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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Acclaimed authors preview south Bocas lit fest

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20151010

The third an­nu­al NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest South comes off this af­ter­noon at San Fer­nan­do Hill. Last week­end two writ­ers who had been cel­e­brat­ed in pre­vi­ous years by Bo­cas gave an au­di­ence at the Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre in UWI, St Au­gus­tine, a taste of what peo­ple can ex­pect at to­day's event.

Au­thor Robert An­toni, who was born in the US to Trinida­di­an par­ents, won the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture last year for his book As Flies to What­less Boys.

Au­thor Caryl Phillips, who grew up in Britain but whose par­ents were from St Kitts, was long-list­ed for the Bo­cas Prize in 2012 for the es­say col­lec­tion Colour Me Eng­lish: Thoughts About Mi­gra­tions and Be­long­ing Be­fore and Af­ter 9/11.

An­toni and Phillips are friends with each oth­er and with Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar, who is al­so an au­thor and who mod­er­at­ed a dis­cus­sion be­tween the two that ranged from the re­cep­tion of Caribbean lit­er­a­ture abroad to the fate of books in the age of so­cial me­dia and smart phones. The men al­so read pas­sages from their lat­est books: An­toni's As Flies to What­less Boys and The Lost Child from Phillips.

"The op­por­tu­ni­ty to have some of our best writ­ers here is what Bo­cas is about," said Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, founder and di­rec­tor of the Bo­cas fes­ti­val. She ex­plained that she would have liked the men to come for Bo­cas South but they had oth­er en­gage­ments.

The au­thors re­spond­ed to a ques­tion from Ram­char­i­tar about how their work is re­ceived by au­di­ences in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca.

"For some rea­son I've found a large and en­thu­si­as­tic read­er­ship in Fin­land," said An­toni to laugh­ter from the au­di­ence.

"Who can ex­plain that? Ex­cept that they have a lot of s--- and farts in their jokes, and I guess so do I. They have a very bawdy sense of hu­mour.

"You write for the sto­ry that's be­ing told. That's what guides me," he added more se­ri­ous­ly.

"I have to trust in that–that wher­ev­er I take it, peo­ple will re­spond even if they've nev­er heard of Trinidad."

Phillips said that in the past there was more scep­ti­cism to­wards Caribbean writ­ers and writ­ing in Britain than there is to­day.

"I think lit­er­a­ture has be­come more glob­alised and na­tion­al bound­aries are not as im­por­tant in lit­er­a­ture as they were," he said.

"It seems to me [Caribbean lit­er­a­ture] is part of a more glob­al phe­nom­e­non where writ­ers of all sorts of dif­fer­ent back­grounds tend to trav­el a lot more and tend to read their work in front of much more cos­mopoli­tan au­di­ences."

Dur­ing the Q&A, two au­di­ence mem­bers asked ques­tions about the im­pact of so­cial me­dia and smart­phone tech­nol­o­gy on read­ing.

An­toni said he was con­cerned about what would hap­pen to so­ci­ety if "all of your re­la­tion­ships are vir­tu­al." But, he added, "the oth­er part of me says you can't fear all of that."

"I think what's go­ing to hap­pen is tech­nol­o­gy is go­ing to trans­form the way we tell our sto­ries and the way those sto­ries are trans­mit­ted. They're prob­a­bly not go­ing to be pa­per-based. They're go­ing to be elec­tron­ic–like it or not," he said.

Phillips wor­ries that dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is up­end­ing "the great moral pur­pose of lit­er­a­ture," which is to en­cour­age em­pa­thy and to re­mind us that in spite of our dif­fer­ences "we are all part of one fam­i­ly"

"If we were not part of one fam­i­ly, we wouldn't be able to read An­na Karen­i­na and feel any­thing. We wouldn't be able to watch Ib­sen plays and feel any­thing," he said. "We wouldn't be able to read a nov­el by an In­di­an nov­el­ist. We wouldn't be able to read Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez.

"The plat­forms, the me­dia that we're talk­ing about [are] so damn nar­cis­sis­tic that it is work­ing against the im­pulse in lit­er­a­ture to­wards em­pa­thy," he said.

The event was a part­ner­ship be­tween Bo­cas, the ANSA McAl Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence (AN­SCAFE), UWI, St Au­gus­tine, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T. It was streamed on­line at the AN­SCAFE web­site. Caryl Philips won an AN­SCAFE award in 2013.

"The pur­pose of these events is to pro­mote the work of our lau­re­ates and by ex­ten­sion knowl­edge and ex­cel­lence," said Maria Su­perville-Niel­son, who spear­heads the awards, in clos­ing re­marks. "We wish all peo­ple to be­come fa­mil­iar with ex­cel­lence and to know those who have at­tained it are in their midst and that it is at­tain­able."

Ram­char­i­tar, who is in charge of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for AN­SCAFE, said events like the Phillips/An­toni dis­cus­sion are im­por­tant.

"We'd like to do much more," he said.

"We've com­mit­ted to hav­ing one pub­lic lec­ture every year of our lau­re­ates."

Su­perville-Niel­son told the au­di­ence of Ram­char­i­tar's ex­cite­ment in get­ting to spend time with the two oth­er au­thors.

"Ray­mond picked them up from the air­port on Thurs­day night," she said, draw­ing laugh­ter, "and he came in at about five to eight on Fri­day morn­ing, and he said, 'You know, I miss talk­ing to writ­ers about writ­ing.' He was so in­vig­o­rat­ed, and that's what this is all about, get­ting our stu­dents to in­ter­face with these ac­com­plished writ­ers, these great minds."

The five-year-old Bo­cas Lit Fest has been ex­pand­ing out­side of Port-of-Spain and its main event in April. There's now Bo­cas South in Oc­to­ber and Bo­cas To­ba­go in Ju­ly. Next month Bo­cas will present read­ings and a con­ver­sa­tion with three writ­ers from the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean at the Mi­a­mi Book Fair.

Bo­cas South will in­clude writ­ing work­shops, a dis­cus­sion with Cana­di­an-Trinida­di­an au­thor Sab­ri­na Ram­nanan, spo­ken word per­for­mances and many more events.


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