian Lloyd, for her sto­ry Pub­lic No­tice. In the po­et­ry cat­e­go­ry, Soyi­ni Ayan­na Forde's se­lec­tion of sev­en po­ems ti­tled Learn­ing to Swim emerged as the win­ner.

The on­ly non-Trinida­di­an on the win­ners' row, Ja­maican Ch­e­nee Da­ley, earned sec­ond place for her po­ems.

The prize, es­tab­lished in 2009, has be­come syn­ony­mous with writ­ing ex­cel­lence. Sev­er­al of its win­ners have gone on to sign sig­nif­i­cant pub­lish­ing con­tracts. Among the ranks of its past T&T win­ners are 2013 Com­mon­wealth Short Sto­ry prize re­cip­i­ent Sharon Mil­lar; and Hol­lick Ar­von for Caribbean Writ­ers prizewin­ners Bar­bara Jenk­ins (2013) and Danielle Boodoo-For­tun� (2015).

One might be prompt­ed to ask: is there some­thing in the T&T wa­ter that's pip­ing out lit­er­ary pro­duc­tiv­i­ty?

In email in­ter­views with Sub­ran, Lloyd and Forde, the an­swer was: yes, but per­haps not quite in the way you would ex­pect.

Each of the writ­ers es­chewed a get-lucky-fast scheme to cre­ative writ­ing. In sep­a­rate yet in­ter­twined ways, their an­swers point­ed to months and years of care­ful edit­ing, re­vis­ing and, ul­ti­mate­ly, ac­cept­ing the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of a writer's life.

Set in Trinidad in the ear­ly 1900s, Sub­ran's Man­go Sea­son drew in­spi­ra­tion from an­oth­er of her cre­ative call­ings: vi­su­al art. It's a sto­ry of two broth­ers un­der the care of a strug­gling sin­gle moth­er, left to the cru­el whims of her moth­er-in-law, and its vis­tas come straight from the can­vas.

"I based the set­ting from my fa­ther's oil paint­ings of his child­hood: catch­ing froghop­per moths in the sug­ar cane fields and play­ing with the rest­ing bi­son at the wa­ter­ing holes," Sub­ran said.

Her sto­ry went through a year's cy­cle of writ­ing, edit­ing and rewrit­ing, which is sim­i­lar to the cre­ative cy­cle that de­fines Lloyd's Pub­lic No­tice.

In her own words, Lloyd framed Pub­lic No­tice as the sto­ry of "a young woman who goes to the morgue to iden­ti­fy the body of her es­tranged fa­ther. While there she has an un­ex­pect­ed en­counter that leads her on an un­like­ly path to for­giv­ing him." It's a tale that oc­cu­pies cen­tral themes of mor­tal­i­ty and re­sis­tance to that fi­nite state, which typ­i­fies much of Lloyd's cre­ative work.

Like Lloyd and Sub­ran's Small Axe en­tries, Forde's po­ems span a cre­ative time­line: two were writ­ten two years ago, one was writ­ten pri­or to that, and three of them were com­posed in 2016.

Ex­plain­ing the ti­tle of her sub­mis­sion, Forde said, "The lead po­em is in­spired by want­i­ng to learn to swim and learn­ing, fi­nal­ly, as an adult. I be­gan swim­ming lessons in March this year, so there is an im­me­di­a­cy about that po­em that is new for me."

For all three writ­ers, be­ing from T&T isn't an iden­ti­cal pass­port stamp af­fixed to all its cit­i­zens, mean­ing there's no one way to cre­ative­ly rep­re­sent one­self, or one's con­cerns, when it comes to putting words on a page.

While Lloyd claimed Trinidad as the "first point of ori­en­ta­tion" in her writ­ing, she added: "I am al­so a Caribbean writer and a Caribbean di­as­po­ra writer and an African di­as­po­ra writer-it's an iden­ti­ty that ex­pands out­wards al­most in con­cen­tric cir­cles al­low­ing me to claim from a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of per­spec­tives and a range of in­flu­ences.

"As a Caribbean/African di­as­po­ra writer I claim Trinidad, and To­ba­go, New Or­leans, Haiti, Nige­ria, Ja­maica, Colom­bia-the list goes on."

Sub­ran and Forde were equal­ly quick to claim T&T while de­cry­ing any one no­tion of how to be a Trinida­di­an.

Forde, who was born in Cal­i­for­nia and raised in T&T, con­tend­ed with a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of iden­ti­ties in her re­sponse, say­ing, "My na­tion­al­i­ty cer­tain­ly com­pli­cates my ex­pe­ri­ences with per­cep­tions and as­sump­tions of cit­i­zen­ship.

"I'm not the on­ly Trin­bag­on­ian I know ei­ther, who was born in the US and grew up in T&T, so it's not a unique po­si­tion but in con­sid­er­ing how we come to be who we are, it's a cru­cial fac­tor."

Sub­ran's views of T&T as not a sin­gu­lar voice, but a col­lec­tive of voic­es, un­der­scored this stance for the three writ­ers.

The win­ning works will be pub­lished in Is­sue 53 of Small Axe, a high­ly re­gard­ed Caribbean lit­er­ary jour­nal. The is­sue is set for a Ju­ly 2017 re­lease.

First-place win­ners Sub­ran and Forde each col­lect­ed US $750, with Lloyd re­ceiv­ing a sec­ond place prize of US $500. Mon­ey, how­ev­er, is so clear­ly the least of the mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tors for these three writ­ers-in truth, it is the work it­self that vis­i­bly re­tains their great­est in­ter­est, fo­cus and com­mit­ment.

Each of them warned against rest­ing on one's lau­rels, a sen­ti­ment echoed most strong­ly in the words of Lloyd: "Keep work­ing. Keep writ­ing. Take a sec­ond to feel good about it, look for­ward to see­ing your work in print–Small Axe is a great jour­nal so maybe take a lit­tle more than a sec­ond–but then just go again. That's the life."

I'm not the on­ly Trin­bag­on­ian I know ei­ther, who was born in the US and grew up in T&T, so it's not a unique po­si­tion but in con­sid­er­ing how we come to be who we are, it's a cru­cial fac­tor.