UWI celebrates Bocas Lit Fest awardees Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge

The UWI St Augustine Campus Community extended congratulations to Professor Emeritus Funso Aiyejina and Dr Merle Hodge on being awarded the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters.

The award was founded in 2013 to honour the late BBC World Service radio producer, Henry Swanzy, who was a catalysing figure in the development of modern West Indian literature.

A media release from the UWI cited the Bocas Lit Fest Committee's commendation of the duo for their literary work. It said, “Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge have played an unmistakable role in shaping the region’s literary landscape” with bodies of work that span borders and decades. They have been creative writing teachers and mentors, particularly through the influential Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop which they led from its foundation in 2000. Bocas Lit commends their “crucial parallel work as teachers and mentors of younger authors, and their dedication to nurturing a generation of writers grounded in Caribbean literary tradition and language, exploring the region’s social complexities,” the release said.

In addition, Aiyejina was instrumental in the establishment of the creative writing MFA (Master of Fine Arts) programme at the St Augustine Campus – the first degree-granting programme in creative writing in the Anglophone Caribbean. Hodge is author of the 1970 classic, Crick Crack, Monkey. She is a retired lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, St Augustine campus, the release said.

Head of department, Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies, Dr Suzanne Burke said the department joins the national community in recognising the work of both Aiyegina and Hodge in creating art that represents the diversity and dynamism of the Caribbean experience.

“Their work has provided us with new and fresh ways to see, and to be ourselves. As public intellectuals and activists their years of service, especially with young men and women have consistently sought to activate the innate potential of the region’s creative core as a source of real developmental energy. We congratulate them both on their accomplishments,” Burke said in the release.

Other UWI St Augustine lecturers who have previously received this award are Prof Kenneth Ramchand and Gordon Rohlehr, both in 2014.

The Bocas Henry Swanzy Award will be formally presented to Aiyejina and Hodge during a virtual ceremony on April 30 as part of the 2022 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.