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Winning Words: BIRD-TREES

Anthology preview

WHEN I was younger I thought that coconut trees were like giant birds, their fronds gently flapping in the wind. I would sit in our wraparound veranda or in my bedroom looking out at the tall bird-trees with their curved trunks. I would just sit and watch them, waiting for a great whoosh as the wings would begin to flap and the tree would take off and go wherever it was that birds that size would go.

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Winning Words: TURPENTINE AND STEW PANTY

Anthology preview

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More provocative Bajan Winning Words

The ArtsEtc Winning Words Anthology: NIFCA 2013/2014 is now out!

The anthology, which features some searing, provocative and thoughtful work from Barbadian writers on themes such as gender, sexuality, race, and nationhood, sees ArtsEtc continuing in its role as producer and co-sponsor of the National Cultural Foundation's series showcasing award-winnning entries from its NIFCA Literary Arts Competitions.

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INAUGURAL KAMAU BRATHWAITE LECTURE (VIDEO)


An essential lecture, and the inaugural one in a series established by the University of the West Indies' Cultural Studies Department, in honour of Kamau Brathwaite. It was given at UWI's Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination, Barbados, on March 22, 2015. (Video reproduced by kind permission.)

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Antonio Martorell, Las Antillas Letradas, 2013, mural, 4’ 4” x 9’; woodcut and digital impression on papel (30 prints). Detail shows Kamau Brathwaite section of mural.
Las Antillas Letradas


ON A RECENT trip to Puerto Rico, Robert Hill, a professor at UCLA, chanced upon an artwork by Antonio Martorell on display in the Museo de Arte at the Universidad de Puerto Rico en Cayey.  It was a mural entitled Las Antillas Letradas, and was composed of portraits of some of the region's authors layered over maps and fragments of text to form a literary A-Z—28 portraits in all to reflect a bygone Spanish alphabet.

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Martina Pilé, Ayizan's Asson, 2013, painted calabash
THE MAKING OF THINGS


ACCORDING TO YORUBA tradition, Ayizan, a root Loa, controls the Marketplace and Commerce.  Regarded as the first archetypal Mambo Priestess, she is associated with priestly knowledge and initiation. As a spiritual parent of priesthood, she gives the tool of priesthood, a sacred rattle—Ayizan's Asson—to the initiated future Mambo priest/ess.

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JAMAL J. IFILL, Green Energy, 2014, Glass lamp
VISUALIZING THE RESPONSE

ACROSS THIS WEBSITE is a wealth of evidence of the literary response to Kamau Brathwaite. The visual and multi-artistic community has reacted to his writings, too—directly and indirectly—resulting in extended dialogues, repeated waves of call and response. His poem "The Making of the Drum" in particular has been a leaping off point of Barbadian visual artists.

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KAMAU 85 – EDITORS' NOTE

EXCERPTS FROM AN 85TH-BIRTHDAY EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE

Quoting "John R. Lee" December 23, 2014:
> Hi Rob
> Your copy of Sent Lisi mailed this morning.
> Could something similar, an anthology of poetry and art (and prose?) be
> done in Bdos to celebrate Kamau's 85th next year?
> Best for the season,
> R.
 

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SOUL ROASTED LIKE CASHEWS...

“Bim(shire’s) best,” someone said. “Madness!” said the rest.  The level lands of Barbados hide no one. You must take a stand. You forgot the good fight at CowPastor though the planes rain down their tourists in the national interests on your head. You remain the one, the living fighting "I"; they counted you as no more. A life lived in the trenches. A soul roasted like cashews upon a pan resting on the blackened stones. A mind without rest, tested at every turn and pressured to buckle for titled rewards.

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FOREWORD TO KAMAU 85, AN ARTSETC SPECIAL

Poet
is a craftsperson, oral or literary, ideally both, who deals in metrical and/or rhythmical—sometimes riddmical—wordsongs, wordsounds, wordwounds & meanings, within a certain code of order or dis/order—what Antonio Benítez-Rojo calls creative chaos. These word/sound/meanings are caught out of the mind or moment’s sky as it were & etched into the ground and underdrones of the poet’s/of the artist’s culture. And from the ground of that culture is he/ she grown// is he/ she known// is he .she be/ come

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