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Join Robert and Linda, the editors of ArtsEtc, as they offer personal takes and twists on culture in Barbados and beyond... Stage Right, Stage Left continues a journey started seven years ago in ArtsEtc: The Premier Cultural Guide to Barbados, their groundbreaking print newsletter. Follow the rest of the adventure online at www.artsetcbarbados.com.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

What heritage means to GR12 readers



Every year, ArtsEtc asks its Green Readers to make a statement about their art, their environment and the Green Readings theme for that year.


This year, the theme is Heritage.


Here are the "green statements" of the first set of GR12 readers—Arnold Ward, Dana Gilkes, and Carolle Bourne.


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Well-known Barbadian actor and writer Arnold F. Ward has won several prizes for his writing at the national and international level. His publications include Dear AuntBajan Love, and Knock and Wait.

Nation builders
I met an old  man recently who liked to talk.

“I used to head dung,” he said, and I recoiled in polite disgust as he described the process of transporting cow manure in leaking dung baskets on his head from a large heap to the cane holes and vegetable patches. “The one on the top wasn’t so bad,” he recalled, “but when you get down to the middle …” and he smiled.  “It would get all ‘pon your shirt, all ‘pon your hands .. even ‘pon your food if you not careful.”

And that is our heritage.  The suffering and sacrifice of people like him who, in striving to survive, helped to build a beautiful nation.  A nation where we can read and write (perhaps some of it suited for his basket), and enjoy a fairly comfortable standard of living.  Let us salute our wonderful fore-parents.
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Ian Bourne, former journalist and news anchor (above), will be reading in tribute to his mother Carolle Bourne.
















Carolle Bourne, journalist, poet and art critic, who died in May, was the winner of the Kamau Brathwaite prize for poetry and a recipient of the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment. She was the author of the poetry collection Saraband: The Incomplete Works of Caroline Ravenspeare.

Living Art
After all, it usually is what grabs us emotionally that wins us over—seeing a painting or sculpture as something we can live with or rather not.

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Dana Gilkes is an award-winning poet and visual artist. She teaches creative writing at the Barbados Community College and won the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award for the poetry collectionAnatomy of A Scream.




World Without End?
To think the very nature that sustains us could be at our mercy: we dishonour our beginnings, motion our end.


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• Ian, Arnold and Dana will be reading on the Boardwalk at Hastings on Saturday, June 9, 2012, from 3:30 p.m. as part of ArtsEtc’s and the Ministry of the Environment’s Green Readings 2012. 


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