Musgrave awardees surprised

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

One of this year's Musgrave Award recipients, Jean Small, while appreciating her Bronze Musgrave, still questions the process.

She said that, reflecting on the people who have received Musgrave awards previously, including Lorna Goodison and Earl McKenzie, "I found myself among the honourees and I was surprised."

Small has been in theatre for more than 50 years, developed a one-women show and for the past 10 years has directed the Mona campus' entry in the Inter-Campus Foreign Language Theatre Festival.

"When I think of all the people who got Musgrave medals, then I thought to myself they could not have given me any better (than bronze). They gave Linton Kwesi Johnson (LKJ) a Silver and I thought that was so ridiculous," Small said, listing some of the poet's accomplishments, which include his Mi Revalueshanary Fren being published by Penguin Classics in 2002, a rare honour for a living writer.

She also said that she was asked for her curriculum vitae after being told about the award, "so my question is, what is the criteria they use for assessing people? And how did they assess me for a bronze? It seems arbitrary.

"I put that in the context that LKJ was given a silver medal. He has achieved so much. In my opinion he should have got a gold. So my question is, what criteria do they use for who gets what at what level?" Small asked.

Author of Waiting in Vain, Satisfy My Soul and Passing Through, as well as co-founder of the annual Calabash International Literary Festival, Colin Channer, was also surprised, but for a different reason.

"Oh, I was really surprised when I got the news. Surprised but also honoured. The news took me back to my high school years when I found out I was going to be a prefect. Me? The troublemaker? Being honoured like this? Not bad. Not bad," he said in an email interview.

Although his Silver Musgrave is for Literature, Channer said, "I can't say that the medal made me look back at my books or at Calabash. The award made me think of my children, of what this award will mean to them, of what it might say to them about their father.

"It also made me think of people who I think might be more deserving of this award, most of all Justine Henzell. Her contribution to the arts through organisations like the Montego Bay Arts Centre, Women in Film and Television International and, of course, Calabash - not to mention the musical version of The Harder They Come and the feature film No Place Like Home, have positioned her to be honoured in significant ways. I have no doubt that these honours will come," Channer said.

Special place

The award takes Channer back to his genesis as a writer. "The Institute of Jamaica has a special place in my life. It was there that I first began to think of myself as a writer, in that small library in the Junior Centre, where my mother would take my brother and me for art classes on Saturdays. She did this because she was aware of all that the institute had to offer. She also needed to find something for my brother and me to do while she worked a second job on weekends. This award really belongs to her," Channer said.

The ceremony comes on a special day, as Channer said, "I will be accepting this award on my birthday, October 13. From this vantage point I can imagine that I'll have two things on my mind that day ... all that my great friend Kwame Dawes told me about his feelings when he received his Musgrave a few years ago, and the health of my good brother, Barry Chevannes."