Is the Bocas Lit Fest for little guys?

In 2010, when I read about the first Bocas Lit Fest I thought, hey! here's a real opportunity for aspiring writers. The inaugural event was scheduled for 2011 and the committee was accepting submissions for books published in 2010. I can't recall the exact wording of the call for submissions, but aspiring and "invisible" writers across the Caribbean must have been truly ecstatic when they read about the festival and what it promised, because it communicated, in a crystal clear whisper, "Hey, little guy, this competition is for you. You thought no one was paying attention, but we were, and The Bocas Lit Fest was created just for you." One of Potbake's publications, Bend Foot Bailey, qualified, so I mailed five copies and the entrance fee.

When the 2011 shortlist was announced, my eyes bulged for the list featured Derek Walcott and V.S. Naipaul; big, big guns. Shocked and betrayed, I shook my head and scoffed, not because Bend Foot Bailey wasn't there, but wasn't The Bocas Lit Fest for the aspiring? The list also featured critically acclaimed first-time authors but any writer in a ring with two Nobel Prize Winners will feel like an amateur boxer up against Sugar Ray and Ali in their heyday. If Walcott and Naipaul had to be involved they should have been judges, I felt, for they had already made their international mark. Plus, in January, Walcott’s White Egrets had won the TS Eliot Prize and 15,000 pounds.

Let's turn to the 2011 event held at the National Library in Trinidad: well-planned, with minor hiccups, but walking from sessions in the audio room to the old fire station to hear Earl Lovelace read or ARC speak about their new magazine, I felt the itinerary featured only a clique of “knowns”.

The booksellers had stalls strategically set in the atrium, a grand spectacle spiralling several storeys up to a skylight. If a little guy didn't have his book with any of the participating bookstores he was invisible. If he did, it might have been under one of Walcott’s or Naipaul’s many books.

So in 2011, what was there for the little guy? The readings were marvellously entertaining, along with participation in informative workshops and Q and A at the end of talks, if time permitted. If one was eager to listen and learn and engage with others between events, The Bocas Lit Fest was the place for writers to network with readers and booksellers. At the event, I was able to score a spot on Nigel R Khan’s bookshelves. (If you’re a little guy at the 2012 event, work the crowd.)

At noon there was a spoken word session on the pavement outside the library. If one was comfortable enough they could read to talkative listeners and disinterested pedestrians. I enjoyed these most because it was here I met and listened to the grassroots of the writing community: unpublished poets and writers, literature students reading their works from leaflets or cellular phones, activists and singers who performed in cafes. The Bocas Lit Fest was truly alive for an hour and a half every day, for the little guy.

Even before Derek Walcott won the first Bocas Lit Fest (USD 10,000 more for the Nobel Prize Winner) I was doubtful I would ever submit another entry. After seeing the shortlist for 2012 I'm convinced I never will again. Big, big guns.

On Thursday 26 April 2012 the second Bocas Lit Fest kicks off. Earl Lovelace is on the shortlist. A year ago Is Just a Movie won the Grand Literary Prize of The Caribbean (USD 15,000 in the bank). Loretta Collins Klobah is also on the list, an award-winning professor of Caribbean Literature. The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman (I'm lifting my brows) was published by Peepal Tree Press of Leeds, United Kingdom. In the non-fiction category there’s Godfrey Smith, a Belizean politician, columnist and attorney. Big, big guns muffling the aspirations of the little guys, hurt and sad and reeling from the thought that The Bocas Lit Fest, initially disguised as a messiah, is nothing but another grand illusion and insult to their literary dreams.

I’ll be looking on from the pavement.