Andrew Firmin's blog
Andrew Firmin, Commonwealth Foundation
Andrew is the Manager of the Commonwealth Foundation's Culture and Diversity Programme, which includes the annual Commonwealth Writers' Prize. This is his third Commonwealth Writers' Prize final programme.
- London, 11 May 2008
So, this year for the first time we have a selection of writers and judges blogging from the final programme of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in South Africa. Great idea, we thought, but shouldn't there be a staff member too? Sure, but then we all thought each other should do it. I drew the short straw.
It's a hot and sunny afternoon in East London, UK - honestly it is - and in about three hours I'm leaving for the airport. Should I be packing yet? Tomorrow morning me and my brilliant colleague Jen - who actually runs the Prize and so really should be doing this - will land in Joburg, and tomorrow afternoon it all kicks off - seven days of readings, signings, discussion, interaction with different communities, judging (crucially), and, we hope, some fun along the way.
This is my third final programme, following Australia in 2006 and Jamaica last year, and as ever I'm looking forward to getting to know those writers and judges I haven't already met, meeting lots of new people and seeing the counter-intuitive magic of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize - we bring together the writers with the people judging their books, the writers are in competition with each other but work as a group, and somehow it all makes sense - working once more.
It's a huge annual undertaking and with writers, judges, administrators, CF staff - our Director Mark and the Prize Chair Nicholas will also be with us - and assorted hangers-on, there are about 20 people to keep happy. No pressure, then.
Best find my passport...- Johannesburg, 12 May
- Johannesburg, 13 May
- Cape Town, 14 May
- Franschhoek, 15 May
- Franschhoek, 16 May
- Franschhoek, 17 May
- Cape Town, 18 May
As I write, post-midnight, Johannesburg, I am surely the tiredest man on earth.
We got to the hotel at about 11 o’clock this morning. The journey, counter-intuitively via Zurich, to take advantage of the proximity of the London City Airport to my East London home, was comfortable, efficient and, for me, almost entirely sleepless. Annoyingly my colleague Jen slept like the proverbial. About an hour’s nap at the hotel, and then down to work.
All writers and judges present and accounted for. Remarkably, given some of the routes they travelled, all with their luggage too. The complexity of this undertaking, which multiple locations, corresponding movements of people, a plurality of partners and many – yes, here’s that word – stakeholders, was brought home to me by the briefing meeting we held for writers, judges and others this afternoon. This lasted for about five hours. I spoke to glazed expressions. We’ll answer all the questions as the week goes on.
But the first event proper, at Xarra books in Newtown, was fabulous. Six writers read their thing. Sade Anerinan set the bar high with something distressing and attention-grabbing about worms. I may have nightmares. Larry Scott, who lost his glasses somehow en route, proved he didn’t need them by reading word for word perfect from memory. Karen King-Aribasala didn’t read; she acted. No-one dared breathe. The shop was mobbed, and the writers busily signed their books. It was the perfect place to start the programme.
Next stop was the Roka Lounge for the Monday night Lekgotla meeting. Eyelids drooped, alas, given those overnight flights, but we still had a great discussion about African literatures, gender, identity and what have you. Yep, pretty wide-ranging. We talked a lot about categorisation. Why is there, in South Africa, a separate section called ‘African literature’? I’m sympathetic, but I thought the discussion sometimes overlooked the viewpoint of the reader, people like me. Sometimes we readers need signposts. When I’ve read a terrific book, there are times when I want to be pointed towards what I might read next of a similar ilk. We all agreed in the end, though, that great stories are great stories are great stories, which is what I feel– admission of bias here – the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize overall winners tend to produce.
I also noticed at the dinner that Tamima Anam, one of our winners and fellow blogger, is, like me, an inveterate wax picker, irresistibly drawn to peeling the wax off bottles holding candles. We may have to have a tallow showdown in Franschhoek.
Sleep now. Tomorrow, the serious stuff – the judging begins. I don’t envy them. The choice is surely impossible. Can we not just split the prize now and give them all something?
All in all, a pretty quiet day, really.
Only joking. Today I saw both sides of the prize. In the morning we had another reading by our six gathered writers in the utterly beautiful surroundings of the Boekehuis, a cool, woody bookshop packed with serious lovers of literature. Our writers all read well again, the only moments of fumbling inarticulacy provided by my attempts to play compere.
After lunch, I crossed the floor and entered the secret world of the judging, taking place in a concealed and locked chamber deep beneath our hotel.
A word about the judges. Six more sober, sensible, stunningly intelligent people you could not hope to find. They come from all points and what they don’t know about literature you could fit comfortably on a postcard. For a book to take an overall prize it has to undergo their intense scrutiny and make them all happy. Overall winners should feel very proud. The judging process takes two days; more if they need it.
