TheOrator.Press ‘Events’ Page. “Events Dear Boy. Events!” BOCAS Literary Festival. October 2022

The BOCAS Literary Festival ~ October 2022

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(TO.P) TheOrator.Press Attended The 1^st Trinidad & Tobago ‘Bocas’ Literary Festival At The British Library Saturday 29 October 2022

We Spoke To Bocas Organisers And Performers To Find Out How The Inaugural Caribbean Writing Festival Came To Be And What It Was Like Being Part of The Caribbean Reading, Writing And Book Festival On The Day.

Whilst The Intellectual Extravaganza Was Held At The British Library For Just One Day On Saturday 29 October 2022, It Was Part of A Four Day Festival Also Curated In Belfast, Leeds, Leicester And Norwich. And It’s An Annual Oratory Affair In Trinidad And Tabago @bocaslitfest

It Was Staged In Association With The British Library’s Caribbean Curator, Renaissance One (The African Caribbean Written Word Literary Advocates), And BOCAS (The Trinidadian Annual Literary Festival). All Links Opposite Column In Picture Gallery.

It Was Also Live Streamed On The British Library’s Media Platform, With Audience Members Being Able To Buy Tickets To Attend Onsite Or Online.(Online Access Was Given Via A Digital Link Allowing Online Attendees To Watch In Real Time or Stream & Catch Up Within 48 Hours of The Event. Plus There Were Captions Allowing Audience Members To Read & Watch The Presentations If They Could Not Hear Them).

The Whole Day of Festival Activity Ran From 10.30am – 9.00pm With Tickets Priced Between £10.00 ~£30.00 boxoffice@bl.uk

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The Festival Ran On A Ten Hour Schedule From 11.00am To 9.00pm

Broken Down Into 7 Main Sessions

With Half Hour Breaks In Between Each One

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The Raison d’etre of The Festival Is To Showcase Historical, Contemporary, Disaporic, National, Old And Young Caribbean Writing Talent Through Presentations, Performances, Readings, And Conversations, Around Art, History, Identity, Ideas, Stories And Music.

Books By Those Writers Featured At The Event Were Available To Purchase On The Day In The Main Foyer.

And Tasty Caribbean Refreshments Were Provided By @NettiesCaribbeanMobileKitchen And By The Library’s Own Main Pop Up Bar In The Foyer Opening At 5pm.

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Interview With Cherie Taylor Batiste

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We Were Fortunate Enough To Interview Cherie Taylor Batiste, A Writer, Poet & Performer, Who, Today Played A Supportive Role Helping Out Behind The Scences With Renaissance One.

#Cherie Taylor Battiste: My Name Is Cherie Taylor Battiste And I’m An Associate Artist With Renaissance One And I’m A Poet. But Today I’ve Had A Different Hat On Just Helping Out & “Hands On Pump For The Event”.

I Became Assistant Producer For Shivanee & Fred Up In Leeds Last Week And We Kind of Drank Late Into The Night So It’s Just Nice To Kind of Reconnect. We Shared A Lot. And They Were Like “Write Your Memoir We Wanna’ Read It”.

[Shivanee Ramlochan  Is One of The Headline Literary Figures At The Festival, Which Also Includes Celeste Mohammed, Canisia Lubrin, And Fred d’gare]

So What’s Been Beautiful Is Spending Time With Such Writers of Excellence In The Green Room And Those Conversations, It’s Kinda’ The Talk Around The Talk, The Work Around The Work, Where We Just Really Connected Sharing Some of Those Fundamentals And It Was Just A Very Exciting Place To Be Today.

And What I Loved Was That We Could Honour The Excellence of The Writers But Also The Whole Event Kind of Mirrored And Honoured That Rather Than It Being, As So Often, We Don’t Get The Sound We Want or The Venue We Want. Being In The British Library And Having A Full Full Day of Back To Back, You Know, Richness And Culture Has Been A Treat And A Blessing. And Yeah, I Look Forward To The Next One.

As Writers We Don’t Always Get The Chance To Set Our Minds Free. Our Creative Minds Were Allowed To Gallop Freely And Kind of Run, Run, Run. It’s A Blessing And A Gift.

TO.P:  And Where Were They Galloping?

