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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

World tunes in to book fest talks

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20130427

A ground­break­ing at­tempt to con­duct the same con­fer­ence around the world con­tin­ued yes­ter­day dur­ing the on­go­ing Caribbean lit­er­a­ture fes­ti­val at the main li­brary in Port-of-Spain.The Ed­in­burgh Writ­ers Con­fer­ence, which be­gan last Au­gust in that city and made its 13th stop yes­ter­day, was streamed live on the In­ter­net. Over the next few months, even more eyes will watch and read pre­sen­ta­tions from the event, said David Codling of the British Coun­cil, which helped or­gan­ise the con­fer­ence.

"Caribbean voic­es have in­flu­enced the whole of the rest of the world," said Codling, ex­plain­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of one leg of the con­fer­ence be­ing held here. "There's a lim­it­ed num­ber of fes­ti­vals around the world, so it re­al­ly felt ap­pro­pri­ate to have one of them here in the Caribbean."The con­fer­ence was first held in 1962 dur­ing the in­au­gur­al Ed­in­burgh In­ter­na­tion­al Book Fes­ti­val, an event Codling called "sem­i­nal".

"In a sense it was the first in­ter­na­tion­al lit­er­a­ture fes­ti­val. Up un­til then there had been mu­sic fes­ti­vals, per­form­ing arts fes­ti­vals etc, but not re­al­ly lit­er­a­ture fes­ti­vals," he said. "It was al­so sem­i­nal in that it gen­er­at­ed an of­ten ac­ri­mo­nious de­bate about the role of the writer in the so­ci­ety and about lit­er­ary cul­ture world­wide."The Ed­in­burgh fes­ti­val or­gan­is­ers and the British Coun­cil de­cid­ed to res­ur­rect the con­fer­ence last year, this time tak­ing it around the world and on­line.

The top­ics of dis­cus­sion 50 years be­fore and now are the same: Should free­dom of speech ever have lim­its? Will the nov­el re­main writ­ers' favourite nar­ra­tive form? Na­tion­al­i­ty and iden­ti­ty in the nov­el to­day. Should lit­er­a­ture be po­lit­i­cal? And what is more im­por­tant: the con­tent of the nov­el or the style in which it is writ­ten?

The ques­tion dealt with yes­ter­day at the an­nu­al Bo­cas Lit Fest was whether there should be na­tion­al lit­er­a­ture. The pan­el of four writ­ers from dif­fer­ent parts of the world, in­clud­ing Trinida­di­an Vah­ni Capildeo, seem to agree that such a thing would not on­ly be dif­fi­cult to de­fine, but would al­so be un­healthy for the art form.

"What's the price you pay for mu­sic or lit­er­a­ture be­com­ing so eas­i­ly de­fined be­cause it's be­ing pro­tect­ed?" asked keynote speak­er Mar­lon James, a Ja­maican writer and pro­fes­sor. "It be­comes eas­i­ly pro­duced; it be­comes eas­i­ly parot­ted."So take one small rur­al vil­lage, two grannies, a church sis­ter named Dor­cas, two way­ward chil­dren named Lurline and one Mas Joe–be­cause there must al­ways be a Mas Joe–throw in some rivers, a moun­tain and a brush with obeah and, poof, you have a Ja­maican nov­el.

"No move­ment has sur­vived cateogori­sa­tion," said James.The con­fer­ence con­tin­ues to­day at 11 am. It will dis­cuss: Should lit­er­a­ture be po­lit­i­cal?The con­fer­ence moves on to France and Por­tu­gal in May and will end back in Ed­in­burgh in Au­gust.


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