TREASURE BEACH, Jamaica — The sun was shining, waves lapped against the shoreline and crowds packed into a giant tent for the first sessions of the day at the Calabash International Literary Festival on Jamaica’s south coast late last month.
It was a Saturday morning, and it was surprising that people were awake—many had been up until the wee hours at the reggae concert next door, which capped off the opening night programs. Olive Senior, Jamaica’s poet laureate, hugged old friends at the entrance to the venue. Meanwhile, full buses were arriving from all over the island.
At 10:00 am, more than a thousand people filled the seats, contemplating a scene framed by the sea and the blue sky. Margaret Busby, the pioneering British publisher, began with a talk about her anthology “New Daughters of Africa”, followed by a conversation with the majestic dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, who, at 70, had just published “Time Come”, bringing together half a century of his commentaries on culture and politics. When Johnson suggested that this book might be his last, the audience let out a piercing cry of “Nooooooo.”
The combination of sun, sea, and literature turned out to be a heady mix—part literary festival, part worship rally. Calabash, founded in 2001, helped usher in a wave of international literary festivals but was put on hiatus by the pandemic, so by late May people seemed particularly eager to return.
“I’ve been to literary festivals all over the world and none of them have quite the charm of Calabash,” Johnson said.
“Something happens here that doesn’t happen anywhere else,” agreed Paul Holdengräber, a literary podcaster whose conversations with notable authors have been a fixture on the Calabash stage.
Kwame Dawes and Justine Henzell, the festival’s co-founders (with Colin Channer), said they originally saw it as a way to create a “brand” that could encompass local writeshops geared towards overcoming the challenges of the publishing world. His goal: to create a conduit for Jamaican writers in line with which brought international attention to local musicians.
“Why did reggae achieve world status, but very little else did?” Dawes said. “So we looked at the studio system and our workshops were based on that.”
Marlon James, winner of the 2015 Booker Prize for his novel “A Brief History of Seven Murders,” was about to give up writing when he attended a Calabash workshop for beginners in the early 2000s. An editor at Akashic Books was there and promptly signed his first novel, “The Devil of John Crow.”
“For a long time, the festival was a glimpse into this world that I didn’t think I could have,” James said. “As an emerging queer person, the idea that queer writers could go on stage and not feel like they were going to burn to death, and be around people I always wanted to be—watching Michael Ondaatje and bell hooks and so on—for me it was a kind of three-day escape from myself, from the reality of the Jamaica in which I lived.
The weekend passed in a flurry of passionate readings, the rhythm of a bass and aromas carried by the sea breeze: a total sensory explosion. Members of the public lived with the authors on a plane of relative equality.
Sunday morning brought an almost reverential mood to the final acts. There was an homage to Michael Thelwell’s 1980 novelization of “The Harder They Come” (Henzell’s father, Perry, wrote and directed the classic 1972 film). Joyce Carol Oates then took the stage to be interviewed by Holdengräber.
Oates, 84, declared: “This is the most beautiful stage and, even more than that, the most beautiful audience. I know I’m not in New Jersey anymore.”
Anderson Tepper is Curator of International Literature at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh.
By: ANDERSON TEPPER
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6769392, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-06-21 01:20:07
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