It makes it hard to take seriously those prizes where they meet for a couple of hours, put it to a vote and then all go off and have a nice dinner.
There are some great benefits that us staff members get out of the prize. One, frankly, is the free books we get to read. Another is being able to sit in on the judging – while taking pains, of course, never to offer one’s own opinions – and listen to the way the judges talk about the books. So often they nail something that has hovered in the back of my mind but which I haven’t been able to express.
And that’s as much as you’re going to get from me about the secrets of the judging chamber.
Come the evening, another reading, the third in a day and a half. I hope the writers’ voices last out the week. This one’s at a downtown, swish, well-equipped branch of Exclusive Books. I am becoming able to introduce the writers and recite key details of their careers from memory. By the end of the week I will be murmuring their history of shortlists in my sleep.
Not for the first time I find myself admiring Scott Richardson’s glasses, a work of art. That I can’t adequately describe them prove it’s he who’s the writer, not me.
For the final event of the day we’re generously hosted by our friends the Department of Arts and Culture. The Gramadoelas African Restaurant, amidst a street of arts and culture which I would like to investigate further, is rafters packed. Minister Z Pallo Jordan speaks, underlining our host government’s commitment to the Prize. The food is surely the best of the week. We feel well-looked after.
As is the custom I find myself writing this when really I could be sleeping. Tomorrow the caravan moves on to Cape Town, calling for a ludicrously early alarm call at a time I hadn’t previously known existed. Time to re-pack.
Stupidly tired again, only now in a different city.
Today we moved down to Cape Town. I was surprised, when we all gathered together for the first time on Monday, how few of the group had been to South Africa before. I counted and reckoned this was my fifth visit. But despite my various trips to this complex, enthralling country, I had never before seen Cape Town.
We had to move a small army down here, including a mountain of luggage and the essential supplies of propaganda and paraphernalia that accompany the CWP travelling show, but all went without a hitch, and we enjoyed spectacular views as we approached Cape Town. Yes, all went well. Apart from the yoghurt incident, of course.
First I noticed the smell. Strawberry? On a plane? Then as we prepared to disembark I looked down and saw bag, shoes, this very computer on which I now type, all liberally coated with a film of low fat probiotic. My colleague Jen had saved a yoghurt for later, put it in her bag, only for the carton to explode. This is the sort of thing that happens often to Jen.
I was fond of the shoes I was wearing, a mixture of suede and corduroy, but they do not interface well with dairy products. Oh well, they were cheap.
The programme is tight this year. We work our writers harder then ever. A holiday this isn’t. It’s much better than that. We had less than half an hour in our hotel before we were off to the first event of the day. Fortunately it left us inspired and enthused. We called in at the Westerford High School, where about 150 students hung on our writers’ every word. Many of our crew picked their offerings to fit the mood, whether it be Lawrence Hill telling us about his insistence as a 17 year old on growing an afro, or Sade Aderinan picking out choice bits to make young girls giggle. Karen King-Aribisala has a poem that starts very loud indeed, so we began with this to ensure we had their attention. It worked. The students probed with their questions, asking the writers how much they wanted to win the big prize, and whether they felt they were competing with each other. The answers from the writers were that they had probably started the week that way, but had grown to realise how much they have in common, and how much they respect each other, as the week went on. Textbook answer, and I didn’t even coach them.
Then to a regular session of a creative writing class at the beautiful Italianate University of Cape Town. I caught up with another of our alumni there, Ellen Banda-Aaku from Zambia, 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition winner, currently studying at the university and working on her first novel. Our writers joined the discussion, giving tips and encouragement, helping to bring forward, we’ll hope, the next wave of South African writers to emerge and tussle for future Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes.
No evening event tonight, so back to the secret chamber for the final session with the judges. And the winner is…
I’ll tell you on Sunday.
"This is the best thing I’ve ever had in my whole entire life.”
Yes, Jen really enjoyed her dessert.
By the way, I know Jen’s mother reads this blog, largely to find out what her daughter’s been up to today. So hi, Glynis.
So here we are in Franschhoek, our final destination of the week. Our writers and judges will be spending the next few days participating in the Franschhoek Literary Festival, a fledgling event, being in only its second year, in a valley amidst vineyards in the Cape Winelands District.
It’s a little more than a year ago that we started talking with the Department of Arts and Culture about bringing the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize to this country for the first time in its 22 year history. It’s a bit less than a year since the final programme of the 2007 Prize, at the Calabash Festival in Jamaica, where we floated this idea to the three South African writers present, and asked for their suggestions as to where we might go. There’s this new festival at a place called Franschhoek, they said. Middle of nowhere. Small, friendly and community focused. It raises money for accessible libraries. Sounds good, we said, let’s look into it.
