The Caribbean's NGC Bocas Lit Fest 2024
Some of it will be livestreamed. Check which ones here! Plus some reminiscing on The Bocas UK Tour of 2022.
The NGC Bocas Lit Fest has been running for well over a decade. Late to the party, I first tuned in online during the Covid lockdown.
When in 2022 they held a UK tour for the first time, including a full day at the British Library in London, I seized the opportunity to attend and loved every minute of it. Nothing beats the energy of a good live event and the pleasure of meeting and chatting with readers and writers. Online is great but in-person will always be better!
Grace Nichols sat on the Bocas stage as a participant in Ways in the World, the first event of the day. She performed poetry from her collection Passport to Here and There with themes that resonated with me as the daughter and wife of immigrants to the UK, as a dual-citizen and a lover of both this home and the one left behind.
Unlike Grace’s partner John Agard, whose name I knew from BBC interviews and because I’d read some of his poems to my daughter from one of the few children’s poetry books we had at home when she was a toddler, Grace Nichols’ name didn’t initially ring a bell.
Moved by her work, I bought myself a copy of Passport to Here and There. I’ve recently had the pleasure of encountering her work in the extensive and delightful The Big Amazing Poetry Book, where Grace Nichols is one of 52 poets filling over 500 pages with children’s poetry. I picked up this poetry collection for my daughter from the local library entirely by chance. It’s packed with life, fun and so many styles and themes that my affection for poetry has increased by 1000%. I never thought my ten-year-old daughter would eagerly volunteer to read poetry for me aloud at bedtime! But I digress.
When Barbara Jenkins read extracts from her memoir, I wished my mother and aunt were there to share the experience with me. Barbara’s depiction of 1950’s Trinidad and her immigration experiences in the decades to follow would have touched their hearts and resonated with their own memories. In so many ways, her life story had notes of resonance and overlap with theirs. I bought a copy of The Stranger Who Was Myself as a Christmas gift for my aunt but I was so busy chatting that I forgot to tell Barbara to put my aunt’s name on it when she signed. Never mind, I thought. I’ll read it and then pass it on to her.
She passed away before I could lend it to her - but also before we could discuss the last book she’d lent me, When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd-Banwo, which had been my birthday gift to her earlier that year. (Yes, books are meant to be passed back and forth!) For so many reasons both books are now forever entwined with my memories of my aunt. But I’ll leave those stories for another day.
It was wonderful to meet author of When We Were Birds, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo. I was encouraged to discover she was familiar with a piece I’d written, in which I celebrated Trinidad and Tobago’s 21st century writers. In the piece I’d mentioned her book and its spectacularly brilliant book cover. When We Were Birds had hit my radar then as an exciting and much anticipated release.
I cheekily asked for Ayanna’s email and promised to read her book.
I’ve read and loved it Ayanna! And should I eventually blog about it, you’ll hear from me!
It was wonderful to see Ira Mathur again, author of Love the Dark Days. I’d first met her at her book launch event in London earlier that year and at the Bocas event, she kindly introduced me to her publisher. I managed to be incredibly awkward and uncharming at the required moment - but immensely grateful to Ira all the same!
By the end of the day I had so many exciting author-signed books that my paper bag ruptured. The organisers let me rummage ‘in the back’ for a cardboard box to carry them home.
Note to self: always go to literary festivals with a robust, roomy bag. You probably don’t have the discipline not to collect more books for your To-Be-Read pile. Clearly, failing to bring a robust and roomy bag is no deterrent!
In 2024, the Bocas Lit Fest runs April 25-28. The line-up is rich, diverse and exciting.
It won’t be all available by livestream on Facebook and YouTube but a damn good selection of events will be, and I’ve made a listing here of those we can tune into online.
To be livestreamed on the Bocas Lit Fest YouTube and Facebook pages
Friday 26th April 2024
10:00 am - 10:30 am
Welcome to the Festival!
The NGC Bocas Lit Fest is back, for our 14th year! As we kick off, a NALIS representative welcomes audiences to the home of the festival, and festival director Nicholas Laughlin tells us what to expect.
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Fantastic Friday: Take Two
SFF writers Karen Lord (The Blue, Beautiful World, longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction) and Premee Mohamed (No One Will Come Back for Us) kick off our special day of events focused on Caribbean speculative fiction and fantasy, with readings and conversation with Akilah White.
In partnership with the J.B. Fernandes Memorial Trust.
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Fantastic Friday: New Talent Showcase
Meet four up-and-coming fantasy writers from Trinidad and Tobago, and hear from their works in progress! Featuring Dixie-Ann Belle, Jolanda Charles, Janine Mendes-Franco, and Vindhar Suraj.
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Fantastic Friday: Take Two
SFF writers R.S.A. Garcia (The Nightward) and Zalika Reid-Benta (River Mumma) explore reinventing traditional Caribbean folklore for a new generation of fantasy readers, in conversation with Breanne Mc Ivor.
