Professor Kwame Dawes applauds as author Colin Channer addresses patrons of Calabash.
In recent years the name Kwame Dawes as been associated with author Colin Channer as principal architects of the Calabash International Literary Festival, held annually since 2001 at Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth.
During the 1980s Dr. Dawes was known to many in the church community as an actor and the principal playwright with the now defunct Christian Graduates Theatre Company (CGTC). This drama group had directors who shared a vision of communicating the gospel through theatre. Dr. Dawes, who was last month honoured with a Silver Musgrave Medal for Literature by the Institute of Jamaica, has, since 1992, been teaching at the University of South Carolina where he is a Professor in English and Distinguished Poet in Residence, and Director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative.
Professor Dawes shared his views on the Musgrave Award, Colin Channer, Christian theatre and his family with Mind&Spirit Editor, MARK DAWES. The following is third and final part of that interview.
THE GLEANER: What would influence you to return to Jamaica to live?
KWAME DAWES: I live in America because I work in America. I will live in Jamaica if I worked in Jamaica. I don't have a job in Jamaica. But travel has been a part of my life. I was not born in Jamaica. I moved to Jamaica when I was eight years old. I was born in Ghana and lived for two years in England. I have now lived in Canada and here in the States. Jamaica is home for me because most of my family is there and many of my tightest friends are there.
Jamaica is where I learned so much in life, so many milestones of my life happened in Jamaica. I met my wife in Jamaica. I got saved in Jamaica. I spent some of the most formative years of my life in Jamaica. I lived in Jamaica during the transformative 1970s. I learned reggae in Jamaica, from the ground up. So I will always work in Jamaica. The truth is that the world is so much smaller now, and communication is much easier. I will continue to do what I can to work in Jamaica even if I live abroad. I have always said that the one thing that I have never quite gotten used to, or comfortable with in Jamaica has been the crime. But I would never say that this is why I don't live in Jamaica right now. I don't because I don't have a job in Jamaica.
THE GLEANER: What does your being given a Musgrave Medal mean to you?
KWAME DAWES: A year ago, my first short story collection, A Place to Hide, was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Caribbean and Canadian region. My publishers, Peepal Tree had entered the book without my knowledge as is normal in these things. I was quite elated and proud at the news that the work was shortlisted. Shortly there after, it won the Canada/Caribbean region and was in the top four for the best first book prize. Big excitement!
So I went to the website to get some details about the prize and it became clear to me that there might be a question of eligibility. I did not have either Canadian or Jamaican citizenship. The prize required that. My publishers, like most people who know me, assumed I was a Jamaican citizen.
What they did not know was that my father, who was born in Warri, Nigeria to Jamaica missionary parents, before coming to Jamaica at age two years old, could not grant me citizenship by inheritance. Despite my 20 or so years living in Jamaica as a permanent resident I never formalised my status through naturalisation. Never seemed like an issue.
When I saw that the award may not be something I was eligible for, I decided (against the advise of a few friends) to simply let the Commonwealth folks know about it and withdraw from the running. Which is what I did. I mention this incident for two reasons: The first is that I was disappointed when I had to withdraw largely because I really saw the award as a triumph for me and for Jamaica writing, I was proud of being selected as a Caribbean writer. It was hard to be told that I was not one.
Secondly, I was left with a feeling of vulnerability about the fact that while all my work is rooted heavily in my Jamaicanness, I really was not deemed Jamaican enough.
The Musgrave Medal is an honour. And yet I also have accepted that after this is published, the Institute may call me and ask for the medal back. No problem. After all, the gesture is more important than anything else. But while I have the award and while I can celebrate it, I do so gladly because the Musgrave Medal affirms that in Jamaica I am accepted as a Jamaican writer, as a writer whose work emerges from that space and that has come to have some impact on other Jamaicans. This means a great deal to me.
THE GLEANER: If you were to relive your life, what would you do differently as a literary person and as a Christian?
KWAME DAWES: My faith is predicated on the mercies of God. His forgiveness for the sins I commit. And since my walk is centred on the idea of moving towards perfection in obedience and submission, I am inevitably struck by the nature of my failure. So, the human in me wishes that I had not made so many mistakes as a Christian. I do regret my sins. Of course I do. Were I not to, something would be wrong with my faith.
So I regret the people I hurt and if given the chance, I would work towards not making those mistakes. Having said that, part of my growth has to come from accepting the forgiveness that God gives and that others give, and then to somehow discover in that the imperative to forgive myself (vanity is a heck of a thing!) so that I do not dwell on the things of the past or be filled with condemnation about them. That is the liberation of my faith. Of course, such freedom is not something I deserve - it is pure mercy. So there is much I would do differently. It is part and parcel of growing up.
"And yet, I also know that there is a divinity that shapes my end, and in that sense, I do not doubt that even the mistakes I have made have somehow helped to form me and to make me who I am now. After all, what would I write about if I did not have experiences that caused me to reflect and even regret?
I write about pain, about flaws in humans, about the humour of those flaws. I see the opportunities in those moments. I am less concerned about what I have done as a writer or a literary person, as you put it. I have never stopped thinking of myself as an artist learning to make art. I have not arrived at a place of confidence that makes me feel remotely assured about my craft. I struggle with self-doubt all the time.
