Worthy of an article in a mainstream publication, but Caribbean Beat, the inflight magazine of Caribbean Airlines, should not be overlooked for consistently covering some of the most important and sadly unreported stories in Caribbean news and history. Anyway my friend Nigel Campbell wrote this important article marking the 50th anniversary of soca for the…
Alison Flood (The Guardian) reports that British-Trinidadian poet Roger Robinson won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje prize. A Portable Paradise is the second poetry collection to win the award for a book that conjures “the spirit of a place.” In his interview, he says, “I want these poems to help people to practise empathy.” […]…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McPMyu5_3TI?rel=0&w=560&h=315] I’ve been waiting for this video to be released for so many months now. I’d heard snippets from the set from the Producer, and some of the co-ordinators, and have waited with baited breath for its release and finally it’s out. The video released on The Fader Friday. My friend Laura at LoopTT…
I stumbled across Smallman: The World My Father Made while doing research for another post. I pressed play because it was a short film about my friend’s father. I know Richard Mark Rawlins as an artist. He’s also a great illustrator, and I am a big fan of his work. As an aside, whenever he…
Bahamas Carnival just ended and Machel Montano and Bunji Garlin were there. It was the first time the pair performed their soca hit Busshead outside of Trinidad. The duo were interviewed about their collaboration, and careers, on ILTV’s chat show The Stew. They’ve (the show’s producers) posted the entire episode online, so you can fast…
The Voices From Inside event was one of those really nice and hopeful events that make you believe in the potential of us all to do good things. It was a showcase of the prisoners’ poetry, and a reading from Dr. Baz Dresinger’s new book Incarcerated Nations. She had travelled all over, looking at our…
There’s a conversation that takes place in Jamaica about Dancehall versus Soca very regularly. And that conversation gets very heated around Jamaica Carnival. It’s a hard conversation for me to listen to, because having lived in Jamaica – I studied at UWI, Mona – I hear the xenophobia in the comments. Too often when Jamaican…
In the 7 years it’s been around, Bocas has grown from strength to strength. The annual literary festival has hosted some of the most successful and interesting writers, publishers and poets of Caribbean, and World literature. And because it’s in Trinidad, there’s a non-pretentiousness to the proceedings that may make your faves seem significantly more approachable….
The Africa World Film Festival started today. Screenings will be held at UWI’s Film School in St. Augustine, and at the Caribbean Traveling Film School on Gordon Street in Port of Spain. This is the 10 year anniversary of the film festival, so they’re doing a retrospective. Yesterday, I spoke to Festival Coordinator Wayne Cezair…
Michiel van Hout created the Holy Week Art Exhibition to help him find a space in the local art scene for his work. Michiel is a religious artist, and for him his work is a reflection of his faith. It is also part of his spiritual practice. The Holy Week Art Exhibition was created because…