Calabash Literary Festival 2007 – Reading with the stars

Calabash in the rain

“I thought the hurricane season started on June 1st,” quipped Richard Philcox, the husband and translator of Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé, as he read from his wife’s biography against a a backdrop of rain and crashing waves yesterday evening. Condé passed duties over to Philcox after giving the audience a short introduction and a demonstration in a heavy French accent of why she shouldn’t try to read aloud in English. She was correct: Philcox did far greater justice to two elegant excerpts from her biography, which Condé said said she wrote partly in response to the portrayal of the French Caribbean experience in works like Joseph Zobel’s Sugar Cane Alley. Michael Ondaatje followed with readings from his biography, his novel Anil’s Ghost and his latest work, Divisadero; then Caryl Phillips took the stage with an excerpt from Dancing in the Dark and an essay called “Growing Pains”.

Nicholas has more details at Antilles of both this outstanding session and the entertaining open mike that followed, where our Trinidadian friend Muhammad Muwakil easily earned himself the title of crowd favourite.

Muhammad Muwakil brought the house down during the open mike session

Our caretakers Polly and Graham (who told us he spent many hours just sitting and watching Alex Haley — who is said to have written part of Roots in a cottage not far from here — write) are now in the kitchen cooking up yet another fabulous breakfast. I saw what looked like a bowl of fresh ackee last night in the fridge, so I’m hoping that ackee and saltfish — my favourite Jamaican dish — is on the menu. Then we’re off to see Cindy Breakspeare and others perform excerpts from Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur. And yes, you did read that right.

And oh, the photos are here.

Technorati Tags: calabash literary festival, calabash07, jamaica, caribbean, literature

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