GREEN Readings began in 2008 when the Ministry of the Environment, Water Resources and Drainage (formerly Family, Youth, Sports & Environment) asked ArtsEtc to conceive a literary event that could be used to help raise environmental awareness in Barbados.

ArtsEtc welcomed the “green challenge,” and the first readings took place on two consecutive Saturdays in June, during the Ministry’s annual Environment Month activities. The venue was Cloister Bookstore in Bridgetown, and six writers were featured: Mark McWatt, DJ Simmons, Kerry Belgrave, Sandra Sealy, Esther Phillips, and Linda M. Deane.  The readings and ensuing Q&A sessions were enthusiastically received, and a year later the Ministry approached ArtsEtc again.

The second Green Readings were staged June 13 and 20, 2009, on the boardwalk near Hastings Rocks in Christ Church — a new green space and beachfront walkway that provided a fitting backdrop.

Once more, a stimulating mix of work from established and newer writers was showcased. Mark Jason Welch, Heather Barker and James Carmichael performed on June 13; while Karen Lord, Robert Edison Sandiford and Gregory Fitt, who also performed emcee duties, were featured on June 20. Audiences were challenged to think deeply and differently about our natural and man-made surroundings — our very existence in Barbados — on a physical level, and also supernaturally and spiritually.

Speeches from environmental officials, a performance from the Grantley Prescod Memorial Primary School Choir and a lively Q&A complemented the readings.

A souvenir publication of the event is currently in production, and there is every hope that Green Readings will continue as an annual affair as the government of Barbados proceeds with its environmental awareness and education programme.

Below are snippets of “green statements” from the 2009 readers. The statements, some of which were shared with the audience at Hastings Rocks, provided insight into the writers’ worlds, and helped set the stage and tone for the readings themselves.

—Linda M. Deane

Mark Jason Welch
“Words … allow me as an artist to straddle the line between the beauty of island existence and the enigma that is pop culture, things which dually fascinate me and inform my craft. Things like birds’ nests, grass, fallen leaves, and fruit of every description are part of my everyday existence. The ocean, a novel; the highways we traverse, a tome.” 

Heather Barker
“When I think of environment and the Green Readings, I think of not only physical locale and landscape but of a spiritual and social space. And if I give environment that scope, then I have been most profoundly affected by it.”

James Carmichael
“We are, in great measure, the elements that surround us and fill our senses. All the molecules in our bodies, right now, were once in some other animal, or some tree, or maybe even the stones in the earth trod upon by Arawaks long before Columbus came. Dust to dust? Not at all, more like dust to life to ashes to life and on forever...recycling without end, amen.

Karen Lord
“I had in mind a continent that never was, and every part of that continent was Barbados: the balconies of the townhouses, the park-like village court, fields with sheep and goats grazing near a well, chattel houses lining the street. Both the natural and man-made environment, the world of animals and the world of humans, overlapped….”

Robert Edison Sandiford
“I write out of environment, not about environment.  Canadian writers tend to be regional writers—landscape is key (sometimes a key or the key) to our works.  As a Barbadian, there’s the whole navel-string thing, too; mine is buried in rural and suburban country.”

Gregory Fitt
“…The gradual and sometimes not so gradual disappearance of greenery from Barbados’ landscape jars me, and others of my generation. We grew up at a time when there could be found in any and every neighbourhood such a variety of trees, plants, vegetables, and flowers that the air itself exuded a freshness and purity that refused to embrace and encourage words like asthma….”

l - r: Gregory Fitt (emcee), Robert Edison Sandiford, Heather Barker,
James Carmichael and Mark Jason Welch .