Colin Channer reflects on 10 years of Calabash

Last week, 10 questions were thrown at Kwame Dawes, the programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, as Calabash prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary this month. This week, Dawes' close friend, Colin Channer, faces the same questions.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Channer attended high school in Jamaica before moving to New York in the early 1980s. He's Calabash's founder and artistic director in addition to being a fiction writer and an occasional essayist. He lives in Massachusetts where he is the Newhouse visiting professor in creative writing at Wellesley College, some 20 miles west of Boston.

Calabash 2010 will take place at Jake's in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth, from Friday, May 28 to Sunday, May 30. All events will be free and open to the public.

• What do you remember most about the first Calabash?

That was so long ago. Let me think. What's coming to mind now are the 300 yellow butterflies that hovered over the small white tent we'd set up on the lawn just off the lobby of Jake's. We had 300 people and 300 butterflies. The day the festival ended they disappeared. They were spirits of some sort, the manifestation of something mystical - the kind of magic realist expression that we see in novels by Gabrial Garcia Marquez. I also remember the people who came with crossed arms, hoping that Calabash would fail. At the end of the first Calabash they greeted us, the organisers, with open arms. I also remember Staceyann Chin going onstage with a worried look, unsure of how she'd be welcomed, being a Jamaican poet who is also a lesbian. She was welcomed by the audience as a Jamaican poet they could be proud of. The audience reaction made me proud as well. Out of many kinds of many, we are one people with many variations.

• What do you remember most about the last Calabash?

How the changes we made in the programme really worked. We moved the music stage over to the food court. We shifted live music from Saturday night to Friday night. Tarrus Riley was amazing; brought back memories of a young Dennis Brown. The Saturday night sound clash with Mutabaruka was something that will stay with me forever. He's been spinning music in public all his life and I was doing it for the first time in almost 30 years. It was a clash that was more of a musical embrace. That night was a great example of what Calabash is on the level of the soul. It is nothing less than a transmutation of the positive vibration of reggae's welcoming, unifying, non-materialistic spirit into a literary experience, into a festival that is earthy, inspirational, daring and diverse, into a public festival with no cover charge or VIP sections that is deep rooted in its local community but international in its standards and scope.

• Calabash turns 10 this year. What were you like as a 10 year-old?

I was already in high school at 10, at Ardenne. I went from the fourth grade at Alpha Primary to first form. I was pure trouble at school. Couldn't stop talking in class. Couldn't stop making up nicknames for people. I was short, stout and wore glasses. An untidy dresser. The shirt was never tightly tucked into the pants. Awful at sports. Did no homework. But could pass every test unless it was in math. One thing about me, though, being awful at sports was no obstacle to me. I went out for every team and made none for many years. Then I grew tall and then I could do a bit of high jump. Went to Champs and nearly broke my neck when I cleared the bar but missed the sponge. I used to lie a lot too. I used to make things up just because I thought they were interesting, A great exaggerator. Looking back, I was practising for my future career (or so I tell myself). I used to thief too. Books mostly. From Sangster's downtown and Shadeed's.

Okay - bench press. Ten reps. What's the most you can do?

Wow. Right now? Bench press. I have never been able to do more than say 175lbs. But that was then. Right now, about 100lbs. Ten pounds for every year of Calabash. Just like our anthology So Much Things to Say has a hundred poets, I have a 100lbs of strength in my 'chestical' areas.

If you had to write an essay on one of the Ten Commandments, which would you choose?

I would write an essay on bearing false witness and do my best to not use any references to any issues that have any direct relevance to any affairs that might be generating perspiration on one side, and saliva on the other, in the Jamaican Parliament.

• What are 10 things people should take with them to Calabash?

A friend with whom they want to share a special experience. A tote bag for the books they'll purchase. Condoms for all the love they're going to make. Reusable water bottles. Money for food, books, gifts and donations to the festival. Swimsuits. Dancing shoes. Sunglasses. Lightweight clothing - tank tops and wraps are perfect for women. A good excuse for their boss explaining why they missed work on Friday, May 28.

• So you've just been given 10 tickets to this year's World Cup Finals, who're you going to take?

Let's see. I would take my daughter Addis, my son Makonnen, Kwame Dawes, Justine Henzell. I would take John Dacosta for all the work he's done for Calabash over the years. I would take Carleene Samuels too for the same reason. Certain bredrens would have to make that trip with me. Like Oliver Smith over there in what our group of friends refers to as Cakes and Turkos. I would have to get Gary 'Pinchers' Oates from out in Ohio. Two more left now. As a tribute for his greatness - and it is not like I've even met the man - I'd give a ticket to Herbert 'Dago' Gordon, one of the greatest ballers this country has ever seen. The last two tickets now. My bredren Sherman Escoffery. And I can't leave out Mikey Bennett. No way. (That's actually 11, Colin.)

• Of the last 10 countries you've visited, which one surprised you the most?

I think that would be Senegal. I saw a man in market place who walked on all fours like a dog due to some deformity, yet he was going about his business living life with a basket around his neck in which to put the things he was going to buy. That was a life lesson to me. I also went to Goree Island, the slave fort, and found myself distracted from the narrative of slavery to the sheer beauty of architecture of that place of horrors. Then there was the food and the music. But most of all how the threat of violence does not hang over the poorest parts of Dakar.

• You've just been named captain of the all-time greatest West Indies cricket team, who're your 10 teammates?

You have no idea now much I hate cricket do you? But I pay attention to the game. Okay, here we go. Desmond Haynes opens with Gordon Greenidge. Vivian Richards comes at three. George Headley comes at four. Brian Lara comes at five. Garfield Sobers comes at six. Jerry Alexander as wicketkeeper comes at seven. We want a balanced attack, so my bowlers would be Alf Valentine, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall and, well, me.

• What do you think people will remember most about the 10th anniversary of Calabash?

I don't know. My wish for all who come to Calabash this year is that they will make a connection with our logo, a heart with wings, love and transcendence, love without boundaries, love, as the Rastaman says, i-nivershally, and how this connection moved them to support the festival by getting their own copy of the anthology So Much Things to Say.