Calabash book goes into diplomatic bag

Mel Cooke, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Last Monday afternoon Ambassador Evadney Coye, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, briefly mulled how to get 20 copies of So Much Things to Say: 100 Poets From the First 10 Years of the Calabash International Literary Festival out to Jamaica's diplomatic missions worldwide.

"We will be sending them by the diplomatic bag," she said.

The books were presented to Coye by Justine Henzell, producer of the Calabash Festival, which was staged for 10 consecutive years up to 2010. So Much Things to Say was edited by Calabash programming director Kwame Dawes and the festival's artistic director, Colin Channer.

"We are very pleased to have these. I know our missions will value these in their libraries," Coye said.

The presentation was made ahead of a reading by professors Edward Baugh and Mervyn Morris and Dr Earl McKenzie, in celebration of International Literacy Day, which went the previous Thursday. The day's theme was Literacy for Peace.

So Much Things to Say was presented in May 2010 at Redbones Blues Café, New Kingston, where Nicholas Alexander, Simon Brown, Natalie Corthesy, Jonie Jackson, Makesha Evans, Ann-Margaret Lim, Kim Robinson and Charlie Bobos were among those who did readings. Included in the collection are poems by Derek Walcott, Li Young Lee, Elizabeth Alexander, Natasha Trethewey, Robert Pinsky and Mutabaruka.