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UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 4 MARCH, 2018
CAMPUS LITERATURE WEEK – MARCH 19-23
What does it mean to you to be
The UWI’sWriter in Residence this year?
I was very happy to receive the invitation because,
for all the years that I have lived and worked in the arts
in Trinidad, I have not connected with UWI. So, to
connect with the academic Caribbean in Trinidad is
an honour. I’m very happy to have the opportunity to
interact with Trinidadian students and see how I can
help in any way. Trinidad has been very influential in
me beginning to write and in my writing … This for
me is really special because, after Guyana, Trinidad is
my home and I feel a part [of it] and I know enough
about the culture, the language, the complex politics
and all of the drama that goes with Trinidad.
When did you know that you wanted
to be a writer?
I didn’t know that. I started, really, to try it and see
if I could do it as a project. I was writing since I was a
child. We were home schooled (in Guyana) and, every
day, writing or some form of creative work, whether it
was painting or poetry, was encouraged by my mother
… I never aspired to be a writer. I thought I would
become a visual artist and that was what I went to
art school to do. From that, I thought: I’m not quite
comfortable spending four years studying western art. I
Connections
TOTHE INVISIBLE
What makes a writer write?
want to come back to the Caribbean and find out what
that art form is. Luckily, I came back to Trinidad and
came straight into Carnival arts. I was working with
[Peter] Minshall then. From the visual and performing
arts, I tried writing…[I began] really, throughmy love
of reading. I’ve always loved reading … So, wanting
to see if I can write like the stuff I read was my first
challenge. I had the time and support to do that [then],
so I approached it as a project first. I told myself, if I
write, I have three stories in my head – three novels
that I think I could write. If I don’t get published by
the third one, then I will go back tomy art. Getting the
first one published was very encouraging, and I still
have only three published novels, but I know I will be
writing for a long time.
For creatives, it can be difficult to find the time
to devote to work that may not immediately
– or ever – supply a pay check. How have
you been able to accomplish that?What’s
your advice to writers who’d like to become
successful at their craft, but need to focus on
other work for money?
It’s an eternal challenge. If you really stop and
think about it, you would go towards something
more commercial. I was working in graphic art and
advertising. Because that work was slow – I was
freelancing – I tried writing as a project. Now, [being]
successfully published, even if you get good reviews,
doesn’t necessarily mean that the sales add up. Unless
it’s a best seller, basically, you’re not going tomake a lot
of money – enough to sit down andwrite the next book
without doing other work. Continuing to freelance,
doing research [and] consulting work has allowed me
to earn on projects and then write in between.
But it’s very stressful because it’s not secure and if
you’re not constantly seeking the next job or the next
contract, you start to fall out of the loop …That’s why
many writers go into teaching, because you have a
secure income and it supposedly gives you the time
to write … A lot of successful writers are teachers or
professors. I chose not to go that route, but it makes
it that much more fragile. Hence the grey hairs and I
stay slim!
I found, over the years, [that] because I continued
to want to write, or do some form of creative work, it’s
a choice any artist has to face. Why do you need to do
this thing? How do you find a way in your life to do it
that doesn’t compromise you to the point where you’re
starving? And some artists do make that choice. It’s a
really personal, but artistic, challenge that goes deeper
than what you’re writing, as to why you’re writing.
When you read Oonya Kempadoo’s
description of the “snuffling and
bubbling” Tobago sea, swelling his chest, stretching his arms to the mountains
and scratching his white fingernails along the rocks, in Tide Running, you can
feel the water lapping at your feet as it creeps on to the shore. You can smell
the fresh sea water. You can hear your nanny, your bredda, cousin, tanty and
neighbour in the language of the narrative. She’s talking about home, a home
that she knows inside and out, from the upsides and the downsides.
Kempadoo is a true Caribbean daughter, “pan-Caribbean,” she says, and
she has an extraordinary talent for describing those places in which her heart
lies. She was born in the UK to Guyanese parents, grew up in Guyana and has
lived in various Caribbean islands throughout her life, including Trinidad and
Tobago, St Lucia and Grenada.
While Guyana is her homeland, Kempadoo considers Trinidad and
Tobago her second home, having lived here for nine years in which she began
her career and took her first writer’s steps. Today, she lives in Grenada and
has regularly visited our islands, sometimes for as long as a year here and
there. She was happy to return when The UWI’s Department of Literary,
Communications and Cultural Studies invited her to join its Masters of Fine
Arts (MFA) programme, as the 2018 Writer-in-Residence.
Here, Kempadoo talks with Serah Acham about her love of reading,
writing as a career and an academic pursuit, access to Caribbean literature and
what she’s doing to increase that access in Grenada.
PHOTOGRAPHY:
ATIBA CUDJOE
