CALABSH 2008–IMAGINE May 24, 2008: Calabash 2008 – Friday May 23rd At 7:30 PM, under a cluster of white tents and in the presence over eight hundred people sitting patiently on white plastic chairs, with the constant moaning of the sea in the background and the distant thump of a the bass coming from sound systems kicking up their Labor Day night sessions on the south-western [...] by Kwame Dawes

Jena Six September 10, 2007: If you depend on television for your sense of what is hot in the news, you may be forgiven for not knowing about the Jena 6. But there is something happening around these six teenagers from Jena, Louisiana. It is all over Black talk radio. And this is no small thing. These quite popular radio hosts are devoting their entire shows—three and four [...] by Kwame Dawes

Naipaul on Walcott September 5, 2007: For a long time, I have wondered what the West Indies' two living Nobel Laureates thought of each other’s work and success. Perhaps there exists some recent article somewhere by Derek Walcott about V.S. Naipaul. Walcott, I know, has reviewed Naipaul in the past, and made some passing comments and some insightful comments about the value of [...] by Kwame Dawes

A Brief History of the Computer and Me September 2, 2007: It occurred to me today that I have been using personal computers since 1988. Prior to that, I had a tangential relationship with computers. I had people use them to get things done for me. In 1987, I began to use a PC in the computer lab in the basement of one of the University of New Brunswick buildings. I was both excited and intimidated by [...] by Kwame Dawes

The Games Poets Play August 30, 2007: Sometimes poems are riddles, hard to decipher, complex mazes with clues scattered all around to help us find our way to some understanding. The poet is taking a risk there. The more difficult the task of working out the clues, the greater should be the pay-off. There is nothing worse than that sensation of finally cracking some code and then [...] by Kwame Dawes

All Memory is Fiction, Again August 29, 2007: Don’t worry about the facts, the truth is what is important. Writers are told this all the time. There is this idea that there is a truth that transcends the facts and that we may find in what is not factual some profound truth. This is most obviously the justification for great fiction. The very name makes the point. Fiction is a cluster of [...] by Kwame Dawes

Reflectons on Porridge August 29, 2007: My grandfather lived in Lome. We drove from Ghana to Lome, waiting patiently to be waved through the Ghana/ Togo border with a sense of anticipation and excitement. From there into Lome, the European language would be French and not English, but Ewe had long been the language even deep into Ghana. Ewe stretched across the border, another example [...] by Kwame Dawes

Finding Poems August 27, 2007: In 1995, Rosalie Richardson was one of the women I interviewed in Sumter about their lives growing up in Jim Crow, South Carolina. These stories have been a rich source of music and insight for me. But sometimes I return to their voices, just as they spoke to me, to remind me of the grace and poetry inherent in the cadence, the syntax and the care [...] by Kwame Dawes

The Dark Night of the Soul August 26, 2007: Take me where the light is John Mayer I have still not worked out quite why the recent Time Magazine article on Mother Teresa’s book of private correspondence, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, has fascinated me so much without my even reading it. The obvious reason could have to do with my interest in matters of the human experience of faith, [...] by Kwame Dawes

Apropos of Nothing August 25, 2007: In 1973 I entered high school. That year, my school, Jamaica College, did not play in the schools’ football (read soccer) contest—in fact, no school did. That year the entire season had been suspended for reasons I can’t recall right now. Something had happened the year before, and so there was no season. But there were games. And the [...] by Kwame Dawes