Colin Channer, Calabash Literary Festival co-founder, has re-signed from that organisation with immediate effect.
With his resignation comes word the festival -- which was launched in 2001 in rustic Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth -- will now be biennial.

The next staging is set for 2014. Justine Henzell, Calabash board member, says the decision to hold the event every other year was taken prior to Channer's resignation.

Observer Link:
www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/Channer-leaves-Calabash_13351045

We vigorously don't believe that it's too early to campaign Kwame Dawes, Justine Henzell and Colin Channer (as an honourary advisor to the Calabash) for fresh literary talent.
Who could be more worthy than a poet, Richard Blanco, with Caribbean roots (Cuban-American), who has been picked out of obscurity to deliver the "occasional poem" for President Obama's Second Inaugural Swearing-In.
Rebecca & Eric...As far as further relevance to Jamaica and Treasure Beach, you well know that when you climb Blue Mountain in the early morning, what awaits you at the peak, on a clear morning is a glorious view of Cuba!

Here are some insightful excerpts frm Reviews of Blanco's book of poems, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, which might find some correlation with experiences of some in the Jamaican diaspora, who even after frequent Returns to their Isle, may still be haunted by a sense of "Exile".


"This work is about 'the paradox of crossing, being nowhere yet here,' where travelers, family members, and lovers seem perpetually in a state of 'almost touching,' of 'learn[ing] to adore [their] losses.' Heartfelt and elegant, these exquisitely crafted poems place Blanco in that pantheon of poetas from the Americas who have flourished in the Old World and the New. Directions to The Beach of the Dead--spanning three continents--marks Richard Blanco as arguably the most cosmopolitan poet of his generation."
--Francisco Aragón, author of Puerta del Sol

"In Directions to The Beach of the Dead, Richard Blanco enacts the exile's great conflict in his astonishing, unerring poems of distance and desire, refuge and release. At once pensive and restless, full of both abandonment and abandon, this book is ultimately a journey to the haunted, utterly familiar places in our own hearts. Lost Cuba, newfound love, immemorial time---this soulful poet gives us all that is at once impossible to have ever owned, and yet ever within
the reach of our having known."
--Rafael Campos, author of Landscape with Human Figure

"Richard Blanco has written a strong and beautiful book that takes his fine poetry forward to a new and exciting level. While these poems possess a keen sense of past and place, they move beyond nostalgia to the rich difficulties of the nowhere but here that is his clear milieu."
--Elizabeth Alexander, Yale University

"Richard Blanco is a troubadour of Exile. . .with aching stories of its displacement, loss and nostalgia, -- that uniquely Cuban reverie --for what might have been."
--Ann Louise Bardach, author of Cuba Confidential:Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana

Richard Blanco::Miami Herald Link:
www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/09/v-print/3175162/poet-richard-blancos-road-from.ht ml

New York Times Profile:
www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/books/richard-blanco-2013-inaugural-poet.html

The poet, Richard Blanco, read a poem, in a deliberate cursive fashion, after President Obama's Second Inaugural Address that strongly reaffirmed the themes of an American Creed which have ignited universal human rights and democratic movements world-wide.
We (as in "we the people") hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

To which President Obama, in an expansive speech on progressive and communitarian values, asserted..."yes", these rights are self evident, but not "self-executing".

Here's the full flavour of the occasional poem, by Blanco, for Obama's & peaceful democracy's big day, with obvious North American references, but also a personal nod to parental devotion and "cane cutting" in the Caribbean immigrant experience.

One Today

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -- bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives -- to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind -- our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me -- in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country -- all of us --
facing the stars
hope -- a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it -- together