We are at the British Library, right in the heart of London. It’s two days before Halloween, but unseasonably sunny. There’s a bunch of dancers in carnival costumes in the Piazza out front, and nearby they’re serving hearty Caribbean food (though more Jamaican than Trini).
It’s the first London incarnation of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, a focus for Trinidad and Tobago’s literary scene since 2011. It’s a strange double take. We are 7000 kilometers from the Port of Spain. We are in the second largest library in the world, with 150 million items and 625 kilometers of shelves.
On display are the desks where Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice; Magna Carta, a cornerstone of Britain’s constitution; and a special exhibit on Alexander the Great.
And right in your face as you enter is the Bocas of Trinidad and Tobago. There is a group of friendly, familiar faces. The buzz and atmosphere in this light and airy space is strikingly similar to Bocas’ regular home to NALIS and the Old Fire Station in Port of Spain.
This Bocas event acted as a magnet for writers from elsewhere in the Caribbean. Among those who spoke were Guyanese Grace Nichols and John Agard, both based in England since 1977; Pauline Melville, also from Guyana; Cecil Browne of St Vincent; Canisia Lubrin from St Lucia; and Karen Lord from Barbados—although surprisingly, there was none from Jamaica (except for the food).
A ten-hour program went from memoir to re-created history, and on to magic and myth, to ancestry and bloodlines, home and communities, and then a grand finale with excerpts from Dominique Le Gendre’s musical version of Playboy of the West Indies.
The T&T High Commission in London hosted an evening reception prior to the event at the historic Marlborough House, the seat of the Commonwealth. Authors productively connected with publishers and agents. “See where you get,” said NGC’s Mark Loquan. In addition to NGC, backers for London’s Bocas included One Caribbean Media, parent company of the Express, and CCN TV6; British Council; and Yale University.
The literary connection to London goes back to the 1950s and beyond, to Naipaul and Samuel Selvon, to fiery British editors like Diana Athill to the publisher André Deutsch and 56 years of New Beacon Books.
Caribbean talent meets a London publishing infrastructure with a critical mass the region cannot rival, and an international reading public large enough to deliver lucrative sales volumes.
But successful publishing doesn’t have to be big publishing. Jeremy Poynting’s tiny Peepal Tree Press has incubated a string of Caribbean writers since the 1980s – not least new work this year and the latest from Barbara Jenkins, Ira Mathur and Amanda Smyth, all stimulating contributors to the Bocas of London.
Peepal Tree took on Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch when other publishers lacked confidence in the work despite the author’s already strong track record. Black Conch won the prestigious Costa Book of the Year Award in 2020.
The book has since been picked up by Vintage Books, an arm of publishing giant Penguin Random House, in a deal that looks like good news for all concerned. Thirteen translations followed – the Japanese version is out next month. Filming is underway and will utilize TT locations and talent.
Also at the 2020 Costa Awards, Ingrid Persaud’s Love After Love won the First Novel Award. Annoyingly, Coca-Cola, which is the new owner of the Costa cafe chain in Britain, scrapped the prices this year. Doesn’t it suit her fizzy agenda?
The Caribbean connection extends to the British school curriculum. AQA (formerly the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) is the largest testing body for Britain’s schools, setting and marking more than half of the exams taken at GCSE and A-Level (equivalent to CSEC and CAPE).
Shakespeare and the 19th century novel make up a large part of their GCSE English Literature syllabus – but the other big part is modern lyrics and poetry. In that regard, Grace Nichols from Guyana is up there among the selected poets.
So is Roger Robinson, who was born in London to Trinidadian parents but came home with them at the age of 4, returning to Britain as a 19-year-old in the 1990s. He works in music and spoken word. and his A Portable Paradise won the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2019—following Derek Walcott, who received Britain’s highest poetry prize in 2010. Another AQA poet with Caribbean roots is Raymond Antrobus, born in London from a British father and a Jamaican mother.
I can’t find any of these three on CSEC’s current text list, or their longer reading lists – although the wide choice of other writers is testament to the breadth of Caribbean talent.
Robinson’s book project, Home is Not a Place, explores black Britishness, in collaboration with photographer Johny Pitts. But the title evokes other themes highlighted by the Bocas event—the crossflow of cultural and linguistic currents, diaspora and home without strong national boundaries, and the irrelevance of heated debates about who is authentically Caribbean and who is not.
In February 2023, T&T Carnival returns. And in April, Bocas is back at its usual TT venue. I feel good?
—Author Mark Wilson is an international journalist based in Port of Spain.
