Latest posts by Nicholas Laughlin from December, 2011
Cuba: owing obsolete rubles
Cuba has a longstanding debt to Russia of 20 million Soviet rubles — a currency that no longer exists. Machetera asks: “how and when do you decide what a vanished currency is really worth?”
Jamaica: when poets join academia
UK-based Jamaican writer Kei Miller muses on the consequences of poets joining the academic world. “Poetry is certainly not known for its plain-spoken-ness and in fact is accused, just as much as the academy, for its obscurity and its pretensions. And this is as it should be!”
Barbados: tribute to Desmond Bourne
The Bajan Reporter posts a tribute to his late father, the journalist and adman Desmond Bourne. “It was not that my father never stood on convention, he acknowledged where he felt it was expected – such as Diplomats and & Ceremony – but for the most part he ignored it….”
Barbados: prime minister's quandary
Barbados Underground offers an analysis of the “headache” created for Prime Minister Freundel Stuart by a now notorious leaked letter allegedly demonstrating his party's doubts about the PM's leadership. “Whatever he does must positively feed public perception that he is in charge of his men. The question is: will it...
Jamaica: vote or not?
Idle Yout Speeks asks if he should bother to vote in Jamaica's upcoming general election. “I blame my reluctance … on a deep rooted fear that stemmed from the more violent days of Jamaica's more violent election campaigns,” he writes. “I see some subtle differences in the parties but ultimately...
Cuba: Prix Carbet for Padura
Cuban writer Leonardo Padura has won the 2011 Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe, reports Repeating Islands. The prestigious prize for works of Caribbean literature in French, founded by the late writer Edouard Glissant, was awarded to the French translation of Padura's novel El hombre que amaba a los perros (The...
Barbados: remembering “Hitch”
Barbados-based B.C. Pires posts his reflections on the death of writer Christopher Hitchens: “for all his flaws … worth a few hundred pastors and priests to me, perhaps a few thousand.”
Trinidad and Tobago: making zines
Trinidadian artist Rodell Warner posts images from a zine workshop for young artists which he organised in Johannesburg, South Africa, and explains that the experience made him think “of all the people at home who are concerned with actively sharing and making the place richer and more fertile.”
Barbados: debating “the letter”
Barbados Underground and Barbados Free Press comment on a controversial letter allegedly written to Prime Minister Freundel Stuart by members of his party, expressing a lack of confidence in his leadership, and subsequently leaked to the media.
