Caribbean lit links roundup

• Geoffrey Philp celebrates Kamau Brathwaite’s birthday by posting a podcast of Brathwaite’s poem “Francina” and a new poem by Opal Palmer Adisa:

reinscribing
love is not an ideal
but power to render
truth in the present....

Happy birthday, Kamau Brathwaite

• Nalo Hopkinson, recovered from a short illness, posts two entries from her “writing log”: one, two.

• At the Poetry Foundation blog, Kwame Dawes posts two thoughtful essays: on political poetry, and on the importance of the imagination, the role of poetry, and what people expect from poets.

• In the Jamaica Observer, Michael A. Edwards talks to actor Roger Guenveur Smith, who will perform his one-man play Who Killed Bob Marley? at the Calabash Literary Festival at the end of May:

"For me, it's a cultural question, it's very personal. It has everything to do with how I identify myself with Jamaica, with music, as represented by Bob and the overall culture."

• In The Hindu, the Indian editor of the Poetry International Web, Arundhathi Subramaniam, reflects on questions of identity, displacement, and cultural authenticity, and is reassured by some lines from Derek Walcott’s “The Schooner Flight“.

• The premiere of Rough Crossings, a play by Caryl Phillips, adapted from a Simon Schama book, has been postponed–or cancelled?–due to the unexpected announcement that Bristol’s Old Vic will close for refurbishment, reports the UK Guardian.

• And Shelf Space, the Bookforum blog, links to three pieces from the CRB archive.