THE CALABASH International Literary Festival will take place at Jakes Resort in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth, this weekend. Nearly 30 confirmed writers and performers and lovers of the word will converge on the attractive beach resort to celebrate Jamaican writing and literature in general.
Every single event at this festival will be free and open to the public.
At its core, the Calabash International Literary Festival seeks to celebrate the fact that there is a renaissance of contemporary Jamaican writing being published around the world today. Calabash is also celebrating the quality and energy of that work with the hope that such celebrations will raise the level of appreciation for Jamaican writing in Jamaica and around the world.
This new writing grows out of the energy and drive that is at the heart of Jamaican society. It grows out of the tension, conflict, hardship and creativity, that in all their contrariness, are central to the contemporary Jamaican psyche. In other words, this literature is varied, energetic, controversial and innovative.
There is a typically Jamaican sense of daring a willingness to speak from a cultural space with the assurance that their world is not only valid but interesting and relevant in contemporary society. These works of literature are not merely shouting out that Jamaica is a wonderful place hardly. Many of these works argue with Jamaica, come from a place of conflicted emotions about Jamaica, and yet they arrive on the page with a more complex, but truthful telling of 'Jamaicaness' than we have had in a long time.
Calabash seeks to celebrate this work, to expose this work, because the organisers of Calabash understand that the passing down of traditions is not a symbiotic process that simply happens naturally. The organisers understand that traditions can be lost, that traditions can be side-tracked by crass materialism, a failure to value what is our own, and by simple inertia and sloth. Calabash is seeking to create a space in which these writers can be honoured for their work, but further, we seek a space in which these writers will be able to dialogue with the future artists from Jamaica, many of whom may not even know as yet that they are going to be the future writers.
Calabash is involved in the business of allowing traditions to be shared, of ensuring that dialogue creates an environment that encourages innovation and daring. Calabash is about possibility.
None of the writers are being paid to perform at Calabash.
Calabash is not about an academic exercise that is focused on the academic study of literature that has its place but here, the celebration is of the written and spoken word.