Never let it be said we don’t listen. Tonight I bumped into two of those writers who planted the seed back in Jamaica: Shaun Johnson, last year’s Africa Best Book winner, and Gabeba Baderoon, a very talented poet. We’ll doubtless cross paths with Maxine Case, last year’s Africa Best First Book winner, sometime over the weekend.
We caught up too with the various dedicated people who organise the festival: novelist Christopher Hope, Jenny Hobbs and James Woodhouse. I don’t know if a week has gone by this year when we haven’t spoken to James, and he’s always been extraordinarily cheerful and accommodating of our petty worries. There’s one person I owe a drink. Fortunately, as I said, we’re surrounded by vineyards.
The morning offered contrast, and was essential. We took the group to Robben Island, to remember something of the brutality of the monstrous regime which once governed this country. It was a sobering but simultaneously uplifting experience. We were shown around by two former political prisoners, who told us of their backgrounds, and their actions which were deemed criminal. But what could have been depressing turned out to be an inspiration. Both our guides spoke of the realisation that they needed to reach out to their captors, that all parts of their community should be considered victims of Apartheid. A former prisoner of 18 years’ standing invited his ex-warders around for dinner. I find it hard to imagine responding in this way. Ultimately their message was one of the need for reconciliation.
It made me think about the importance of museums in preserving narratives, in telling stories of identity. What will happen when the last people from this era have passed away? How will stories be preserved, and be transmitted to further generations? It’s not just an issue here, but for the Holocaust, and the First World War, from which the last survivors will soon die, at which point the reality of it becomes pliable, deniable. Museums are crucial, and deserve our support. We need to keep understanding the multiplicity of our pasts to enjoy a pluralistic present.
“I’m not really a dessert kind of person.” – Jen
As yesterday, the day started with a prison. This one was Groot Drakenstein, the jail from which Mandela so memorably walked free in 1990. We were there to see the fruits of an innovative writing in prisons project, which has resulted in a soon to be published book, 15 Men. It reminded us of the potential of arts-based interventions to reach the most marginalised, and the urge we all have somewhere for self-expression and validation that can find a channel through writing and other creative acts. It was a pity that for whatever bureaucratic reason the prisoners were unable to present their works themselves, that we were denied their voices, but project leader Margie Orford conveyed to us well the workings and impact of the scheme. She is clearly committed, and had visibly won the respect of her students. It was great too to see the way they all supported each other.
There’s a festival going on around here, although I didn’t see much of it today. This is generally the case on such trips. We bring people together at these events, but there’s always so much work involved in support that we are often denied the pleasure of our own participation. (Ironically, I’ve also had no time to read these last few days.) When we would have liked to be listening to fine writers read and debate, instead we spent much of the day stuck in my room, which has also become the Foundation’s de facto office, doing the admin and doing the preparation for Sunday’s big announcement event. Tomorrow my aim is to go to one session in which we are not directly involved. We’ll see. Not that I’m complaining. This is a job I’d be jealous of if somebody else had it.
Our best first book winners read again in the afternoon, enjoying the luxury of a longer slot to really stretch their legs and get stuck into the texts. We were joined, in the school hall, by a contingent of students we’d supported to be brought over from the creative writing class of the University of Western Cape, who set a new standard in intensive listening. It’s important for us to add benefit to diverse communities while we’re here, especially in a place with the intriguing contradictions of Franschhoek. Before we leave we’ll also be making a donation to support the start-up of a mobile library, which will serve primary and secondary school children in the rural communities which surround this place.
It was an interesting session, ably convened by the Prize Chair Nicholas Hasluck, something of a TV star now in these parts. The only disappointment was a lower than hoped-for crowd, the first such of the whole trip. They missed out. But tomorrow, ahead of the Best Book readings sessions, we’ll be out handing out flyers and urging random passers-by to attend. These writers deserve the biggest possible audience.To adopt the vernacular of my Canadian colleague Jen, we and the people of the Franschhoek Literary Festival worked our asses off last night and today to build a crowd for the readings of the Best Book winners. And it paid off, as a full house heard our trio present speak with the now familiar panache and polish. The applause at the end was thunderous and sustained. I hope they sell lot of copies of their books.
I’ve got to say a word here about Nikki Stubbs, our seemingly tireless and ever resourceful local organiser, and one of the best things we ever got right. She has held this trip together and I’m hoping she can quickly migrate to wherever it is in South Asia – it’s their turn – this Prize next heads. I’m going to miss Nikki next week back in London. The first time I run out of milk or a tube breakdown makes me late for something, I’m liable to find myself giving Nikki a call in the expectation she’ll sort it all out.
