"England suddenly felt tropical"

I took a phone call one mid-morning, when I was lazing in bed, wondering whether to get up and face the bleak wintry day. The phone call was the warm, lyrical voice of the Director of the Sabga Awards, telling me that I was their Arts and Literature laureate for 2008. Needless to say, England suddenly felt tropical, and I arose from my bed.

--David Dabydeen, speaking about his recently announced Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence, in an interview with John Mair in the Stabroek News.

SN: What does getting this award mean to you?

DD: It means that I can have a greater regional presence, in terms of access to media, individuals etc. It will also encourage me to visit more of the islands. It offers me a degree of protection against acts of malice. And I can buy crates of red wine as well.

The money will be spent on paying off some of my mortgage, so I can have a secure home on earth; some will be spent on the poor in Guyana, a kind of bribe to get to heaven.

Caribbean books on NBCC shortlist

More prizes.... this time the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Awards, the finalists for which were announced in San Francisco yesterday. There are no fewer than four Caribbean-related books on the shortlist: Edwidge Danticat's memoir Brother, I'm Dying and Junot Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao--both of them CRB books of the year!--plus Trinidadian-American Arnold Rampersad's biography Ralph Ellision and Dominican-American Julia Alvarez's cultural study Once Upon a Quinceanera.

The NBCCA winners will be decided and announced in March.

Sabga Award for Dabydeen

The winners of the 2008 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence were announced yesterday--and the arts and letters "laureate" is David Dabydeen, one of Guyana's leading contemporary writers, professor at the University of Warwick, an important figure in the field of Caribbean studies--and a member of the CRB's editorial board. Congratulations, David, from Antilles and the CRB.

The other 2008 laureates are: James Husbands of Barbados, for science and technology; and Annette Arjoon of Guyana and Claudette Richardson Pious of Jamaica, both for public and civic contributions. All four will come to Trinidad in April for the awards ceremony.

(Dabydeen has a new novel, Molly and the Muslim Stick, due later this year; three of his earlier novels were recently reprinted by Peepal Tree Press; his latest books are The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited with John Gilmore, and an edition of the poems of the nineteenth-century Guyanese poet Egbert Martin.)

Meanwhile, elsewhere....

- Marlon James lists his favourite music of 2007--and resents his prose being described as "lyrical".

- Sharon Millar resolves to read all of Naipaul in 2008, but first she tells us why she loves Oscar Wao. (There's a short story by Junot Díaz in the 24 December, 2007, New Yorker.)

- Tobias Buckell gives an update on his forthcoming novel, Sly Mongoose--it's at the copy-editing stage. (If you can't wait to find out more, check out the video trailer he uploaded last week.)

- Reviews of Caryl Phillips's new novel, Foreigners, are starting to appear all over. Here's one by Donna Bailey Nurse in the Toronto Globe and Mail, another by Michael Fischer in the Miami Herald, a third by Howard Frank Mosher in the Boston Globe.

- And the January/February issue of Caribbean Beat offers a slew of book, film, and music reviews.

Great Brits?

Not content with a mere "best of 2007" list, the London Times (or at least its literary staff) has named what it considers "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"--better yet, ranked them in order of "greatness". "What better way to start the year than with an argument?" they ask.

Philip Larkin tops a list in which poets are otherwise rather sparse; Orwell, Golding, Hughes, and Lessing round out the top five; Michael Moorcock brings up the rear; someone called Salman "Rusdie" finds himself at number 13. But the reason we note this squib here at Antilles, dear readers, is the presence on the list of two of "ours"--V.S. Naipaul at no. 7 and Derek Walcott at no. 31. Naipaul--who has lived in Britain for fifty years, been tapped on the shoulder by the Queen, etc.--no one can argue with, but Walcott seems a little out-of-place here. He is not a British citizen and has never lived in Britain; the Times explicitly excludes Seamus Heaney from the list on the grounds of nationality, so why do they lay claim to a St. Lucian?

(Also, there is something seriously wrong with any list that ranks J.K. Rowling above Bruce Chatwin.)

2007 CRB books of the year

At the end of any calendar year, it's natural to find yourself thinking back over the high and low points of the preceding twelve months. Here at the CRB, we've found ourselves thinking, specifically, about the books we've been reading.

In 2007, the CRB reviewed a full sixty books, and "noticed" another thirty-odd in our "Also noted" column. That may represent just a half of all the Caribbean books published during the year. Because the CRB is a quarterly with a rather long lead-time, we'll be reviewing 2007 books well into 2008.

And of the dozens of books that have passed through our hands and our pages this year, which have we enjoyed best, or been most edified by? What were the stand-out Caribbean books of 2007, the ones we believe deserve a permanent place on our readers' bookshelves? Over the last week, we've done a rough poll of the magazine's editors and contributing editors, and come up with a collective list of our "books of the year". In what we hope will become an annual year-end tradition, we offer their names here, for the sake of those readers who may have overlooked them in the hurry and press of everyday.

The 2007 CRB books of the year, in alphabetical order:

Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds, by Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester, Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, et al (Yale Centre for British Art/Yale University Press)
This lavish catalogue of an exhibition that opened in October at the Yale Centre for British Art looks at the work of Belisario in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century topographical drawing and painting, and the iconography of slavery and emancipation. (Look out for a review in the February 2008 CRB.)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz (Riverhead)
The long-awaited first novel by the author of the short story collection Drown tackles the horrors of the Dominican Republic's modern history, the trials of immigration and diaspora, and the mysteries of fuku americanus, the Curse of the New World, with a linguistic verve that is Caribbean and American and also something in between. (Look out for a review in the February 2008 CRB.)

Brother, I'm Dying, by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
Catalysed by the death of Danticat's uncle Joseph while in the custody of US Immigration in Miami, this heartbreaking memoir describes a family caught in a cultural, historical, and political crossfire. (Look out for a review in the February 2008 CRB.)

An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque, by Krista A. Thompson (Duke University Press)
A wryly intelligent examination of the ways that postcard and poster depictions of the Caribbean have influenced and been influenced by the island's tourist economies, by a young Bahamian art historian. (Reviewed by Melanie Archer in the August 2007 CRB.)

Four Taxis Facing North, by Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw (Flambard Press)
Walcott-Hackshaw's first book of short stories takes an unsparing, un-nostalgic look at the here-and-now of contemporary Trinidad, from an urban middle-class female perspective still rare in Anglophone Caribbean writing. (Look out for a review in the February 2008 CRB.)

From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People, by Lorna Goodison (McClelland and Stewart)
A family memoir by Jamaica's most important living poet, sharing with her poems their gentle wisdom, their understated lyricism, and their sense of how marvellous the real can be, and how real the marvellous. (Look out for a review in the May 2008 CRB.)

Ragamuffin, by Tobias S. Buckell (Tor)
This speculative fiction novel combines a perfectly paced plot and compelling characters with a powerful and very Caribbean allegory about personal independence and intellectual autonomy. (Reviewed by Lisa Allen-Agostini in the November 2007 CRB.)

Selected Poems, by Derek Walcott, ed. Edward Baugh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A distillation of the work of the Caribbean's great--greatest?--poet by one of his foremost readers and interpreters. (Reviewed by Brendan de Caires in the May 2007 CRB.)

There Is an Anger that Moves, by Kei Miller (Carcanet)
This second collection of poems by the promising and prolific Jamaican writer demonstrates an already distinctive voice and a rapidly maturing talent. Miller's first novel will be published in 2008. (Look out for a review in the May 2008 CRB.)

***

And what were your favourite books of 2007, dear readers? Tell us in the comments below.

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