Main Speaker At Youth Forum Tomorrow.
A leading young Caribbean writer will address his peers here this weekend on ‘Why Reparations Matter!’
On Friday, as the world observes International Creole Day, youth and students here will gather at the Castries City Hall auditorium to discuss the connection between CARICOM’s quest for atonement from Europe for Slavery and the island’s indigenous Kweyol (Creole) language.
The main speaker, Vladimir Lucien, is described in literary circles as “a writer, actor and critic.” But he’s much more than that, also seen and pointed to by acknowledged visionaries, as one to watch – and very closely.
This young Caribbean writer’s accolades outstrip his age. As if born to be a bard, he has taken the world of words by quiet storm.
Growing-up on the same rock of sages that produced Derek Walcott and Arthur Lewis, Lucien is far from the age of a sage. But his storehouse of literary talent is what led the island’s National Reparations Committee (NRC) to ask him to ‘Rap on Reparations’ with young Saint Lucians at the CARICOM Reparations Youth Forum.
The Forum is one of three activities being hosted in Saint Lucia this weekend in observance of October as Creole Heritage Month.
Under the theme ‘No Development Without Justice – Reparations For Us All!’ the NRC will also host a CARICOM Reparations Baton Relay and a related Youth Rally on Saturday, also in Castries.
A lecturer in Literature and Caribbean Studies at Saint Lucia’s Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, Lucien has won both acclaim and awards across the Caribbean — and in the wider Diaspora.
In honour of Saint Lucia’s Emancipation Day this year, the island’s Consulate General in New York, the Brooklyn-based Caribbean Cultural Theatre and the Caribbean Research Center – Medgar Evers College, on August 3 hosted an event entitled Emancipation Voices – New Generation of Caribbean Poets, featuring Lucien.
The event was held at the Central Brooklyn Campus of Medgar Evers College at Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, New York and included a discussion with the poet afterwards.
Hailing from Gros-Islet, Lucien’s poems are seen as based on family, the stories of ancestors, the history that makes its way into his voice as a writer of Saint Lucian descent — and his personal Caribbean heroes, including Walter Rodney, C. L. R. James and Edward ‘Kamau’ Brathwaite.
As an exciting new voice in Caribbean poetry, Lucien’s work has appeared in The Caribbean Review of Books, Small Axe, Wasafiri, PN Review, Caribbean Beat and BIM magazine.
His debut collection, Sounding Ground (published by Peepal Tree Press in May, 2014) was the winner of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and was also later shortlisted for the Guyana Caribbean Prize for poetry.
Lucien has featured at the Miami Book Fair and the ‘Read My World’ Festival in Amsterdam and was recently featured at an exhibition-cum-conference held in Wedding, Berlin in Germany.
He also wrote his own verse into Caribbean history when he became the first non-Jamaican to hold the post of ‘Writer in Residence’ at the University of the West Indies (Mona Campus).
Lucien wrote an anthology of Caribbean poetry and prose entitled Beyond Sangre Grande (edited by Cyril Dabydeen) and his poems have been translated into Dutch and published in the literary journal Tortuca, with forthcoming translations in Italian in El Ghibli, as well as in Mandarin.
He is also the co-editor of the anthology, Sent Lisi: Poems and Art of St. Lucia (published in November 2014) and the screenwriter of the documentary The Merikins, which premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2013.
This year has been good to Lucien. From January to May this year he served as writer-in-residence at the University of the West Indies (Mona Campus) and in February he was hailed (as part of Black History Month) by Canada’s CBC Books as “a young black writer to watch.”
Undoubtedly, Lucien is one of the major young voices in Caribbean literature today — and his peers at home will undoubtedly benefit from his flowing fountain of verve and verse when they meet at his next sounding ground at the Castries City Council Auditorium from 10am tomorrow, International Creole Day.