The international flavor of national writings was evident in a ‘’LiTTribute”
– literary tribute to writers and poets of the world by members of the UNESCO
Executive Board in Paris. It saw a world of poets and writers of Greece, Iran,
Bangladesh, India, Venezuela, China and Trinidad and Tobago on the gather to
read and explore their national literatures. The readings for the Caribbean
came from the highly acclaimed LiTTscapes
- Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago by Dr Kris Rampersad, which
celebrates the value of writers to society through presentation of more than
100 works of fiction since 1595 to present in descriptive and pictorial
snapshots.
Selected passages from LiTTscapes
scanned the significance of the writings of not just Trinidad and Tobago's two
Nobel Laureates Sir Vidia S Naipaul and Derek Walcott along with other
multicultural milieu if awarded writers as Samuel Selvon, Ismith Khan, Earl
Lovelace, Michael Anthony, Robert Antoni, Lawrence Scott, Lakshmi Persaud,
Shani Mootoo but others less known as Sonny Ladoo. It placed the fiction
writings within the social realist traditions that yet resounded poetic
sentiments bringing to life the fictional representations of such challenges of
island states being addressed by UNESCO that brought tears in the eyes of some
of the world's award winning writers and our audience. "I was touched from
the opening statement, the Ambassador of Greece stated.
The audience heard of LiTTscapes' revisionary representation of Ismith
Khan's passages in The Crucifiction of
"the long tongue lashes of the sea lap up on the edges of the earth as if
waiting a chance to swallow the island," relating the ever present threat
of flooding or being engulfed by sea that much predates theories of sea level
rise, climate change and global warming as well as LiTTscapes' presentation of the primeval antiquity of the original
name of the islands from the indigenous Kairi that has been rebranded the New
World, an old world since 'the beginning of time' as told by Lawrence Scott in Witchbroom.
"Globalisation has been very real to us for a very long time,
it did not begin a few years ago with some metropolitan theorists," said
Dr Kris Rampersad, reading from the Introduction
to LiTTscapes which has been dramatized
as an Invocation to the Muses at
national and international presentation. It acclaims the significant role of
writers in a society, was from the introduction of LiTTscapes which has since become the themed "invocation to
the muses" at LiTTributes so far held as LiTTribute to LondonTTown in August 2013; LiTTribute to the Antilles in Antigua; LiTTribute to the Continent in mainland Guyana and LiTTribute to
the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago hosted by former First Lady Jean Ramjohn
Richards. This followed the launch of LiTTscapes
at White Hall, one of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ of Port of Spain (also featured
in LiTTscapes) as part of Trinidad
and Tobago's golden jubilee celebrations in 2012.
The soiree also heard passages from Naipaul and Walcott, other
writers cited Nobel Laureates of India as Rabindranath Tahoe, Greece, China, among
others. The soiree was organised by the Ambassador and delegation of Bangladesh.
