High notes to end Bocas Lit Fest evenings

Despite continued restrictions on gatherings, the 2021 NGC Bocas Lit Fest will stay true to its usual social and cultural evening fare in its 2021 all-virtual festival.

The three festival days – April 23-25 – all close with engaging celebrations of music, Caribbean literature, and prize-winners’ announcements.

After a decade of annual literary celebration, festival-goers have become accustomed to nightly wrap-up sessions fitting of the largest literary festival in the Caribbean, and this year will be no exception, albeit in virtual form, said a media release from the NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

The first day’s events wrap up on April 23 with Shake it Up, a celebration of Vincentian jazz musician and poet, “Shake” Keane. Philip Nanton, a fellow Vincentian, will share from his deeply-personal biography of Shake Keane, Riff: The Shake Keane Story, which explores little-known aspects of Keane’s life and Caribbean legacy. Nanton will be joined in conversation with jazz musician and singer Ruth Osman.

They will lead on to the premiere of a new composition from guitarist and bandleader Gene Lawrence, who has set the poems of Keane’s Volcano Suite to music. The Volcano Suite, a lengthy poem inspired by the 1979 eruption of La Soufriere, is hauntingly describing current scenes in St Vincent in the aftermath of the recent eruption this month, the release said.

On April 24, the focus turns to the NGC Bocas Lit Fest’s Winners’ Row celebration. The highly-coveted 2021 OCM Bocas Prize will be announced from among the three shortlisted authors who have already won the fiction, non-fiction and poetry categories respectively: Maisy Card, Andre Bagoo and Canisia Lubrin. The winner of the last edition of the Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize will also be named, and professors emeriti from Jamaica Edward Baugh and Mervyn Morris will both receive the 2021 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award.

On April 25, the evening event also centres on a grand announcement – after an extensive crowdsourcing campaign in 2020 – the final list of the 100 Caribbean Books That Made Us. The campaign was undertaken as a response to a 2019 BBC list of 100 novels that shaped the world, which had scarce Caribbean titles on it. To help reveal the new Caribbean list, Jamaican Poet Laureate Olive Senior, Caribbean literary scholar Aaron Kamugisha, and publisher of Akashic Books Johnny Temple will analyse the highlights and surprises of this new "canon" with host Ardene Sirjoo.

Tune in to all events for free, no registration required – the full programme is available at bocaslitfest.com/programme/ – and will be streamed live via bocaslitfest.com, facebook.com/bocaslitfest, and youtube.com/bocaslitfest.

April 23

8.30-9.30 pm: Shake it Up – Celebrating the legacy of “Shake” Keane, with Philip Nanton, Ruth Osman and Gene Lawrence

April 24

6.30-8.30 pm: Winners’ Row – Announcing the winners of the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize, the 2021 Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize and the 2021 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award

April 25

6.30-7.30 pm: 100 Caribbean Books That Made Us: The Reveal – With Olive Senior, Aaron Kamugisha and Johnny Temple. Hosted by Ardene Sirjoo.