A Review of Watching Out for Mummy

Norma Meek sure knows how to pack a bariffle of pre-teen troubles into 150 pages.

In Watching Out for Mummy, which the author wrote twelve years ago and is still her only novel, we meet 11-year-old Shawn Austin at a moment of transition: he’s about to swap life in Barbados for life in New Jersey in the United States, where his mum lives. 

Satisfaction of an Unbroken Clay Pot

Nick Whittle (r) in conversation with National Cultural Foundation CEO Carol Roberts-Reifer and Gustavo Pandiani, the Ambassador of the Argentine Republic to Barbados.  Photograph Copyright © 2019 by the NCF.

 

A Reaction to Nick Whittle’s Exhibition Other Lives

WITHOUT EXPENDING a huge amount of imagination, I find myself cast into the middle of a gigantic ocean. On a ship or, maybe, beneath it, at one with the churning waves.

Last, late copy for Harold Hoyte

Linda M. Deane receiving her journalism diploma from The Honourable Billie Miller at the graduation ceremony held at the Hilton Hotel, June 1982.  At the podium, partly hidden, is Harold Hoyte.  Photo Copyright © 1982 by the Nation.

 

WHO was it said: “You can change your mind, but you can’t change your fate?”

Lessons from Poetry: Complaint and Sorrow in Kamau Brathwaite’s Liviticus

WE HAD a close encounter in our house a couple months back. It was unplanned, unexpected and poetic in nature.

With that casual, don’t-carish air teenagers practice so well, my daughter picked up the review copy of Kamau Brathwaite’s Liviticus, published by House of Nehesi, that has occupied space in our front-house for a while now (along with overdue library books and other unfinished titles) and read the whole thing—thirty pages—out loud, including earthy, elegant foreword by Garrett Hongo and the author’s bio at the end.

Dear John: Notes for an open letter to the new Minister of Culture

(or 7 days in the life of a creative whose well of dreams is deeper than her pocket)

SHORTLY AFTER Minister John King’s open invitation to the artists' community of Barbados to bombard him with ideas, project proposals, wish lists, I volunteered to respond on ArtsEtc’s behalf.  Of course, I’ve procrastinated. No idea where to begin. But last week after more than seven near-consecutive days of creative adventure, I am beginning to sense what the notes for the draft of that letter might look like….

Deane's List

Welcome to Deane’s List. Mostly about the literary arts in and outside Barbados, but also about other art forms and issues shaping culture and community. Mostly informal and about what’s noteworthy and toast-worthy. But not above or beyond a gripe or a swipe. A randomized threading of the personal with the universal. A web, if you will, in the shape of a list. Spun as an occasional blog for ArtsEtc by one of its editors, a sometime-ish writer whose name is Deane.

On This Hideout Faintly, A Beating of Drums

Runners before the starter's pistol.
But where are the drums? 
Photo Copyright © 2017 by SD.

 

THIS RYHTHM is set before the collapse and closure of the spectator stands at the National Stadium.

Riding De Culture Train with Adrian "Boo" Husbands, one last time

Adrian "Boo" Husbands: a Barbadian cultural force.  Photo Copyright © 2017.

 

PICTURE IT. Black Rock Cultural Centre in the 1980s. Richard Stoute’s Teen Talent Contest. The early rounds. Upstairs, on a darkened balcony overlooking the packed, noise- and music-filled hall, a rookie reporter takes a breather. Out of the shadows, a figure coolly emerges.

“You’s Linda Deane from the Nation, right?”

Making Friends with Tom Clarke—and the Hangman

Sometimes, you've got to let that big blue-and-yellow bus pass if you want to reach your destination.

 

ABOUT FOUR YEARS AGO, I was sent into a small, colourful primary school in the middle of St George to teach Creative Writing to the upper school.

Workman’s Primary has a population of about 420 pupils, a warm, family atmosphere, and I remember its teachers as dedicated. The building, with its lively murals of children, is set into a hilly junction, with roads doubling back around, above and below it.

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