Commonwealth Writers Prize: 2003 winners

Commonwealth Writers Prize: 2003 winners
Arts on Sunday
by Al Creighton
Stabroek News
June 8, 2003

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Austin Clarke, a writer from the Caribbean and Canada, is the winner of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize. He received the Best Book Award for his novel The Polished Hoe, published in Toronto by Thomas Allen and Kingston, Jamaica by Ian Randle Publishers, at a gala awards dinner in Calgary, Canada earlier this month.

Clarke was born in Barbados (where he is known as ‘Tom’) in 1934 but has lived in Canada since 1955. He is known for his short stories and a few well-known novels rooted in the Caribbean, and in Barbados in particular, such as Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack and now The Polished Hoe set in ‘Bimshire,’ a thin disguise for the colonial Barbadian plantation society of 1950; virtually the same setting as Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin. For a long time he wrote a column in Barbadian Creole in one of the daily newspapers in Barbados. When Guyanese poet Mark McWatt won the Guyana Prize in 1994, Tom Clarke commented on it in a satirical piece in his column, criticizing Barbados for not having anything to match the Guyana Prize.

The Commonwealth Foundation describes him as “an established and well respected writer on the Canadian literary landscape” declaring that “this prize confirms his international stature.” He won two Canadian prizes: the 2002 Giller Prize for Canadian fiction and the 2003 Trillium Prize. The Polished Hoe was sent on its way to Calgary two months ago when it was declared Best Book in the Caribbean and Canada Region by the Commonwealth Prize Judges, as the news release explained:

“An international judging panel meeting in Vancouver, Canada, has announced the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize Award for the region. The Jury members were Al Creighton of the University of Guyana, Chelva Kanaganayakam of the University of Toronto and Margery Fee of the University of British Columbia.”

Then at the next stage in Calgary, Clarke won the overall Commonwealth Prize from three other major fiction writers who were the 2003 winners in their respective regions: The Other Side of Silence (Secker and Warburg) by Andre Brink of South Africa, Spies (Faber and Faber) by Michael Frayn of the UK, and Of a Boy (Viking) [published as What the Birds See in UK and USA] by Sonya Hartnet of Australia.

The following is the citation given by Dionne Brand, famous Canadian author who was Chairman at the gala awards.

The citation for the winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize Book 2003, Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe:

Beautifully drawn, an elegantly rendered tour de force, The Polished Hoe is a wide ranging epic in which the experience of several generations of women is masterfully realized. Beginning in a chilling statement made to a policeman after a murder, a woman’s voice, speaking in the shadowy reaches of a plantation house in the 1950s slowly uncovers layers of disturbing history. But Mary-Mathilde is more than protagonist, she is a haunting which leaps outside the pages of the novel and indicts empires of colonialism and masculinity; she is the unsettled presence, the un-beheld, the unheld, the fetished, unloved. In her singular and final act of self narration her mind is dangerous, her hand ultimately and inexorably nightmarish. The Polished Hoe is a richly crafted novel which eludes, defies categories; it is variously wistful and agonizing, ironic and sensual; a tragic tale, relentlessly wrought.

This is probably the most earth-shaking book to have come out of Canada for the year, and the waves it has caused in the Caribbean in particular are stronger than the Labrador currents. It has shaken up some readers because of its length, its epic proportions and rambling style, which test the endurance and patience of many; some remark at its basic sexuality, while several others suspect it on the grounds of its gender politics. On a recent launching tour of Barbados made by publisher Ian Randle and the author, one strident comment was that the Bimshire that the book depicts no longer exists, though that is debatable. It might be the most contentious Barbadian-Canadian novel, but the controversy that it has generated has not prevented it from being the most decorated.

Despite all that, Clarke is still claimed by his former home - Barbados - though the academy in Canada lists him as Canadian. In his own words at the end of his Acceptance Speech in Calgary, he locates himself in the Commonwealth, claiming that the Prize “shall remain in my mind and my memory as the highlight of my writing career - a double-barrelled acclamation of acceptance of my dual nationalism - Canadian and Caribbean.”

Winners from the Caribbean in previous Commonwealth Prizes are Earl Lovelace (Trinidad), Olive Senior (Jamaica), Robert Antoni (Trinidad) and Pauline Melville (Guyana); while regional winners have included V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad) and Erna Brodber (Jamaica). Previously, when it used to be the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, it was won by David Dabydeen of Guyana and Dennis Scott of Jamaica.

Meanwhile, following the annual tradition of the Common-wealth Prize, arrangements have been made for Austin Clarke to be introduced to the Head of the Commonwealth, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, at Buckingham Palace.

The 2003 winner of the Best First Book for the Caribbean and Canada is Paulo da Costa for The Scent of a Lie (Ekstasis). Da Costa was declared winner by Fee, Kanaganayakam and Creighton after another controversy in which the author first chosen as the winner withdrew. A short story collection, A Place to Hide (Peepal Tree) by Kwame Dawes of Jamaica was the jury’s first choice. Da Costa was born in Angola and raised in Portugal but is a Canadian citizen living in Alberta. The other Regional First Book Winners were Waiting for an Angel (Hamilton) by Helon Habila of Nigeria, The Rice Mother (Sceptre) by Rani Manicka of Malaysia and Haweswater (Faber and Faber) by Sarah Hall of the UK. The overall winner is Sarah Hall.

The citation for the winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for the Best First Book 2003, Sarah Hall’s Haweswater:

Tender in its evocation, fiercely patient in the sculpture of its lines, Haweswater lifts the ordinary to the mythic. The construction of a dam in Westmoreland, England and the devastation of the countryside is vividly brought to life, not simply mourned here but keenly and archingly described. Here is a finely calibrated, tunefully lyric prose, its register the same as water, its pitch at the frequency of the heart. Firmly rooted in its time and place but transcending both, Haweswater is an astonishing blend of the documentary and the magic. Tightly written and immaculately composed, at home in its 1930s idiom this is an ambitious and stunning work of reinvention.