Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

I am wrung out from my four days at the an­nu­al NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, but al­so in­spired and re­newed by those four days. The fes­ti­val ran at the Na­tion­al Li­brary in Port-of-Spain from April 25-28.

The fes­ti­val, now in its third year, be­gan for me on Thurs­day af­ter­noon with a cre­ative writ­ing work­shop for near­ly 50 Stan­dard Three pupils from Rich­mond Street Boys'. It con­tin­ued on Fri­day with two more work­shops for Stan­dard Three girls from San Fer­nan­do (about 80 in all).

I have done the work­shop every year and every year it has grown while still de­light­ing the chil­dren who at­tend. Con­grats to the chil­dren's fes­ti­val di­rec­tor Danielle De­lon, ably as­sist­ed by Nat­acha Jones, for stag­ing such an out­stand­ing se­ries of events for chil­dren as part of the wider fes­ti­val.

Apart from a po­et­ry and fic­tion read­ing by T&T Guardian Sun­day Arts Sec­tion writer Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan, and the launch of the Cari­b­Lit Web site by the group for­mer­ly known as the Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture Ac­tion Group (Calag), I bare­ly re­mem­ber what hap­pened Sat­ur­day. To be hon­est, most of my at­ten­tion was fo­cused on prepar­ing for that evening's prize cer­e­mo­ny. I was one of six fi­nal­ists short­list­ed for the Hol­lick Ar­von Prize–co-spon­sored by Bo­cas, the Ar­von Foun­da­tion and the Hol­lick Fam­i­ly Trust.

It's old news now that I didn't win; my dear friend Bar­bara Jenk­ins took the award. I am hap­py for her, and hap­py too for the ex­treme­ly glow­ing re­port of the judges who praised my writ­ing with such su­perla­tives that I was ex­treme­ly flat­tered and felt en­cour­aged de­spite my loss.Of course, I called Bar­bara's win in this col­umn more than a month ago, so I wasn't re­al­ly sur­prised when they called her name. She's a fine writer and she de­serves the prize. Giv­en the ex­cel­lence of her first book, Sic Tran­sit Wag­on, which was launched at Bo­cas on Sun­day, I ex­pect she will put the Hol­lick Ar­von Prize to good use and I look for­ward to her next book. (You can read BC Pires' re­view of Sic Tran­sit Wag­on in the T&T Guardian on­line.)

Sat­ur­day night al­so brought the news of my men­tor Monique Rof­fey's win in the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture. Her third nov­el, Arch­i­pel­ago, took the award over two strong com­peti­tors, St Lu­cian po­et Kendel Hip­poly­te's Fault Lines, and Guyanese es­say­ist Ru­pert Roop­naraine's The Sky's Wild Noise. (All three books have been re­viewed in theT&T Guardian by Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan in the Sun­day Arts Sec­tion. The re­views are on­line, if you want to look them up.)

On Sun­day I was part of a pan­el called The Books that Made Me, along with three oth­er writ­ers and the ed­i­tor of the UK-based jour­nal of con­tem­po­rary writ­ing, Wasafiri. We were all fea­tured in the spe­cial Trinidad is­sue of Wasafiri: Brighter Suns: Six­ty Years of Lit­er­a­ture from Trinidad. (Wasafiri com­mis­sioned me to write a noir sto­ry set in Trinidad–be­cause I co-edit­ed the an­thol­o­gy Trinidad Noir some years ago I've be­come some­what known as a noir writer. My Wasafiri sto­ry, So­ca Star, is about a mur­der in a so­ca fete and the dire con­se­quences that fol­low.)

In the pan­el dis­cus­sion I talked about two books that have in­flu­enced me: Harp­er Lee's To Kill a Mock­ing­bird, and Sam Selvon's Ways of Sun­light. It was tremen­dous fun read­ing an ex­cerpt from Selvon's short sto­ry Wartime Ac­tiv­i­ties, a slight­ly risqu� piece writ­ten en­tire­ly in Trinidad Cre­ole.Reg­u­lar read­ers of this col­umn will know that I wrote it in Trinidad Cre­ole for some years; as I told the au­di­ence at the pan­el dis­cus­sion, it came as a great sur­prise to me that the Cre­ole voice I had as­sumed was mine was ac­tu­al­ly Selvon's. I had ab­sorbed it when I was a small child, read­ing my big sis­ters' lit­er­a­ture books, and you know how they say "mouth open, 'to­ry jump out"? I re-read that Selvon af­ter 30 years and it all fell in­to place.

Which brings me at last to my con­clud­ing point: the val­ue of the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest. Stu­dents and teach­ers thronged the one-on-one talk with fa­mous Ja­maican au­thor and po­et Olive Se­nior dur­ing Bo­cas, and she was but one of the many writ­ers present at the fes­ti­val.I am grate­ful to NGC, its ti­tle spon­sor, and the Bo­cas or­gan­is­ers for build­ing this fes­ti­val. It is a great gift to our coun­try and our re­gion and we who live here should take ad­van­tage of it.