2020 Frank Collymore Literary Award winner Linda M. Deane. Photo Copyright © 2021.
THE 23rd FRANK COLLYMORE LITERARY AWARDS were presented entirely virtually for the first time on February 14, 2021. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the ceremony was aired via a live stream that used prerecorded readings by the winners in various locations across the island.
All of the winners were poets this year, with the Prime Minister’s Award going to a prose writer for a YA novel.
Photo Copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group.
Riff: The Shake Keane Story (Papillote Press, 164 pp., paperback, 2021) is the biography of the Vincentian poet-jazz musician Ellsworth McGranahan “Shake” Keane (1927-1997). Keane is St Vincent’s best-known (perhaps its only) poet with an international reputation. Less known is the fact that he is most likely St Vincent’s most accomplished jazz musician. Written by Barbadian-based Vincentian author Philip Nanton, this biography, though brief, is thoroughly researched, and is erudite in content and style.
THE ArtsEtc Independence Reading List has reached a milestone: it's now in its tenth edition!
The IndyList, as we like to call it, is a selection of 12 Barbadian books to make friends with over the coming year.
Christine Barrow, who made Barbados her home for nearly fifty years, delivers a masterclass in short fiction’s powers of subtlety with her first book, Black Dogs and the Colour Yellow. These stories do not declaim so much as they stitch, quietly and with stunning resolve, a Barbadian tapestry as complicated as it is unsentimentally beautiful.
Nailah Folami Imoja's novel Pick of the Crop (Heinemann, 106pp., paperback, 0-435-98966-9) opens with a familiar, Bajan, boys-on-the-block scene, complete with spliff and tamarind tree. For a book geared toward young adult readers, this is somewhat surprising. There is the obligatory condemnation, which comes from our hero, Leroi Baines, even as the young offenders puff on. "I don't know why y'all always burning out wunna brains with that junk..." and "Wunna need to try and keep you mind and body clean. How you expect to get ahead?" But the first few pages resonate with other
PROLOGUE: NEVER RETREAT, NEVER SURRENDER
Story, Script and Illustrations by the Research Methods Class of 2020
Brathwaite’s risky reinvention of his important trilogy—Mother Poem (1977), Sun Poem (1982) and X/Self (1987)—has much to offer old and new readers alike. The celebrated Barbadian poet has reworked the text in his own hieroglyphic “Sycorax video style” type. His dispossessed speakers habitually declare themselves in free verse dialect.
Central Bank of Barbados Governor Cleviston Haynes with top 2019 Frank Collymore Literary Award winner Sharma Taylor (second from left) beside sister awardees Claudia Clarke and Sarah Venable. Photo Copyright © 2020 courtesy of the Central Bank of Barbados.
Casting out again. This edition's cover is by Kai Miller.
A version of the following speech was presented by ArtsEtc Editor Robert Edison Sandiford at the launch of The ArtsEtc NIFCA Winning Words Anthology 2017/2018 held at the Daphne Joseph-Hackett Theatre November 14, 2019.
GOOD EVENING, ladies and gentlemen, artists and patrons, art sponsors and art angels.
I suspect what I’m about to say will sound a little like a vote of thanks. This is, maybe more so than in past years, inevitable.
