The St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus is con­grat­u­lat­ing Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Fun­so Aiye­ji­na and Dr Mer­le Hodge on be­ing award­ed the Bo­cas Hen­ry Swanzy Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice to Caribbean Let­ters.

Ac­cord­ing to this re­lease, Fun­so Aiye­ji­na and Mer­le Hodge have played an un­mis­tak­able role in shap­ing the re­gion’s lit­er­ary land­scape” with bod­ies of work that span bor­ders and decades. They have been cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers and men­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the in­flu­en­tial Crop­per Foun­da­tion Writ­ers’ Work­shop which they led from its foun­da­tion in 2000.

De­tails fol­low in this re­lease from the UWI:

The St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus Com­mu­ni­ty con­grat­u­lates Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Fun­so Aiye­ji­na and Dr Mer­le Hodge on be­ing award­ed the Bo­cas Hen­ry Swanzy Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice to Caribbean Let­ters. The award was found­ed in 2013 to ho­n­our the late BBC World Ser­vice ra­dio pro­duc­er Hen­ry Swanzy who was a cat­alyz­ing fig­ure in the de­vel­op­ment of mod­ern West In­di­an lit­er­a­ture.  

Ac­cord­ing to the Bo­cas Lit Fest Com­mit­tee, “Fun­so Aiye­ji­na and Mer­le Hodge have played an un­mis­tak­able role in shap­ing the re­gion’s lit­er­ary land­scape” with bod­ies of work that span bor­ders and decades. They have been cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers and men­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the in­flu­en­tial Crop­per Foun­da­tion Writ­ers’ Work­shop which they led from its foun­da­tion in 2000. Bo­cas lit com­mends their “cru­cial par­al­lel work as teach­ers and men­tors of younger au­thors, and their ded­i­ca­tion to nur­tur­ing a gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers ground­ed in Caribbean lit­er­ary tra­di­tion and lan­guage, ex­plor­ing the re­gion’s so­cial com­plex­i­ties.” 

In ad­di­tion, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Ai­jye­ji­na was in­stru­men­tal in the es­tab­lish­ment of the cre­ative writ­ing MFA (Mas­ter of Fine Arts) pro­gramme at the St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus – the first de­gree-grant­i­ng pro­gramme in cre­ative writ­ing in the An­glo­phone Caribbean. Dr Mer­le Hodge is the au­thor of the 1970 clas­sic Crick Crack, Mon­key. She is a re­tired lec­tur­er in the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion, St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus. 

Head of De­part­ment, Lit­er­ary, Cul­tur­al & Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, Dr Suzanne Burke said, the de­part­ment joins the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in recog­nis­ing the work of both Pro­fes­sor Fun­so Aiyegi­na and Dr Mer­le Hodge in cre­at­ing art that rep­re­sents the di­ver­si­ty and dy­namism of the Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence. “Their work has pro­vid­ed us with new and fresh ways to see and to be our­selves.  As pub­lic in­tel­lec­tu­als and ac­tivists their years of ser­vice, es­pe­cial­ly with young men and women have con­sis­tent­ly sought to ac­ti­vate the in­nate po­ten­tial of the re­gion’s cre­ative core as a source of re­al de­vel­op­men­tal en­er­gy.  We con­grat­u­late them both on their ac­com­plish­ments,” she added. 

Oth­er UWI St. Au­gus­tine lec­tur­ers have pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived this award – Pro­fes­sors Ken­neth Ram­c­hand and Gor­don Rohlehr, both in 2014. 

The Bo­cas Hen­ry Swanzy Award will be for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed to Fun­so Aiye­ji­na and Mer­le Hodge dur­ing a vir­tu­al cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day 30 April as part of the 2022 NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest.