CALABSH 2008--IMAGINE

Calabash 2008 – Friday May 23rd
At 7:30 PM, under a cluster of white tents and in the presence over eight hundred people sitting patiently on white plastic chairs, with the constant moaning of the sea in the background and the distant thump of a the bass coming from sound systems kicking up their Labor Day night sessions on the south-western coast of this island, I introduced three writers whose task it is to celebrate the work of other writers in their capacity as editors. M. Mark, Editor of the Pen Journal, Thomas Glave, editor of Our Caribbean: Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writers of the Antilles, and Achy Obejas, editor of Havana Noir yet another in the remarkably readable Noir series put out by Akashic Books. Glave has been apprehensive all day. He is a Jamaican who writes and teaches abroad, but continues to spend a lot of time in Jamaica, being a outspoken advocate for gay rights on the island. He is aware that to speak up on these matters is not without some risk, but he also knows that Calabash is a festival that boasts one of the most open-minded and gracious audiences one could find. The best kind--an audience filled with people with strongly held opinions and yet people who understand that when a writer goes on stage, they are taking a risk, and that hospitality is the overriding spirit that should guide their reaction. Glave, despite his nervousness, is cool, steady and begins with a small speech directed at Jamaica's Prime Minister who recently declared to the BBC that he would not have any homosexuals in his cabinet.

Glave's statement is forceful--a deeply felt articulation of the disenfranchisement implied in the Prime Minister's word--it is undemocratic and foolish, Glave says. The audience applauds. In the distance, in the dark away from the large audience area, a single male voice shouts, "Fyah Bun!" This is Jamaica. Glave then reads from the anthology, passages continue in the same vein--statements about the silence about homosexuality in the Caribbean, and the need for respect and recognition.
After his reading, M. Mark, editor of the Pen Review, who earlier had amusingly remarked that no matter how much sun she gets she is still alabaster white--smiles gently and does exactly what a visiting writer should do before a Jamaican audience--she tells them she loves Jamaica, that she is honored to be at Calabash. Then she talks about the importance of witness, and the wonderful possibilities of international voices sharing the sound of literature with each other. She reads short selections that nicely showcase the unusual array of writers that are collected in her anthology. Even though she tells the audience that they do not have to applaud after each piece, they insist on doing so, especially when the piece is especially fetching. Another rule--only suggest to a Jamaican audience, don't tell them what to do especially when what they are doing is something they think is good and polite.
She is then followed by Achy Obejas, a poet and fiction writer who was born in Cuba and continues to visit Cuba regularly. Jamaica, she says, is her transition point on her way to Cuba and so it has a tender place in her heart--a place of anticipation and excitement when she is heading to Cuba and one of nostalgia and melancholy when she is heading back from Cuba. She reads a long, amusing piece about the way in which many Cubans have mastered the art of irony that plays on the willingness of "outsiders" to believe any insanity about what happens in post-revolutionary Cuba. She then reads from the work of another of her authors in the anthology. The Noir series is an impressive one and the standards remain consistently high in terms of the quality of the work produced. Akashic books have found a brand and is doing a fantastic job with it.
By the time the first break arrives, the tent area is now crowded with people. There is a great deal of mingling. People come to Calabash to see old friends. They come to Calabash to meet new friends. They come to Calabash to find out what is going on. In the in between time, I try to eat my supper, a plate of curry goat with vegetables and rice. A stream of people come up and begin with the phrase, "I won't disturb your dinner, but..." They are welcoming, happy about the festival and then full of suggestions: authors we should invite, what to ask the audience to do or not do, curiosity about why some authors are on the roster, and the perennial less than subtle "checking in" by my fellow Christian brethren to make sure I am still in the faith.
Colin Channer, the founder and artistic director of the festival is keeping a low profile this night. He has trimmed his hair down from an unruly explosion of defiant locks to the carefully carved "cleanness" of a corporate head. I watch as people do double takes and then embrace him. One of the great pleasures of the festival for us is when we sit beside each other during readings, and whisper commentary about what is happening. We laugh a lot. We build a wonderful archive of anecdotes and entertainments during those moments. In a sense, this is why we do the festival. We do it to see great writers work, to watch audiences enjoy what they hear, to amuse ourselves at the ways of literature loving people, and to wonder at the greatness of Jamaica where so many things happen that allow only the phrase, "Only in Jamdown."
Chris Abani and Yusef Komounyakaa are the "Two the Hard Way" about to read for the next session. Chris Abani is a dear friend of ours, so hearing him read is especially entertaining because we can tease him afterwards. Abani, though, is all business when he is about to read. He is charming, cool and PRESENT. He also knows what is important to our audience because he knows that women are the core of our audience, that it is women who convince, by their share numbers, the men to follow and be at Calabash. Abani knows that to offend women at Calabash is to open yourselves to a lot of commentary afterwards. He reads a beautiful poem about his mother, a love poem. Abani has some fans. He also recites from memory a poem by Yusef Komounyakaa. It is a gesture of generosity and respect. Abani's reading ends with a saxophone solo. He can play. Calabash is on.
Yusef Komounyakaa has a booming voice that is character filled at the edges, a kind of threadbare breaking at the end of sentences. He reads with his own syncopations, complex poems that allow the listener to hold on to the music of his sounds, and to embrace the stretches of narrative that will emerge every so often. He does a virtual bob and dance as he reads and he reads from very new poems--poems that are to appear in his upcoming collection Warhorses. They are poems that are about the present, about war in America, about the war in Vietnam that he thought he was done with. But war births war poems and war memories. Komounyakaa will always remind me of the importance of rooting one's work in the desire to find a voice that is not ashamed of who one is, nor afraid of who one is. He represents what Langston Hughes spoke about in his essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain--that the only successful writers are those who are willing to write out of who they are--not in the sense of the confessional lyric, but in the sense of their aesthetics and their understanding of what has come to shape who they are as people. The reading is well received by the audience.
Half an hour later, people have settled in to watch Perry Henzell's last film before his death. The film, “No Place Like Home”, is introduced by Jason Henzell, Perry's son, and the man who makes Jakes available to Calabash each year. Jason is a constantly smiling, gentle man, he is a man so rooted in the earth of St. Elizabeth that his welcome to an audience is filled with meaning and the full weight of a homeboy welcoming people--a mayor welcome guests. The film is Perry Henzell working in his most experimental ways, mixing easily accessible narrative lines with a series of surreal plot shifts and turns. Perry Henzell's counter-culture manner and style, his quixotic commitment to create the art he wants to create regardless of the circumstances around him, and the flashes of genius and wit that we find in all his work, are present in this film. This is our second year of Calabash without Perry Henzell, and yet I still expect to see him walking slowly towards me, his shoulders slightly hunched, his hair in its crazy chaos, a ironic glint in his smiling eyes, his breezy white cotton shirt swallowing his slight body.
At midnight, the sound system kicks in. Mutaburaka cajoles the revelers to dance, Squeeze squeezes of a series of delightful and dread reggae hits and Jamaicans stand around the sound system, rocking to the sound, in the easy way in which Jamaicans enjoy their music and their revelries. I fall asleep to the thump of the reggae music after a small cup of coffee ice cream.