Where do you consider home and why?

Trinidad and Tobago is home. It does not matter where I visit or live, this is the soil on which I was born and where I was raised. “My navel-string bury here,” as we say in local parlance.

List three words or phrases that come to mind when you think of home.

Belonging, soul connection, abundance.

Have you ever been homesick? Tell us the circumstances and how it felt.

Every time I have lived abroad, I have been homesick for my country of Trinidad and Tobago. In fact, when I travel, I get homesick after two weeks. I miss the food, the weather, the landscape, the sound of Trini voices, and the birdsong. I also miss the privilege and security of walking around with a full understanding of the customs, norms and rules of engagement of the society. 

What is your opinion about brain-drain?

I read a 2020 study done at the local University in TnT, which found that brain-drain has drawn more than 50 % of recent graduates to other shores. I think this has occurred because of the unmet expectations of the skilled and highly skilled.  When there are no jobs, or no sufficiently remunerative jobs available, people will leave for a better life – and we can’t blame them. 

In what way does your physical location impact your creative output?

Living in TnT gives my creative work its authenticity. The writer who is seated here, in the belly of the beast, who must negotiate the daily exigencies of life in the trenches, is the writer who enjoys the best vantage point to take the pulse of society and report on its health. Therefore, living here allows me to move beyond the clichéd portrayals of the Caribbean as ‘setting’, and to truly engage the island as ‘subject-matter’ in my work. 

What is your preferred mode of travel and why?

Living on an island means getting anywhere requires a plane or a boat. I prefer air travel, as difficult as it has become. It is still quicker than sea travel.

In her debut collection of poems Home Coming, Sonia Sanchez’s writes:

“i have returned \\ leaving behind me \\ all those hide and \\ seek faces peeling\\ with freudian dreams.”

      What does the phrase “freudian dreams” mean to you?

A: When I hear that phrase, I think of repressed longings, unmet desires, unfulfilled wishes which inconveniently reveal themselves at moments when our defences slip or peel away.

The mission to establish a colony of humans on Mars is becoming a realistic proposition. Would you agree to be one of the founding members?

A: Absolutely not. If God wanted humans on Mars, he would have put us there.

This is the 10th anniversary of Ake Arts and Book Festival. If you have attended this festival before, please tell us what was special about your experience. If you have never attended, what are your expectations?

A: I expect to have a good time, obviously. I expect to be regaled and awed by all the creative talent on show. I expect to have many of my assumptions about Africa dispelled, and to come away with a deeper–or at least a more accurate–understanding of the continent’s people.

What does Africa need right now?

A: I would not presume to tell Africa what it needs – I am not an African citizen. However, I would hazard an opinion that both Africa and the Caribbean stand to benefit richly from a more deliberate and sustained cultural exchange. There is a cousinhood between us which has not been fully acknowledged or explored.