Calabash Jubilation! Begins Today

JUBILATION! 50 is a celebration of Jamaica's 50th anniversary of independence. The selection of authors and performers come from Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa, the UK, USA, and Jamaica.
May 25-27, 2012,  Jake's Resort Treasure BeachSt. Elizabeth, Jamaica.Authors
Chimamanda Adichie.The AdmiralWayne ArmondJacqueline BishopLoretta CollinsCarolyn CooperMichael “Ibo” CooperChristine CraigFred D'AguiarMarcia DouglasGarfield EllisCarolyn ForcheSteve GoldingVivien GoldmanColin GrantLaura HenzellPaul HoldengraberMelissa JonesSadie JonesRonnie KasrilsVictor LavalleShara McCallumAlecia McKenzieMaaza MengisteAnis MojganiOrlando PattersonPatricia PowellClaudia RankineOlive SeniorSeretse SmallSonjah Stanley NiaahIan ThomsonKerry YoungKevin Young

Please follow this link for the schedule: http://www.calabashfestival.org/2012/schedule.html

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Continental Shelf by Fred D'Aguiar Shortlisted for TS Eliot Prize

Fred D'Aguiar’s Continental Shelf has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, “the UK's most prestigious prize in poetry.”

For more, http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8451000/8451972.stm

For the complete list: http://www.poetrybookshoponline.com/tseliot.php

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Fred D'Aguiar @ Poetry

Fred D'Aguiar is a poet, novelist, playwright, born in London of Guyanese parents and raised in Guyana. He teaches in the MFA and African Studies programs at Virginia Tech. His sixth poetry collection, Continental Shelf, is forthcoming from Carcanet.

ROYGBIV

The shoemaker’s wife ran preschool
With a fist made not so much of iron
But wire bristles on a wooden brush.

(Source: Poetry)

Fred D’Aguiar's "Elegies for Virginia Tech"

“A year on, the campus is gearing up for another media blitz and my fellow teachers, students and staff all seem tensed for the replay of last year. The poetry becomes more important because it promises to outlast crude media depictions of spilled blood, broken bones and blinkered melodrama (the shooter, his makeup and psyche is of more interest to the media than his many, many victims).

I find myself ducking for cover into poetry once more.”

Fred D’Aguiar posts two poems for The Guardian.

Caribbean Cookbook For VT.

My mum cooked soul food for my final class:
Fried plantains, cow-tail in a stew of casareep,
Boiled dumplings, sliced pineapple and mango

Juice for our first meeting after the cancelled week.
One student arrived with a bouquet for my mother.
Everyone heaped Pirates of the Caribbean paper plates

For this breakfast, minus one of our number, gone
For good. We ate as if on the heels of a Ramadan
Squeezed into a week of nil by mouth, ears and eyes.

My mum flew to Blacksburg for our joint offer.
She rose before the birds and I helped her skin
Exotica and washed up to keep the kitchen spotless.

At 9AM we breezed into my Caribbean class
And served up honeydew with plates of paradise.

“Elegies for Virginia Tech”—The Guardian

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Poet, novelist and playwright Fred D'Aguiar was born in London in 1960 to Guyanese parents. He lived in Guyana until he was 12, returning to England in 1972.

--From Contemporary Writers

Elegy for Virginia Tech

What happened at Virginia Tech. goes beyond what the mind can fathom, the heart can bear, the soul can possess, and I turn to the only poet who consoles in a time like this:

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

Rest in Peace, my brothers and sisters.

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Virginia Tech