by Nicholas Laughlin on November 20, 2013
“Footnotes” is a series of occasional blog posts giving further information about books reviewed in the CRB The November 2013 CRB includes a review by Ishion Hutchinson of Edward Baugh’s Black Sand: New and Selected Poems. “Baugh’s brand of poetry,” writes Hutchinson, “has given the quotidian Caribbean experience, and often the unexamined Caribbean life, an [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on February 28, 2011
The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature — which will be awarded for the first time this year — has announced its 2011 longlist of ten books, in three genre categories: Poetry = Elegguas, by Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados) — Wesleyan = A Light Song of Light, by Kei Miller (Jamaica) — Carcanet = White Egrets, [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on February 11, 2011
Photograph by Horia Varlan, posted at Flickr under a Creative Commons license It’s shortlist time — for at least a couple of literary awards. Yesterday the Warwick Prize for Writing announced its 2011 shortlist; Derek Walcott’s White Egrets has advanced to the final six (after winning the T.S. Eliot Prize a couple weeks back). The [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on January 24, 2011
Derek Walcott He has won almost every other poetry award he’s eligible for, and this evening in London it was announced that Derek Walcott has won the 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize for his latest book, White Egrets. From the UK Guardian’s report: The winning collection . . . was described by the chair of judges, [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on December 7, 2010
Last Friday, 3 December, Derek Walcott gave the annual Robert B. Silvers Lecture at the New York Public Library, on “Hemingway and the Caribbean”. The library has been kind enough to post video footage of the lecture online for those of us in other cities or on other continents.
by Nicholas Laughlin on October 24, 2010
V.S. Naipaul in his younger days NAIPAUL I’m unusual in that I have had a long career. Most people from limited backgrounds write one book. I’m a prose writer. A prose book contains many thousands of sentiments, observations, thoughts — it is a lot of work. The pattern for most people is to do a [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on August 12, 2010
Sesenne Descartes. Photograph courtesy the St Lucia Folk Research Centre My country heart, I am not home till Sesenne sings, a voice with woodsmoke and ground-doves in it, that cracks like clay on a road whose tints are the dry season’s, whose cuatros tighten my heartstrings. The shac-shacs rattle like cicadas under the fur-leaved nettles [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on July 26, 2010
Dustjacket of the first edition of Samuel Selvon’s A Brighter Sun, from the H.D. Carberry Collection of Caribbean Literature, University of Illinois at Chicago library Does the physical format of a book — its size, shape, weight, the design of its cover and pages, the texture and smell of the binding — influence the experience [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on July 24, 2010
• Revival of Paul Simon/Derek Walcott’s Capeman opens in NYC in August: http://bit.ly/bxdLLX • Trinidadian Marlon Griffith wins 2010 Commonwealth Connections international arts residency: http://bit.ly/9y7e2o • Announcing @Carifringe: an annual regional arts festival hosted in Nassau, launching October 2010: http://bit.ly/aXkXpw • Bahamian Christian Campbell shortlisted for Forward Prize for best first collection: http://bit.ly/9cahf2 • Draconian [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on July 21, 2010
Christian Campbell The shortlists for the 2010 Forward Prizes for Poetry were announced today. The UK Guardian suggests that An expected clash between Nobel laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott on the shortlist for this year’s Forward prize for best poetry collection has been averted, after Walcott’s latest collection failed to make the cut. (The [...]
by Nicholas Laughlin on July 20, 2010
Now Showing (2010), silkscreen on paper, 20 x 27 inches, edition of one hundred signed and numbered prints, by Christopher Cozier. Image courtesy the artist and the trinidad+tobago film festival The camera, as it were, hovers gently in the air, looking down into an empty walled enclosure. A man walks past, glimpsed only in silhouette. [...]