Call for applications: Bridget Jones Travel Award

Writers, artists, musicians, and arts researchers from across the Caribbean: take a look at the call for applications for the 2008 Bridget Jones Travel Award.

Arts researchers or practitioners living and working in the Caribbean are eligible to apply for the Bridget Jones Travel Award, the deadline for which is the 11th January 2008. The winner of the award will present their work at the Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference, 2nd-4th July 2008 at Edinburgh University.

Eligibility

If you are an arts practitioner or researcher (postgraduate, postdoctoral or professional) working in any region of the Anglophone, Hispanic, Francophone or Dutch-speaking Caribbean, you may apply for the Award. The successful recipient will receive £650 towards travel expenses and, in addition, a full bursary to cover conference fees and accommodation. Applications are especially welcome from individuals with no institutional affiliations. We encourage visual artists, performers and creative writers to submit proposals in addition to the more usual scholarly research papers.

How to apply

To apply for the Award you must submit either:
(a) A proposal for a presentation of your work, in the areas of film, literature, visual or performing arts.
(b) A proposal for a reading of original creative work.
Applications should be in writing, including a covering letter, full curriculum vitae and statements from two referees who are able to comment on your work. Completed applications must be received by 11th January 2008. A decision will be made by the committee in late January.

Applications and enquiries should be sent by e-mail or by post to Kate Quinn, Chair of the Bridget Jones Award Sub-Committee:

Kate Quinn
Institute for the Study of the Americas
31 Tavistock Square
London WC1H 9HA
kate.quinn@sas.ac.uk

For more information on the Bridget Jones Travel Award and the Society for Caribbean Studies, visit the Society website on www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk.

Remembering Martin Carter

13 December was the tenth anniversary of the death of Martin Carter, a great Caribbean man of letters and a poet who stands--alongside Walcott, Brathwaite, and Bennett--at the head of the West Indian poetic tradition.

In yesterday's Stabroek News, Al Creighton took a brief look back at Carter's posthumous career and offered close readings of two of his poems, "The Poems Man" and "The Conjunction". The CRB has run two substantial pieces on Carter in the last couple of years. In our November 2006 issue, Vahni Capildeo reviewed University of Hunger, the edition of Carter's poems edited by Gemma Robinson. And in February 2006, we published an essay on Carter, "The truth of craft", by Stewart Brown (who co-edited another edition of the great man's poems last year, with Ian McDonald).

(I wrote a review of University of Hunger too--in the July/August 2006 Caribbean Beat.)

Other Carter resources online:
- his very brief Wikipedia entry (in need of some expert attention)
- his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for those with subscriptions
- a short tribute by Geoffrey Philp, published on Carter's birthday in 2006
- a review of Carter's 1977 Poems of Succession, by Wyck Williams
- an interview with Carter done in 1995 by Gemma Robinson