Saturday 12 April, 2014, 8 pm
Alice Yard, 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain
Douen Islands is an ongoing, open collaborative project — featuring writers, poets, musicians, artists, photographers, and others — first launched on All Hallow’s Eve, 2013, by poet Andre Bagoo and designer Kriston Chen.
On Saturday 12 April, Alice Yard will host an event by the Douen Islands collaborators, as part of the 2014 NGC Bocas Lit Fest pre-festival programme. Douen Islands: In Forest & Wild Skies will be a reading of poetry and prose produced as part of an ongoing collaboration around the Trinidad and Tobago folklore character of the douen, a haunted child spirit.
The event will feature poetry from Andre Bagoo and Shivanee Ramlochan and prose from Sharon Millar. This will involve moving images by Kriston Chen and sitar recordings from Sharda Patasar.
The collaborators state: “Douen Islands is a journey, unearthing what is lost — the furtive child foraging through darkened forest; tricked by moonlight into a vacant past; vanishing, like love and blood, into wild skies. A slippery stream flowing out of this post-Independence country, trek into heat, memory, nightmare, dream. Take back the steps we never took. Seek to find.”
The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago is title sponsor of Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival, now in its fourth year. One Caribbean Media is sponsor of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. The Ministry of Planning and Sustainable Development is a main sponsor, and First Citizens, flow, and Courts are supporting sponsors.
The 2014 NGC Bocas Lit Fest runs from 23 to 27 April, headquartered at the National Library and Old Fire Station in downtown Port of Spain. See www.bocaslitfest.com for more information.