First up was Mel Cooke, a Jamaican journalist and poet with a booming voice and a bone to pick with Jamaican violence and American politics. One poem rhymed "rub-a-dub" with "blood," and another called the president of the United States a "son of a Bush." The young poets who followed him were mostly obsessed with sex, with much ado about flesh-slapping, the divine B-O-D-Y and wombs "stuffed like cumulonimbus."
Then Adziko Simba, a British-born poet living in Jamaica, performed her poem "Crazi Ladi Daze." With long arms waving and bare feet moving up and down as if on hot coals, she had a poetic breakdown, a long, agonized "Ahhh!" and then confessed breathlessly: "Sometimes I have a need, a need to have a crazi ladi day ... And suck thumb and suck thumb and rock and suck thumb rock and suck thumb ... and scream ... I need a day." She was a knockout.
Colin Channer's Calabash Literary Festival made the NY Times yesterday. Of course the Jamaican newspapers covered the event extensively for weeks--see Mervyn Morris's summary in last Thursday's Observer here.
What I'd really like to know is why Walcott pulled out at the last minute. Anyone have the inside story?
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Who is Nicholas Laughlin?
I am a writer (read some of my reviews, essays, etc. at Choosing My Confessions), editor of The Caribbean Review of Books and Caribbean Beat, and programme director of the Bocas Lit Fest. Visit my home page for more details. I’m a bit more active on Twitter: @nplaughlin.
I’m a co-director of Alice Yard, an experimental creative space and network in Port of Spain.
I co-edit Town, a modest literary magazine published in two formats: broadsides posted in public locations around Port of Spain, and online.
See photos at my Flickr page.
See my collaboration with artist Christopher Cozier, Tropical Night.
Amours de voyage; or, notes from an occasional traveller.
Some poems.
Email me at:
nicholaslaughlin[at]gmail[dot]com
My second book of poems, Enemy Luck, was published in 2019 by Peepal Tree Press.
My first book of poems, The Strange Years of My Life, was published in 2015 by Peepal Tree Press.
I’m a co-director of Alice Yard, an experimental creative space and network in Port of Spain.
I co-edit Town, a modest literary magazine published in two formats: broadsides posted in public locations around Port of Spain, and online.
See photos at my Flickr page.
See my collaboration with artist Christopher Cozier, Tropical Night.
Amours de voyage; or, notes from an occasional traveller.
Some poems.
Email me at:
nicholaslaughlin[at]gmail[dot]com
Blogs I read oftenish
Caribbean magazines, journals, newspapers
Literary magazines, websites, and blogs around the world
Other people, places, things that interest me (in no particular order)
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