Today I fulfilled my ambition of going to something here that we didn’t directly organise, dropping in on a fascinating session about the line between fiction and reality, albeit one that benefited from the presence of our own Scott Richardson, and yes, by now I do tend to think of him as our own.
This evening I spent time talking to one of our writers, Stephen Carroll from Australia, laureate of the suburbs. The music anorak in me, never far from the surface, is intrigued that Steve spent his formative years playing guitar in a rock and roll band rather than writing. Okay, so I’m not sure about the bias towards Eagles’ cover versions, but it seems he lived that particular dream more than I ever managed. Unusually for an Australian, Steve seems to have a good appreciation of English beer, and we share a love of theatre. I’ll never be as much of the Stoppard fan as he is, but he understands my reverence for Pinter.
Franschhoek was founded by Huguenots kicked out of France, hence the name. This is a fascinating piece of little-known history, something of a theme for many of this year’s winning books too. For me there’s been a personal edge in coming here. Firmin’s a French name, and it’s been said among the family that our forebears were also French Huguenots, albeit ones which settled in the flatlands of East Anglia rather than the valleys of the Cape Winelands, showing a propensity for bad decision-making which has perhaps become an enduring hallmark. There’s a randomness to and mutation of identity. Ironically, despite this, this is the only place on the trip so far to have offered me the familiar irritation of a misspelled surname.
The above thoughts are even more random and disconnected than usual, because it’s late again, I’m tired again, and I’m concerned about sleep before tomorrow’s big day. Sunday afternoon is the moment we announce our two overall winners, the culmination of the whole show. If you can’t be with us in the high school hall, I recommend you check this website then. I have a feeling you’re going to approve of the judges’ choices.So, the overall best book winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is Lawrence Hill for The Book of Negroes, while Tahmima Anam took the overall best first book prize for A Golden Age.
Phew. After a few days of having to keep this news to ourselves, it’s a relief to be able to share it with the world. When the envelope opens and the cheque is handed over, we go into this weird reversal: something that we’ve been keeping tightly under wraps must now insistently be shared. We become publicity whores.
So it was good to see the two overall winners in such demand when the final ceremony, the final event of the final programme, finally came to a close. People mobbed them to secure signatures for their freshly bought books. Everyone wanted a piece of Larry, and last night he was busy doing interviews for his home country of Canada.
For something like the Prize, publicity isn’t an add on, or an exercise in fatuous PR; it’s an essential. If the point of the Prize is to encourage wider readership and to bring books that merit attention to a bigger audience, then you have to shout about the books and shove them under people’s noses. We’ll keep on shouting and shoving.
The ceremony was hitchless. We owed much to our brilliant MC Soli Philander, who played shamelessly to the audience and tied together what had seemed on paper a long and clunky sequence. And our events lynchpin, Rasheed (AKA the loudest man on earth – here’s one guy who doesn’t need a mobile phone) pulled off the whole show with endless cheer. I admit to rising panic half way through about whether we’d really put the right results in the right envelope, but I guess we always had a 50-50 chance. Our guest of honour Minister Jordan presented the cheques, and almost immediately I took the cheques back from the winners because they’d both really prefer a bank transfer.
So we did it. It’s been a successful week and I hope we’ve made some new friends. If what we try to do in our programme is bring people together from different cultures to share, learn and work, then we did it time and again in the week just ended. I’m tired, and admit to being gnawed by that slight sense of hollowness which comes at the end of any really big endeavour, but I feel proud of what we did this week, for the first time in South Africa.
Inevitably, the job isn’t over yet. There’s internet stuff to be done. People to put into contact with Larry. And tomorrow Jen and I head up to Johannesburg for a consultation on cultural policy as part of a growing area of our work. There’s always time for one more thing. Then I head home, via Zurich again, and back Tuesday morning. Jen stays on for a few well-earned days’ break. This was my third programme, but her first. Not that you’d have known. It’s impossible to imagine doing it without her again. She’s been a star.
Larry will be with us in London again in July when he comes to meet the Queen, and I know we’ll cross paths with the other writers again from time to time – it was great, for example, to catch up with Maxine Case, one of last year’s winners, at the ceremony today. We’re urging them all to swing by Marlborough House when they’re next in London. We’ll show them the chandeliers and then take them in the Red Lion across the road.
This is the last blog; although I can see the addictive appeal of this, I’ll resist the temptation to keep going on return to London, boring you with my daily thoughts about the inadequacies of the Victoria Line and what I had for lunch. I’m looking forward now to being at home, to seeing my wife Nic, to sleeping in my own bed, and indeed to getting at least six hours’ sleep a night. It’s been great, but I’m glad it’s only once a year.
