( L - R ) Millicent Graham, Velma Pollard

When the 2009 Calabash International Literary Festival begins at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Millicent Graham, Esther Phillips and Velma Pollard will lead off the readings under the huge tents at Jake's in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth.

Two of the trio published by the independent United Kingdom publisher Peepal Tree Press, Graham and Pollard, are Jamaicans, with Phillips from Barbados. Graham, who will open Calabash 2009 (the writers in any one session appear in alphabetical order), will be reading mainly from her debut poetry collection The Damp in Things.

And this is less than a month after she held a copy for the first time. "I was with my mom in the living room when we opened the package and she immediately began to make a list of who she wanted to receive copies. I must say it was the start of a very protective and intimate relationship. I took it to bed that first night and we have been inseparable. I have stared at it, flipped its pages, sniffed it, and read it too," Graham told The Gleaner.

Third time's a charm

It will be the third time she is reading at Calabash; she was a representative of the Poetry Society of Jamaica at the festival's second staging in 2002 and took a shot at the open mic last year.

Velma Pollard, whose third poetry collection published by Peepal Press, Leaving Traces, was launched late last November at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona, also read at the second Calabash. Then, she read prose from Considering Woman and Karl and Other Stories. She will be reading mostly from Leaving Traces, with a touch of The Best Philosophers I Know Can't Read or Write.

Pollard is happy to be reading on the same evening with Edwidge Danticat and said, "I like to be at Calabash and I like to have been selected to read at Calabash."

Of course, this Calabash festival almost never was. Pollard said when she heard that it had been cancelled, "I was frightened. I was shocked out of my mind." But then she heard Calabash's artistic director Colin Channer in a radio interview and "he was cool as ever. He was telling them he wasn't looking for money for Colin Channer, he is looking for money for the people of Jamaica and Calabash Bay who have put so much into this festival."

Pollard said that the Jamaica Tourist Board was also caught in justifying their expenditure on the Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival and Reggae Sumfest.

Graham said: "I never thought of starting the proceedings as an honour, in that I think just being on the schedule is a great honour, knowing the magnitude of writers that have gone before and those who could have been given the opportunity.

"By that same admission the pressure is proportional. I also feel a double shot of relief. First, that the festival will go on, as I could not survive the year without it and, second, that I can get rid of these jitters from early and just listening to everyone else."

The Damp in Things was officially started in 2003 and finished in 2005, Graham crediting Wayne Brown for pushing her along. Naming the collection was difficult and she said, "It was Gwyneth Barber-Wood's teasing in a workshop that finally planted the idea in a damp patch, then Manuscript 1 (the original title) sort of named itself after that.

"It's an awkward title but it was meant to be. I don't know if that's a good thing, in that, I have to repeat it a few times before it can be heard. But that 'distraction action' is central to the ingredient it describes and it gives me a secret glee to see people mull and make meaning of it. The easy answer is that it's the last line of one of the essential poems in the collection."

Inspiring story

Peepal Tree was one of two publishing houses which accepted Graham's manuscript (there were several rejections).

"I chose Peepal Tree for a number of reasons, but mostly because I admired what they have done in Caribbean literature. Peepal Tree's story is inspiring and their repertoire of writers is so impressive, sometimes I cannot believe I'm now part of that legacy.

"That was around June 2007. Kwame Dawes had recently joined Peepal Tree as its new editor so it was good to be working with him toward the final product. I knew I had an editor that understood what I was trying to do with my work and that made the experience enriching. It included a few rewrites and a little more cutting, but I believe the results will delight most. I'm excited to share it," Graham said.

Pollard also credits Peepal, saying, "I have had a good relationship with them and all the jackets on my poetry books are my photographs.

"I appreciate the freedom they give me with text and jacket," Pollard said, mentioning Peepal's Hannah Bannister and Jeremy Poynting.