The average weekly wage for a Treasure Beach fisherman is J $5000

The average weekly wage for a Treasure Beach fisherman is J $5,000. That’s about £45.Although the core Jamaican book consumer is the middle-class woman, that doesn’t mean other demographics aren’t interested in literature. One of the most striking aspects of Calabash is the very diverse nature of its audience. Other new Jamaican writers creating a healthy buzz right now include Marlon James, who published his debut novel John Crow’s Devil last year, and Netto Meeks, a dub poet who has brought a hip-hop slant to the foundation laid down by LKJ, Jean “Binta” Breeze and Mutabaruka (who also read at Calabash, much to the audience’s delight).Yet publishing here is a very difficult business; James follows Channer and Dawes in signing with an American press, the Brooklyn-based independent Akashic, and books remain luxury items in a country where disposable income is extremely low. But it is 20-year-old Ishion Hutchinson who has been singled out for special praise for his ability to sculpt original verse from the rich bedrock of dancehall reggae.According to Dawes, he is “a writer who understands what the aesthetic of dancehall is as it would affect a modernist poet”. “In Jamaica, Andrea’s not black British, she’s Jamaican! You have the right to return.” He believes that the acclaim Levy has garnered in the west significantly empowers the land of her forebears.

In terms of the Jamaican Diaspora, you have more people writing at a higher level in more forms and more points of view and that is largely a result of what has happened for black people in places like Britain, Canada and the US. The progress made by those black populations has carried along to Caribbean people.”Channer tries to sustain this momentum through the Calabash Writers Workshop, an initiative that puts 40-odd new writers and poets “in the lab” over a two-year cycle with renowned Jamaican literary figures like Mervyn Morris, Kaylie Jones, Elizabeth Nunes, Channer himself and his fellow programmer Kwame Dawes, a Forward Poetry Prize winner.The new voices that have emerged as a result include Andrew Stone, Saffron, Blakka Ellis, Niki Johnson and Mbala. “The success of writers like Patricia Powell, Nalo Hopkinson or Levy, who have ties to Jamaica, has had a real impact. The extract she read from her multi-award winning Small Island was one of the highlights of the festival.The chord that Levy struck with the almost exclusively Jamaican audience brought into focus the question of identity for a writer, who, although London-born, has imaginatively broached her Caribbean roots in print.Colin Channer, the Jamaican author who founded Calabash five years ago, argues that Levy was not perceived as a foreigner at the event. Featured authors were Bonnair-Agard’s compatriot Robert Antoni, the Guatemalan Francisco Goldman and Britain’s Andrea Levy. They proved that Calabash is a high-grade international event in which writing from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia forms a thought-provoking mosaic of story, history and mythology. This universal dimension was reinforced by a session of readings entitled “the great Non-American novel”.

A dreadlocked figure in an Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt was seen nodding heartily in the second row.The stylistic palette was further broadened by the Trinidadian spoken word artist Roger Bonnair-Agard, the Indian poet Meena Alexander, and the American novelist Russell Banks. And yet, over three days every spring, Treasure Beach, with its population of approximately 1,000, becomes home to Calabash, a not-for-profit literary celebration where attendance peaks at 3,000. Readings, open mike poetry sessions, concerts, a beach party and a film screening all take place in an enclosed area next door to Jake’s, a hotel whose string of homely bungalows with charming names like Seahorse and Jellyfish is the antithesis of the soulless modern day tower-block model.
Occupying a grassy plateau that overlooks a curving bay, the Calabash site is striking. A huge gazebo covers the seating area and the stage, sheltered by a giant straw roof, caresses the coastal path. The backdrop to the readings is the Caribbean sea.In 2005, 30-odd renowned authors and poets came to cast their words against these historic waters.