Peter Laurie 2022 Frank Collymore Literary Award Winner

2022 Frank Collymore Literary Award winner Peter Laurie. Photo Copyright © 2023 by Peter Laurie.


Adapted from centralbank.org.bb. Peter Laurie Took Home the $10,000 First Prize at the 25th FCLE Awards

Two Poems from Girl Before Country

 

Blind Date

My Black
and my Caribbean
walk into a room
and the air is
still

My Black breaks the silence first
and says: "Wassup, where you from, fam?"
to root itself in the present
where it has made a home for itself
in places meant to be its hell

Three Poems

The True, True Mudda Sally.  Illustration Copyright © 2023 by Akaila Armstrong.

 

Love in the Time of Circular Chants 

Chant A Psalm A Day… Chant A Psalm A Day…
Chant A Psalm A Day…
An undulating Steel Pulse hosanna

That’s how a Chewa man— 
his ebony courting hands, soft-pressing 
vinyl onto record player, evoked 
a bell and bass reggae of rejoicing 

From the Archives: Word (on teaching a forty-year-old man to read)

 

He trusted me to break the word, crack
each segment open until the mystery expired.
Not so this morning.  He stared bewildered
at the board, the back at me.  “I never t’ought
dat word could be so small.  F…i…x,”
he mused.  “Dis word so small.”

How could his daily toil of hammer,
saw and nails; an old lady’s reckoning
of last month’s window
against the patching of a roof this week—
how could her life of sacrifice
and his of labour, sweat and boiling sun
be totalled up in this small word?

Last Saturday Night

 

 

Chorus

Saturday night, it was Saturday night

Saturday night, last Saturday night

 

VS 1

Down through de alley playing piece o’ romey

Risking my coppers at a boy salary

Cards hard can’t win a lil trally

Gamble out muh grandmother light bill money

Brek like a bottle muh pocket empty

Would like to check a fete but aint had no currency

So I slide Clyde home to granny old house

Then remember she does sell she lil pudding and souse

In Golden Square: A Photo Essay

Barbadian poet and performer Winston Farrell has been hosting poetry pop-ups in Golden Square, Bridgetown, throughout 2022. Linda M. Deane, who took part in February, offers this alternate take on the popular literary event. Photos by S. Devonish. (Click the photos and scroll using the arrows.)

Ronald A. Williams 2021 Frank Collymore Literary Award Winner

2021 Frank Collymore Literary Award winner Ronald A. Williams.  Photo Copyright © 2022 by Ronald A. Williams.
 
 
Reprinted from centralbank.org.bb. Ronald Williams is the Top Entrant in the 24th Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Competition > Central Bank of Barbados > News
 
RONALD A. WILLIAMS emerged as the top entrant in the 24th Frank Collymore Literary Endowment (FCLE) Competition. This was announced during a scaled-down in-person awards ceremony at Frank Collymore Hall.

Winning Words: Resurrection 1

 

 

No kites up in the air this year
No singing angels’ majestic climb
No raging bulls
No dancing round-kite
Square-kite
Box-kite
Not a bat-kite in the blue sky

Little ones
Distracted by a different story 
Backs turned to this ascension 
Too busy
Plugged into their PlayStations
YouTube fingers google walking portable brains

Winning Words: If Only on the Outside/If Only on the Inside

 

 

If only on the outside
I am fat
so I cannot accept that
I am worthy
I know deep down
my bulging belly labels me obese
and I see
my heavier hips generate the most stares
I realize
my body is riddled with cellulite
and I understand
the mirror can only present its truth
I acknowledge that
my value is measured primarily as a number on a scale
so no one can make me believe
I am beautiful
if only on the inside

Latest Winning Words Focuses on "Our Uncertain Times"

....Like the world, and its words, are on fire.  This edition's cover is again by Kai Miller.     

 

The following is from the back cover of The ArtsEtc NIFCA Winning Words Anthology 2019/2020.

THESE ARE NOT normal times we’re in.  And they are changing fast.

Pages