Bocas South grows Shivanee Ramlochan Published: Sunday, November 16, 2014 Good literature grows everywhere. I was reminded of this last weekend, when the NGC Bocas Lit Fest team, headed by founder Marina Salandy-Brown, packed up its banners and headed way past the lighthouse: to the Southern Academy for the Performing Arts (Sapa). Sapa hosted this year’s NGC Bocas Lit Fest South on November 8-9, in a structure and broadness of scope similar to the annual main festival held at the National Library in Port-of-Spain. Decentralising the NGC Bocas Lit Fest is key. Port-of-Spain may be the island’s commercial epicentre, but it cannot—and does not—represent T&T’s sole literary heartbeat. Sam Selvon called San Fernando his home: the prolific fiction writer, playwright and poet was born there, in 1923. In a weekend programme thoughtfully curated to reflect the best and most promising of southland writing talent, Selvon’s achievements, those that made up the fullness of his bibliographic diversity, launched the festival proper. Kenneth Ramchand’s keynote address on Selvon stressed that there were multiple interpretations for the work of this bright San Fernando son. In this, the 20th anniversary of the writer’s death, Ramchand encouraged a deeper, broader appreciation of Selvon, including but not limited to The Lonely Londoners. Whether intentional or not, Ramchand’s position on ecumenical, divergent approaches to reading could be said to characterise the spirit of the 2014 NGC Bocas Lit Fest South. Moving from panel to one-on-one conversation, from courtyard performance to book signing, it was evident, and encouraging, that people in Port-of-Spain and San Fernando alike are drawn to different facets of a life well steeped in literature. Book loving, and word loving, wore as many faces during the Bocas South weekend as did Felix Edinborough’s Pierrot Grenade, who breathed new life into reinvented, reimagined words, during his November 8 courtyard performance. Edinborough’s inclusion in the festival can but be a vital one, alongside the extemporaneous prowess of veteran calypsonian Black Sage. Sitting on the Sapa steps and listening to Black Sage hold forth in spirited verse on November 7 during the Lunchtime Jam was a whimsical reminder of how literary arts in T&T are deeply embedded in our Carnival culture—and of how the carnivalesque, no matter where you are in the country, doesn’t restrict itself to only a glittery span of two days in the hot sun. Bravery, and the value of writing through fear, also resounded through the festival in varying peals of intensity. The strongest of these made echoed in the November 9 panel Crime as Fiction: Worse than Reality? Caron Asgarali, survivor of a 2013 shooting attack, took to the podium to read from her memoir of spiritual perseverance, From Lion to Lamb, the woman in the seat opposite me conspicuously patted her eyes, while I shuffled in my pocket for my own handkerchief. Good writing, and good reading, can survive the worst censure and the least hospitable of climes. During their November 9 panel, speculative fiction writers RSA Garcia from T&T and Karen Lord from Barbados mused on how science fiction and fantasy writing often catch the short end of the lightsaber at the big literary table, while proclaiming their dedication to this fantastic genre that imagines, so often, what we most need to believe in. In her one-on-one talk with Bocas programme director Nicholas Laughlin, Jamaican poet Tanya Shirley read from her new collection, The Merchant of Feathers, sharing searing poems of brutalised youth alongside dancehall offerings of sensual heat and promise. Governing her poems is a voice unafraid to speak for itself, about itself and its people—to map and chart the Jamaica of Shirley’s understanding and intuition. Maybe you took the shuttle from Port-of-Spain just to hear Brandon O’Brien rock the spoken word mic at Sapa, or to perform a piece yourself. Maybe you hopped over from Gasparillo to get your book signed by Michael Cozier, or to take a picture with Sat Maharaj. These, and other NGC Bocas Lit Fest South origin stories, show us again and again that reading is ours to hold, to interpret, to engage in with unapologetic enthusiasm, whether we’re in Cascade or Cedros, or any place in between and beyond. Prof Emeritus Ken Ramchand gives the keynote address at the opening of the 2014 NGC Bocas South festival on November 8. Source:: Trinidad Guardian The post Bocas South grows appeared first on Trinidad & Tobago Online. #trinidad
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 13:19:03 +0000
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