Cherie Taylor Battiste: In The Green Room We Were Talking About All Kinds of Topics. Just The Very Essence of Writing, Tailored By Personal Experience. That Combination Is A Wonderful Thing And Similarly With Fred, Who’s Just Over There, Fred  d’gar. It’s A Continuation.

We Were Talking About Life And How It Kinda’ Impacts Art And The Experiences You Have And Permeates Into A Sense of Truth And A Sense of Connection And A Reminder of Who We Are And The Resilience And Beauty of It. Everything You Go Through And Get Down In The Mud With, You Know, There’s Diamonds In That Mud As Artists.

Some of The Resilience You Gain As A Creative Black Woman Is Priceless . It’s Not That You Invite Struggle, But When You’re Stood Tall After Struggle, Or On A Stage Sharing You Words After Struggle, You Know That Struggle Connect Us Together.

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Interview With Nicolas Locklin (Photo Gallery)

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(TO.P) TheOrator.Press Also Spoke To BOCAS Representative, Nicolas Locklin, About How The Festival Got It’s Name, When It Started And Why It’s Important.

BOCAS:  Between Trinidad And Venuzuela There Are A Series of Narrow Sea Passages Called ‘The Bocas Del Dragon’ (The Dragon’s Mouth). It’s A Geographical Feature of Trindad And Tobago, And The Festival Is Named After That.

TO.P: And Why Was This The First Year You Reached Out To The British Library ~ Or How Did It Come To Be?

A Big Part of What We Do Is Showcasing Caribbean Writers Internationally. And We’ve Done Various Smaller Things Before. And Originally For Our Tenth Anniversary 2020 We Planned To Do A British Tour. Then Covid Happened And So A Couple of Years Passed And We Were Able To Pull It Together This Year And We Thought What Is A Good Place In London That’s A Big Central Place In London Where People Come To Help Write Books And You Know,  So We Thought The British Library. There’s A Really Good Caribbean Curator Here Who We Were In Touch With And So We Basically Said “Do You Think The British Library Would Be Interested In Having Us? And She Said “Absolutely” And So We’re Here.

TO.P: And Who Was The Curator?

BOCAS:   Her Name Was Nicole Rachael Moore And She’s The Curator of Caribbean Collections At The British Library. She’s Also From Trinidad But Living Here. So It’s A Trini’ Link Up!

TO.P: So How Long Have You Been Doing What You Do With Bocas?

BOCAS: Since The Beginning. Since BOCAS Started In 2021

TO.P: And Why Do You Think It’s Important To Have An Event Such As BOCAS?

BOCAS: Because Caribbean Literature Is Extremely Rich And Diverse And Varied And We Have Amazing Writers And A Disproportionate Number of Amazing Writers For The Size of Our Population. And The World Just Needs To Know About It, And So That’s What We Do.

TO.P: And Are You Coming Back Next Year?

BOCAS: I Don’t Know About Next Year To Be Honest. We Might Be A Bit Tired Doing It Next Year. We Have Our Own Festival To Run Next Year. But We’ll See Maybe We Will Be Back.

TO.P: So Were The Two Festivals Running Simultaneously [Your One And This One]?

BOCAS: No. At Home Our Festival Is The End of April Every Year

TO.P: And Long Is It This Year With The British Library? How Long Have You Been Here?

BOCAS: This Is A One Day Event. A One Day Programme. So Just Today. I Mean Today Was Plenty.

TO.P: So Your British Tour. You Mentioned That You’re Going To Ireland Is It, On Thursday?

BOCAS: Yes. Belfast, Leeds, Here And We Were In Norwich The Other Night, So Yes.

TO.P: And That’s All On Your Website Is It?

BOCAS: All On Our Website!

TO.P: And Thursday You Finish?

BOCAS: That’s Right. That’s The Last Event

TO.P: And Where You Gonna’ Be?

BOCAS: In Belfast. On Thursday.

TO.P: That’s Great. Thank You For Talking To Us

BOCAS: That’s Alright. You’re Welcome. Thanks For Coming.