As a result, I am convinced that with better skills I could make everything I have written better. So there is a sense in which I will always do things differently, which is something of a redundancy when you think about it. Yes, I would do things differently, but that does not mean that the way I have done it is particularly bad or some kind of failure of art. It is the way that things went. So I don't harp on that kind of thing. I have never allowed myself to blame anything else for failure in my work ethic or work habits. I take full responsibility for that.
THE GLEANER: Which of your Christian plays do you regard as your favourite and why?
KWAME DAWES: I would say that Charity's Come the one that most realises the combined values of language use, theatricality, and basic dramatic structure. I enjoyed that show. I have restaged it a few times and I have always been pleased by it. In many ways the simplicity of the narrative and the humanity of its themes has made it a play that combines a strong message with a very strong sense of the human condition.
I wrote that play with care and passion. I did a great deal of reading of women's poetry of the last 30 years while I wrote the piece. I wanted to understand the woman's voice and I think that something good happened there.
Additionally, though, the first cast to do that play was a gifted one. Those women performed with a maturity of vision and a forcefulness that I will never forget. Having said that, however, I do think that I regard all my plays as somewhat unfinished things. I have never had the feeling that my plays were finished. In other words, while the stagings were finished products, I have always returned to the script to rewrite, to change, to reshape things. What I need to do is a retrospective of my work which would then allow me to work on each play with the maturity of vision and writing skill that I have now, and with the help of an excellent director and strong actors, to make the works as strong as they can be.
Wouldn't that be splendid? A year of Christian plays, Even Unto Death, Friends and Almost Lovers, Dear Pastor, In Chains of Freedom, Charades, Song of an Injured Stone, and so on. If only someone would build a black box theatre in Jamaica that can accommodate that kind of theatrical exercise, wouldn't that be superb?
I should say, though, that one of my more recent plays, Stump of the Terebinth is perhaps the best written and most sophisticated of all my plays. The piece was treated to a few productions including a touring production in the US and a successful award winning production in Trinidad. In Jamaica it has only had a particularly inspired staged reading at the Calabash Literary Festival in 2000. I will never forget the force of that staging with some of the best actors in Jamaica. That play, a work about AIDS, really ought to have a staging.
THE GLEANER: Tell me a little about your wife, and your kids?
KWAME DAWES: My wife, Lorna, and I met while we were undergraduates at UWI, Mona. We have remained best friends since then which is handy. She was born in the United Kingdom to Jamaican parents. Her father, Mr. Davis, actually taught at JC where I was a student. Lorna was a science student. She returned to England in the mid-1980s to pursue training and a career as a librarian. We then got married in Canada where I was studying.
She now works as a media specialist in one of the best high schools in the state of South Carolina. We have three children. Sena, who is twelve, Kekeli, who is eleven and a boy, Akua, who is nine. They are lovely children, and we are trying to make them into a band. Kekeli plays the drums and is working on the sax. Sena is working on her cello and the double bass while Akua plays the viola. This might be a promising thing, man (smile). They are smart children and sensitive people. We are grateful to God.
THE GLEANER: What does Calabash Festival have to teach the Christian community?
KWAME DAWES: Calabash is a festival that serves the larger community, and Christians are part of that larger community. At the same time, Christians can learn something from the volunteerism, professionalism and service that marks what we do at Calabash.
Colin, as the founder and artistic director, Justine as the producer, and I do all that we do as a service-we are not paid for this. For my own part, some of this sense of service was developed as a Christian worker with SCF/SU. Calabash helps Christian artists to think about the seriousness of their commitment to the art they claim to embrace. It helps to set some standards and to try and reach for higher standards of art. It helps them to recognise that the power of our art often rests in the skill with which we explore that art. A bad play can be used by God to save anyone.
That is because God will use anything. But when He says He can use anything He is telling us this to prevent our arrogance and hubris. He is not giving us an excuse to not work on what we are doing. He demands excellence and hard work. He demands that we do what we can to honour Him and that we give it all we have. A bad Christian play, you see, can be so distracting that it really prevents the audience from paying attention to the message. Is it not often a lot easier to listen to a good singer render a song that someone who is constantly shifting pitch and mauling the song?
THE GLEANER: How has your friendship with Colin Channer shaped your life and your Christian world view?
KWAME DAWES: Not significantly, not my Christian world view. No. Colin is a very good and dear friend. One of the good things about his friendship is that he accepts me as a Christian, he understands what is important to me and he respects this in many ways. He sees my role in his life as one shaped by the whole of me whether it is my Ghanaianess, my love of reggae music, our shared sense of humour, my love of poetry, my passion for reading fiction and so on.
As a result there is no expectation for me to change to suit the friendship, and that is one of the more important things about our friendship. At the same time he brings a great deal to my life.
It is the way of friends. And in the same way I see his role in my life as one that involves who he is. My friendship is not so much with Channer the celebrity, but with Channer the guy who sits with you on a train travelling from London to Leeds late at night singing Bob Marley songs and reminiscing about cadets, Manning Cup games, famous Champs incidents and the dreams of success as artists.
I have learnt a great deal from him. A great deal. And we have been through much together. Needless to say, it is a tremendous privilege to be friends with a writer whose work I think is doing much to give meaning and shape to Caribbean writing.
THE GLEANER: Where do you think Colin Channer is at as a spiritual being?
KWAME DAWES: That is really a question for Colin, you know. He would love to answer that.
