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Saturday, July 5, 2025

A literary

walkabout

in the city

by

1537 days ago
20210421

On Sat­ur­day, at 11 am, the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest will pre­miere a new half-hour film, Port of Spain: A Writer’s Heav­en. Join host Wen­dell Man­war­ren of 3Canal as he wan­ders the streets of the city bring­ing alive works of lit­er­a­ture from clas­sics to con­tem­po­rary.

This doc­u­men­tary was made to cel­e­brate the 10th an­niver­sary of the Bo­cas Lit Fest and was made pos­si­ble by the fes­ti­val’s ti­tle spon­sor, The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, and with the sup­port of the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts. It is a unique ad­di­tion to the vir­tu­al 2021 pro­gramme, hav­ing mor­phed out of a planned, ac­tu­al walk­ing tour of the city.

Ac­cord­ing to Fes­ti­val Di­rec­tor Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, it was for­tu­itous.

“Now we will have it for pos­ter­i­ty, and it will be avail­able for all to see and ex­pe­ri­ence glob­al­ly. We re­gard it as crit­i­cal to our pro­mo­tion of our cap­i­tal city as the con­tem­po­rary lit­er­ary hub of Caribbean lit­er­a­ture.”

The Bo­cas team se­lect­ed the au­thors to be fea­tured—hard choic­es had to be made when orig­i­nal plans for a longer pro­duc­tion had to cut. Ja­nine Mendes-Fran­co wrote the script and pro­duced it, and Dion Bou­caud at Pix­elPlay Me­dia di­rect­ed. This Man­war­ren walk­a­bout al­so fea­tures VS Naipaul schol­ar Pro­fes­sor Ken Ram­c­hand and two con­tem­po­rary au­thors Bar­bara Jenk­ins and Bre­anne McIvor.

For Ma­ri­na Sa­landy Brown, there is so much to cel­e­brate at the fes­ti­val this year and this film is part of that: “Our lit­er­ary arts are im­pres­sive. Right now, many of a new gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers are com­ing through, get­ting un­prece­dent­ed book deals and win­ning big prizes, and im­por­tant­ly, in­creas­ing­ly, they are do­ing that while liv­ing at home in the Caribbean. Pub­lish­ers are com­ing to find them.”

The film starts in the Na­tion­al Li­brary on Aber­crom­bie Street with the quote from Derek Wal­cott’s fa­mous No­bel Prize speech which gives ti­tle to the film: “Port of Spain . . . a down­town ba­bel of shop signs and streets, mon­gre­lized, poly­glot, a fer­ment with­out a his­to­ry, like heav­en. Be­cause that is what such a city is . . . a writer’s heav­en.”

Man­war­ren criss­cross­es the city from the li­brary and the Old Fire Sta­tion, which had been home to Wal­cott’s Trinidad The­atre, to the Red House and its con­nec­tions to Ismith Khan’s The Jumbie Bird to Wood­ford Square, then on to the Light­house, up Cal­vary Hill, over to Bel­mont, back to the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, on to St James and fi­nal­ly up Chan­cel­lor Hill.

In Bel­mont, Man­war­ren meets with Bar­bara Jenk­ins and they talk about her re­cent Bel­mont based nov­el The Righ­est Place (2018), which Brid­get Br­ere­ton praised as “fun­ny, sad, in­trigu­ing and com­plex.”

At the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, he joins young writer Bre­anne McIvor to dis­cuss a dark sto­ry about a mid­night rob­ber based around the Sa­van­nah from her col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, Where There Are Mon­sters (2019). From there, it is off to St James to the fam­i­ly home of VS Naipaul, which was the ba­sis for the one in his nov­el, A House for Mr Biswas. He meets with Ken Ram­c­hand, leader of the Friends of Mr Biswas who worked to get the build­ing pre­served and turned in­to a mu­se­um. They have a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion on how this house that Naipaul lived in dur­ing the late 1940s served as a ba­sis for this sem­i­nal nov­el.

When the project was first pitched to him, Man­war­ren jumped at it. An avid read­er, he al­so has al­ways been ground­ed in Port of Spain, raised in Bel­mont, now liv­ing for many years in Wood­brook.

“For me, it res­onat­ed on many lev­els and I found it a very ex­cit­ing project.”

The ini­tial fo­cus on Derek Wal­cott brought back his days work­ing with the fa­mous writer and act­ing in his plays. Since the script large­ly in­volved read­ing quotes from lit­er­ary works, it re­quired ac­cu­ra­cy.

“Some­times you take the script and wing it be­cause you have a sense of what it is, but if you’re quot­ing the books, they want you to do it to­tal­ly ac­cu­rate­ly. It was a nice chal­lenge. I have to go back in­to my old act­ing head­space, mem­o­riz­ing my lines!”

On Cal­vary Hill the film fo­cus­es on Earl Lovelace’s clas­sic nov­el The Drag­on Can’t Dance (com­plete with drag­on) and hear­ing Man­war­ren read from the book, you won­der why he has not been hired to cre­ate au­dio­books for all the Lovelace clas­sics! A cou­ple of lo­cal res­i­dents came up when they were film­ing this seg­ment and asked Man­war­ren what song they were film­ing a video and when he ex­plained this was a piece about Lovelace’s great nov­el and one of them im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond­ed: “I’m go­ing in the li­brary. I’m go­ing to find that book for me.”

For Wen­dell Man­war­ren, that was a tri­umph that “this young man was now so moved to find this book to read about this place that he lives in.” He wants all the view­ers to fol­low that ex­am­ple, take the vir­tu­al jour­ney through the streets of Port of Spain with him this Sat­ur­day and then read, read, read.

The NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest runs from April 23-25 on­line. The full pro­gramme is on­line at www.bo­caslit­fest.com.


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