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The Festival Ran On A Ten Hour Schedule From 11.00am To 9.00pm

Broken Down Into 7 Main Sessions

With Half Hour Breaks In Between Each One

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Session 1 – (One Hour ~ 11.00 –12.00 ~ Entitled ‘Ways In The World’)

This Session Hosted By Audrey Brown, Curates A Collection of Autobiographical Poems & Moving Memoirs About Being Displaced And Returning Home Again By Various Authors

Barbara Jenkins ~ The Stranger Who Was Myself;

Ira Mathur ~ Love the Dark Days;

Grace Nichols ~ Passport to Here and There

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(Half Hour Break)

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Session 2 ~ (One Hour ~ 12.30 – 13.30 Entitled ‘The Trouble With History’)

With New Stories From The 19^th Century To The Mid 20th Century The Present Day Can Learn From The Past.

BOCAS Executive Nicholas Laughlin Hosts The Winner of The Europe & Canada Commonwealth Short Story ‘A Hat for Lemer’ ~ Cecil Browne;

Ingrid Persaud ~ The Vagabond Rajah;  

And

Amanda Smyth ~  Fortune

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   (Half Hour Break)

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Session 3 – (One Hour ~ 14.00 – 15.00 ~ Entitled ‘An Island Is A World’)

Hosted By Claire Adam, Different Characters, Themes, Voices And Concerns Converge To Represent Different People Within The Caribbean

Celeste Mohammed ~ Pleasantview;

Jacob Ross ~  Tell No-one About This 

And

Celia Sorhaindo ~Radical Normalisation

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(Half Hour Break)

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          Session 4 – (One Hour 15.30 – 16.30~ Entitled ‘Don’t Call It Magic’)

Myth, The Supernatural, Speculation, Folklore And Fairytales Are Discussed By Authors,  With –

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo ~ When We Were Birds;

Karen Lord ~ Unravelling;

And

Pauline Melville The Master of Chao.

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(Half Hour Break)

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Session 5 – (One Hour ~ 17.00 – 18.00~ Entitled ‘Mothers, Fathers, Daughters, Sons’) Hosted By Isabelle Baafi,

Sophie Jai ~ Wild Fire;

Anthony Joseph ~ Sonnets for Albert 

Shivanee Ramlochan ~ Everyone Knows I Am A Haunting

This Session Invited Attendees To Write, Read & Talk About Bloodlines, Betrayal, Ambition And Ancestry Being Both Reassuring And Discomforting.

Family Drama Is Something We Can All Relate Too One Way or Another So This Session Really Stood Out To Us. We Spoke To One of The Producers On This Session (As Outlined Above)

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(Half Hour Break)

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Session 6 – (One Hour ~ 18.30 – 19.30~ Entitled ‘Beyond Every Boundary’)

Hosted By Nick Makoha  ~ This Penultimate Session Considers What ‘Home’ Means For Some Caribbeans As It Is Not Always  A Straightforward Concept. Especially Living As A Diaspora There Are Different Communities, Solidarities, Imaginings And Indeed Politics. Who Can Forget The Cricket Question Posed By 1980s Thatcherite Tory MP Norman Tebbit Who Criticized The Caribbean Diaspora For Routing For The Jamaican Team When It Came To The Cricket.

Canisia Lubrin ~Dyzgraphist (Winner of The 2021 OCM Bocas Prize)

Tessa Mcwatt ~ Shame On Me: An Anatomy of Race And Belonging (Winner Of The 2020 OCM Bocas Prize For Non-Fiction)

Nadifa Mohammed ~ The Fortune Men  (Shortlisted: Booker Prize 2021)  

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(Half Hour Break)

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Session 7 ~ Grand Finale

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20.00 ~ 21.00

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The Last Hour of The BOCAS UK 2022 At The British Library Was A The Grand Finale of Music, Lyrics, And Stylish Performances Co-Hosted By Renaissance One Founder Melanie Abrahams And Veteran Writer, Actor, Wordsmith & Poet John Agard.

Composer Dominique Le Gendre (Cuatro) And Actress Gleanne Purcell Performed Songs From ‘Playboy Of The West Indies’ ~ A Musical, Adapted From Mustapha Matura’s Original Play.

Grace Nichols, Fred Aguiar & Shivanee Ramlochan, Gave A Performance of “We Liming” (Liming Being A Bajan Term For Chilling Out & Relaxing With Friends And Associates).

And Composer And Vocalist Randolph Matthews Performed Too Adding A A Cool, Smooth, Jazz-Style Touch To Finish Things off With A Little Panache.

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This Lovely ‘Liming’ Demonstration (Opposite) By @Queen Latifah Is So Good We Had To Watch It Again!

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TheOrator.Press @theorator.press.on.insta

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