Colin Channer (at microphone) does back-up vocals for Ibo Cooper during a performance at the Calabash Literary Festival held in May of this year in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth. - Contributed Colin Channer, author and founder and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, will be a 'Writer in Residence' at the University of the West Indies, Mona, St. Andrew this week, November 17 - 21 . Sponsored by the Ford Foundation, Channer's residency is a Cultural Studies initiative.
The Gleaner put Channer to a two-part 10 question drill ranging from his expectations of the residency, his writing and Calabash. See part two of this piece tomorrow in The Gleaner.
1What do you hope will be the greatest benefit of your residency at the University of the West Indies next week?
"I hope to be inspired by the students and I hope they'll be inspired by me. I really hope that my time with them will give them a sense of possibility that writing is something that can be more than a hobby, that it's something worthy of professional pursuit. And also that Jamaicans have lived and are living in a garden of great stories that are waiting to be plucked."
2Do you believe that it is true that Jamaicans do not read? Do you have any theories on this?
"Jamaican people read for sure. The success of the Calabash International Literary Festival is one form of proof. However, it's a practice we need to encourage. There are several reasons for the relatively low reading rate. To begin with, we've had a long history of mass poverty and illiteracy, which means that reading as either a practical or a leisure activity took root in Jamaica fairly late. So we started out in the hole as far as reading is concerned, having few people who could read and few people who could afford to buy a book.
"Complicating this and partly as a result of this, music took root as the most important storytelling medium in Jamaica, which meant that our need for stories was being met by some of the greatest practitioners of the storytelling art in the world.
"Success breeds success. And so music ended up attracting the most talented storytellers in Jamaica away from other forms. Many people went into music without considering a career in any of the other major storytelling arts like movies, plays or books.
"So the short answer is that music took the best talent because it provided them with a broad range of clear models of success and because a lot of people didn't have the skill of reading or the money to buy books.
"But, as important as these factors might be, another very important reason for the situation is that the literary world tends to be exclusive and elitist in most cultures, and that was, and still is, to the same degree the case in ours. Our literary events have tended to be too clubby and pretentious and this alienated a lot of people, who otherwise might have been attracted to explore the
literary world as either writers or readers.
"A great reason for the tremendous local support of the Calabash International Literary Festival is due to the fact that we're inclusive and welcoming while maintaining high standards."
3Is there a market for Caribbean writers outside of the Caribbean and are we equipped to attempt to tap into it?
"Caribbean writers have always had to make our living by selling books to readers who are not of Caribbean origin. That goes for all the greats. But this is not a situation that is unique to writing.
"Sean Paul sells more records outside Jamaica than they do in Jamaica. So did Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. Jamaica sells more sugar and bananas outside Jamaica than it does inside Jamaica. And let's not mention weed.
"In the case of writing, the real situation is that we don't have enough trained writers here to make a serious attempt at making writing a significant culture-based industry as say the Irish have done. We have to begin with access to training. We need to train more people to write at high standards, in a broader range of voices, in a broader range of forms.
"America's biggest export is culture. America makes more money from things like movies and television programs and food than they do from making jet engines. All of these are industries that are highly dependent on the existence of a stable of high quality writers. It is not about technology or money.
"Without a good script the play can't go to Broadway. The movie can't be made. The sitcom can't be developed. If you have good writing, the money will come. There is a lot of money floating around out there for the good projects. And this is why it is crucial for us to develop a professional writing program here, master's level. Otherwise we'll be in the situation that we were in when bauxite was discovered here. Sure we had this resource. But we didn't have the means to turn it into money, which is one of the engines of prosperity and growth."
4What aspects of Caribbean and/or Jamaican life do you think would best sell on the international market.
"The very question is flawed. The question suggests that all we need to do is to find the right hook and that is it. The fundamental problem is that too few of us are able to write consistently at international standards.
"Assuming that we're talking about people who are writing at a certain level, then I would say that it all comes down to a matter of writing books in categories of fiction that people tend to read a lot thrillers, mysteries, romance, crime, espionage, family dramas, coming of age.
"When it comes down to it, writing fiction is about creating interesting characters who pursue interesting things for interesting reasons. And very often, people in the Caribbean overrate the degree to which the Caribbean itself is interesting and develop the flawed ambition of wanting to write a nice Caribbean story. So they want to write what I like to call 'a duppy and breadfruit' story something so sickeningly hokey and folky.
"You see this kind of thing a lot in Jamaican theatre and I wish I could say it is a recent thing. It's been going on like this for nearly 20 years. A Caribbean person's ambition should be first and foremost to write an interesting story. Now the story has to take place somewhere. Set it in the Caribbean and you're on a nice little track. The reggae artistes have always known this. Beres Hammond's What One Dance Can Do is a great example of an interesting story with a Caribbean setting. Two other great ones that come to mind are Josey Wales' dancehall classic Leggo Mi Hand Gateman and Ernie Smith's Duppy Gunman.
5Do you feel that you had to leave Jamaica to be successful? Does that remain the case for young writers?
"For shizzle. For sure. Fi real. Two things were missing when I left Jamaica - opportunities for training and the existence of a group of successful peers. It's a little better now, but in some crucial aspects, it's still the same.
"I get the sense that more people are writing now than when I left Jamaica for New York in 1982 at the age of 18. But most of these people are writing without training or supervision, so the work is taking a long time to improve to the point where you can say with comfort that we have the talent to take on the world.
"You have more peer groups in Jamaica now it seems, lots of writer's collectives and poetry groups and all that, but few members of these groups have had the opportunity to develop their own skills to the point where they can be significantly useful to each other.
"A writer in Jamaica today is operating in world of blurred standards, a world in which there is an absence of scale. As a result there are some writers here who are at the top of the local tier who have begun to cruise because they really believe that they are just a phone call away from the big time.
"Generally speaking, I think that young writers are being failed by few structures that do exist like the Jamaica Cultural Devel-opment Commission (JCDC), like the Poetry Society of Jamaica, both of which have been ineffective in terms of creating opportunities for writers to learn more about the craft of writing and thereby raise the profile of the profession by presenting models of artistic integrity, achievement and success.
"The Poetry Society of Jamaica, for example, does not even legally exist. It is no more sophisticated than a youth club. It doesn't even have a mailing address. What is that? Leadership, man. Standards, man. We're lacking these things in the literary arts in Jamaica. The JCDC puts on a grand spectacle of mediocrity and god-awful-sad-shamefulness in the name of Jamaican independence every year. The highlight of their annual literary awards is the steady stream of sardonic comments about the level of the submitted work being spurted by the judges.
"Where is the 'development' in the JCDC's work? They used to do it. Those of us who're over 40 remember this. But they've been slacking off for a very long time. And it is not just an issue of money. Calabash survives on the kindness of strangers. It is a matter of ambition and respect ambition in the sense of believing that Jamaicans are capable of and deserve great things and respect in the sense of respecting oneself and one's public to the point that you always do your best."
