The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
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The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is a major award for literary books by Caribbean writers. Prizes are awarded in three categories: poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction; with one book being named the “Overall Winner.” The prize includes an award of $10,000 for the overall winner ($3,000 for the other winners), and is sponsored by One Caribbean Media. The awards are announced during the Bocas Literary Festival which is held in Trinidad & Tobago each spring.
To be eligible for the prize, a book must have been published in the past calendar year, and written by an author born in the Caribbean or holding Caribbean citizenship. Books must also have been originally written in English. Learn more ▶.
2 Books Honored in 2018
Curfew Chronicles: A Fiction
In 2011, the Trinidad government declared a state of emergency and an overnight curfew. The SoE, brought in to combat the crime and killings associated with the drugs trade, was meant to last 15 days but lasted four months. This is the background to these chronicles, but not their substance. They are an imaginative response to the undertones of those days. Taking place over 24 hours, Curfew Chronicles brings together, like a Joyces Ulysses in miniature, the lives of two dozen characters (including a father and son searching for each other) whose lives intersect in mostly fortuitous but sometimes quite deliberate ways.
Madwoman
These wonderful poems open a world of sensation and memory. But it is a world revealed by language, never just controlled. The voice that guides the action here is openhearted and open-mindeda lyric presence that never deserts the subject or the reader. Syntax, craft and cadence add to the gathering music from poem to poem withto use a beautiful phrase from the book, each note tethering sound to meaning. Eavan Boland
Haunting, alarming, transformative, and elusive, these poems bridge together the gaps between development stages: from girl, to woman, and then mother. With the complexities that intertwine them, can you be all three at once? Who shapes our identity, and who is in control here? How do we recognize, acknowledge, and honor the changing of who we are?
Little Soul
Little soulkind, wandering
bodys host and guest,
look how youve lowered yourself,
moving in a world of ice,
washed of colour. My girl,
what compelled you once
is no more.
