3 Trinis shortlisted for poetry prize

Desiree Seebaran -
Desiree Seebaran -

Akhim Alexis, Jay T John and Desiree Seebaran, all Trinidadian, will now compete for the 2021 Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize (JAAWP). The valuable award will enable one of them to advance his or her ambition as a poet.

The shortlist for the region’s only prize for emerging writers was announced by the Bocas Lit Fest on March 19, and the winner will be announced during the upcoming virtual NGC Bocas Lit Fest, TT’s annual literary festival, which takes place from April 23-25, said a media release.

Eight of the ten writers longlisted for the third and final year of the Johnson and Amoy Achong Writers Caribbean Prize were from TT. A total of 35 submissions were received from seven other Caribbean countries – Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas and Guyana, said a media release.

The release quotes the judges as saying the quality of the 2021 Prize entries was uneven. “Many of the poets failed to sustain their opening imagery, some deployed disconnected symbolism, inappropriate diction, inconsistent code-switching between English and Creole, and in some cases, were obviously too prosaic. But the top contenders were accomplished or very promising. History, myth, gender, and identity are the most common areas of engagement. At the level of experiment, robber talk, the mechanics of spoken word, the tradition of nursery rhymes, rasta groundation, and elegiac tradition are evident,” the release said. It said it is the first time that Trinidadian writers have been so dominant in the final line-up. Founder of the award, Marina Salandy-Brown said in the release, “I have to agree with the view that something is shifting in the literary environment here, and it is not a miracle. We at the Bocas Lit Fest simply added our different, complementary skills to the many other efforts that have been made to develop our writers over a long period. We have been able to affect the ecosystem positively and we are seeing the results of years of work on the part of everyone, especially those who aspired to become accomplished writers.”

JAAWP has been sponsored for three years by philanthropist and medical practitioner Dr Achong Low, in memory of his parents and is administered by the Bocas Lit Fest in TT and the literary charitable trust Arvon in the UK.

The Johnson and Amoy Achong Writers Caribbean Prize consists of a cash award of $3,000US and attendance at an intense creative writing course at one of Arvon’s internationally renowned writing houses, plus a three-day stay in London to network with editors and publishers, hosted by Arvon and in association with the Free Word Centre. The winner is also mentored by an established writer in the genre and gets the chance to be agented by Aitken Alexander Associates literary agency in the UK.

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"3 Trinis shortlisted for poetry prize"

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