15 years of Bocas Lit Fest

BOCAS LIT FEST is celebrating its 15th year, and founder and president Marina Salandy-Brown is proud of the amount of work the team has done and the tens of thousands of children it impacted.

“When we started people said, ‘A literary festival? But nobody reads in Trinidad.’ I said, ‘It’s not true! People do read and they do write but nobody’s given them permission to put their hands up.’

“So there were all these closet readers and a lot of people who wanted to write, but nobody said, ‘Let’s help you. Let’s make it possible for you to get exposure or advance your careers.’”

She said people were scared of the word “literature” or believed it was for “a certain type” of person, which was why they used “lit” in the name. She was pleased she could remove some of that stigma and help people realise literature was not elitist.

She recalled, years ago, her garbage collector rang her doorbell. He told her he wrote poetry and asked if he could read at the festival, which he did at the open mic event.

She was also glad some of those who participated in the workshops or attended other events went on to become successful writers.

Salandy-Brown said literature was not only the things people wrote in books or to study for an exam. People used words, ideas and stories in everything they did including song lyrics, tv scripts and advertisements. She said everything people wrote in a message or social media post was an idea or story.

“It’s just thinking about it differently, which is why we have all these different ways of trying to attract people to the idea.”

Which was why events at the Bocas Lit Fest included the Poetry Slam, discussions, seminars and workshops, the launch of new novels, the annual OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, extempo and ole mas competitions – which were forms of storytelling – and children were invited to write stories which were published.

She said Bocas had no money when it started and that continued for the first few years. Eventually people recognised the work it was doing and asked to join or collaborate, and since most of Bocas’ events were free, it depend on collaboration, for which she was grateful.

She explained “bocas” meant mouth in Spanish and the event was based on oral tradition. Also, The Bocas del Dragón was the waterway between TT and the rest of the world.

“It really is drawing on everything that we do. It’s about, how do we build on what we have? And how do we broaden or definition of culture?

“When we started Bocas, we had two living Nobel laureates in English literature from the region, Derek Walcott and VS Naipaul. Per capita, out of six million English-speaking Caribbean people, we were the highest producers of Nobel laureates in the world and we weren’t even leveraging that.

“If that were soca or dance, everybody would be jumping up and down, but we have forgotten that. It was something I was very keen to leverage to say culture comes in many different ways. ‘Look! We also do this form of culture and we’re bloody good at it!’”

Nicholas Laughlin, festival and programme director pointed out the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest was not only the 15th festival, but the 15th year of the OCM Bocas Prize, the most prestigious prize for Caribbean writers.

This years’s theme was Always Coming Home, a line from a poem by Richard Georges who won the prize in 2020.

“We realised the festival is kind of a homecoming for Caribbean writers. It’s almost like a family reunion when, once a year, Caribbean writers, wherever they are in the world, come together, see each other, interact with readers and celebrate each other through the eyes of the prize ceremony.”

Yet, he recognised “home” was not a simple concept. Some people have more than one, some had none, some chose to leave their home, others were forced to leave their home, to some it was a dangerous place while, to others, it was a place of love and safety. So many of the sessions relate to the theme in different ways.

This year’s festival was also a celebration of Trinidadian author, journalist and playwright Earl Lovelace who was one of the writers who made his career in the Caribbean, at home.

Laughlin said Lovelace had participated in the festival almost every year, is a past winner of the prize, and will turn 90 in July.

So on May 1, there was a festival event named Earl Lovelace at 90 at the Central Bank Auditorium. It included a lecture, an exhibition, readings from his books and a performance by Freetown Collective. The event also marked the debut of The Beginning of a Journey, Lovelace’s first collection of poetry.

“We wanted to use the opportunity of the festival to pay tribute to him, an early birthday celebration. We think it’s important to pay tribute to our writers while they could appreciate it. It doesn’t always have to be after they’re gone we say how great they were. People should know they are appreciated while they’re with us.”

He said the Bocas team would like to establish the Earl Lovelace Distinguished Lecture, an annual lecture in which a distinguished person would speak, either of Lovelace’s work, or the importance, role and value of creativity of all sorts, in Lovelace’s honour.

The inaugural lecture, by professor emeritus of English at UWI Kenneth Ramchand, was about Lovelace’s work.

“He is a very eminent critic and scholar. We thought it was appropriate to have one of our great living scholars talking about one of our great living writers.”

On May 2, at the Big Black Box on Murray Street, Woodbrook, past winners of the OCM Bocas Prize were celebrated with dramatised readings about what home means and music from 3Canal.

There was also a special programme for children and teenaged readers and writers every year. Laughlin said the team was considering relaunching and expanding it, moving it to later in the year when students were not too concerned with exams.

The Bocas Lit Fest ran from May 1-4. But, even on the last day, there were 14 separate events starting at 10 am, to the First Citizens National Poetry Grand Slam starting at 6.30 pm at the National Academy for the Performing Arts, Port of Spain. The Poetry Slam was one of the few ticketed events of the festival, costing $200.