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Discussion: They Don’t Write Them Like They Used To
Do people read the print newspapers mostly for the columns? What should good analysis in the daily press look like? Can a column in the daily newspapers be considered “literary”? And what are the legacies of late star columnists like Keith Smith, Wayne Brown, and B.C. Pires? Marina Salandy-Brown leads a discussion on the present and future of the newspaper column.
SATURDAY 27th April 2024
10:00 am - 11:00 am
One on One with Dionne Brand
Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems firmly establishes Dionne Brand as one of the major poets writing in any language today. Ranging from her experience of the Grenada Revolution to the Iraq War of the early 1990s to the catastrophes of the burning present, these poems combine an acute political awareness with deep formal experiment. She joins Shivanee Ramlochan for a wide-ranging conversation about literary commitment.
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Quarrelling With History
How are conflicts and tensions of the present — from racism to war in the Middle East, xenophobia to climate change — rooted in injustices of the past? And what is the work of the creative imagination in envisioning better and more just futures? Christina Sharpe (In the Wake, Ordinary Notes), Karen Lord (The Blue, Beautiful World), and Myriam J.A. Chancy (Harvesting Haiti) join the debate, moderated by D. Alissa Trotz
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Take Two
Marchelle Farrell (Uprooting) and Safiya Sinclair (How to Say Babylon) discuss their new memoirs exploring the making and remaking of the self in contention with history, family, nature, and religion, in conversation with Tracy Assing.
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Take Two
Ingrid Persaud (The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh) and Soraya Palmer (The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter & Other Essential Ghosts) share their new novels about tempestuous families, dangerous loves, and a longing for freedom, in conversation with Teresa White.
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
One on One with Geetanjali Shree
In her International Booker Prize-winning novel Tomb of Sand, Geetanjali Shree explores the traumas of history and how they shape the present — and what it means to be a woman in today’s India. She talks about the groundbreaking elements of this monumental work with Ira Mathur.
Sunday 28th April 2024
10:00 am - 11:00 am
One on One with Edwidge Danticat
Haitian-American writer and 2024 OCM Bocas Prize chief judge Edwidge Danticat is one of the contemporary Caribbean’s most beloved authors, for her searing fiction and unsparing essays and memoirs. She speaks with Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw about the roots of her work, and if and how writing can bridge gaps of understanding and empathy.
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
A Literary Friendship
Combining penetrating insight with frank self-awareness, A Literary Friendship — based on Rohlehr’s private notebooks and correspondence, and completed not long before his death in early 2023 — is at once memoir, literary analysis, and meditation on fame and obscurity. Publisher Jeremy Poynting introduces this important posthumous work, followed by a conversation among scholars and writers Aaron Kamugisha, Anu Lakhan, and Paula Morgan, chaired by Barbara Lalla.
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
One on One
In her new book Ordinary Notes, Christina Sharpe steps past conventions of academic scholarship and literary genre to explore public and private histories, Blackness, language, memory, and the power of art. In conversation with Gabrielle Hosein.
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Take Two
In this cross-genre session, Canisia Lubrin (Code Noir) and Nicole Sealey (The Ferguson Report) read from their searing books about history, race, and justice, writing from and back to formal archives, in conversation with Michael A. Bucknor.
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Take Two
Novelists Rabindranath Maharaj (The Amazing Absorbing Boy, Fatboy Fall Down) and Kevin Jared Hosein (Hungry Ghosts) discuss their fictional explorations of Trinidad’s past and present, secrets and ambitions, in conversation with Camille Hernández-Ramdwar.
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Amazing Scenes: the Launch of the Long-Awaited Collection of Seepersad Naipaul’s Journalism
Originally published in the Trinidad Guardian in the 1930s and ‘40s and long unavailable to readers, Seepersad Naipaul’s articles and columns are vivid accounts of a boisterous colonial society, full of character and incident. A new selected edition gives this “lost” body or writing back to us. With an introduction by publisher Jeremy Poynting and conversation and readings by co-editors Kenneth Ramchand, Nivedita Misra, and Aaron Eastley.
For the full festival programme, see here.
For more about the Bocas Lit Fest see here.
The Bocas Lit Fest Events to be livestreamed will all take place at the Old Fire Station.
What’s that about AN OLD FIRE STATION?
The Old Fire Station building, National Library in Port of Spain is located on the same complex as the NALIS POS Library Building and now incorporated as part of the library. The building was renovated to be the home of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, who have relocated to a new home in Belmont. It was previously the post of The Trinidad and Tobago Fire Services' Headquarters (established 1951) and was originally built in 1896.
- Source
You can read more about it here.
I’m not taking any chances!
I’m taking time off over Saturday April 27 and Sunday April 28 to catch as much of the livestream as I can. I aim to catch Friday afternoon’s sessions on social media via the recordings in the weeks that follow. But knowing what my life is like, the best way to be sure to participate is to put aside the time, sit down with pen and paper, and be there with my laptop, in my house, in real time! Because actually coming back to those recordings is always iffy for me!
See you at the livestream!