Clik here to view.
A sexual culture of justice
“Sexual citizenship” used to be my favourite big-word. I put it in the title of my op-ed the people in the Commonwealth published. The piece that got Australian Judge Kirby’s knickers in a twist.The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Buying music
Vaughnette Bigford, our local vocal goddess, has a new CD where, says Cathy Shepherd’s Thursday review, she “reinterprets 11 songs from the Trinidad and Tobago calypso, pop, soca and soul songbooks,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pontius Pilate held a referendum
I deeply admire the spirit of the people of Guyana, a nation that has led the Caribbean on many social policy and protection issues, including ones related to sexuality. So I was puzzled when a young...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Should a Good Column Do?
I had an unknowing exchange with a news editor recently, someone I have a relationship with but did not know had returned to the newsroom. I was whining about a sensationalistic story I wanted to die...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Driving impatiently
Last week the Attorney General moved a 49-clause bill that substantially overhauls the 1935 Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act. The legislation aims to establish some 100 modern driving offences and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My two cents
Poetry filled up NAPA last month-end. Fuller than the grandstand for Dimanche Gras. Grandmothers. A tassa section. A screaming posse from Tobago. $200-a-ticket poetry.Now the biggest single event of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hungry For More Poetry Slam
In an expressive culture like ours, so firmly rooted in piercing oral irony and spontaneous joking—one that produces incredible, unpolished sensations like Rankin Kia Boss—it’s a shame our stage comedy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old people children
People shouldn’t only end up in this column only when I sing a calypso on them. Whether it’s Cydelle Crosby, Collis Duranty, Joan Dayal, Vaughnette Bigford, Marlon Bascombe, Joyce Pierre, Nickolai...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Find me an honest lawyer
I’m probably not an innocent observer of the ongoing high drama in the judiciary cascading from the most recent appointments to the high court bench. But let me pretend to be one—and not just a lazy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SOMEBODY’S 17-YEAR-OLD SON
Somebody’s 17-year-old son hailed me up some time ago. On one of the popular gay hookup/dating sites. They restrict membership to people over 18. He seemed a really normal young man, so far as I can...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Black lives matter
Attillah Springer had the quote of the week.It broke through what seemed a national competition for the most offensive or inane public comment on missionary Roman Catholic priest Father Clyde Harvey...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BLACK MEN’S CHOICES
I’ve been writing about Black men and boys a lot.One, who walked into a room with several others seven years ago saying they wanted to be LGBT allies, told me he wants to write a newspaper column. So,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Licks like MPs
Dearest Jenny: Vee posted on Facebook last week. And I quickly switched on the flatscreen. To Parliament TV. There you were. Dressed to the nines on Channel 11, as always. In a lovely, lacy African...
View ArticleClik here to view.
You are my future
To the 12- and 13-year-olds who didn’t pass for “prestige schools” last week, and to those who love and parent them:You are the people who matter to me most right now. And to a lot of other people I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
THE FUTURE: LOOK IN THEIR SCHOOLBAGS
My last column couldn’t fit all the inspiring post-SEA messages for families with children bound for the nation’s lowest-ranked secondary schools that I received from a generation of high achievers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
So what’s in a name anyway?
Last week the Port-of-Spain City Council moved to implement a clever proposal at least two years old to make Queen St pay tribute to 1977 Miss Universe “Penny” Commissiong. Clever in that the street...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I Want a Senator So...
There were some fascinating comments by Government parliamentarians this week in Antigua.It’s a place I have in-laws, but have only set foot in the airport. Taking LIAT to Dominica, you literally fly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brendan Bain and the price of reputation
Brendan Bain won a pyrrhic victory in Jamaican court against the University of the West Indies. He got three months salary. And UWI had breached his freedom of expression.Driving through downtown...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Telling Small Stories
That, I’ve concluded, is what I do best here. Small stories that I think in the telling become enlarged. Today I wanted to tell the story of a family, about how the US Embassy in Port-of-Spain denied a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
IMAGINING LEAVING
“I see a more visible gay life and I know fellow Trinis who are out in one way or another—something I couldn’t say before I left for Canada all those years ago. In a way, I envy that they have stayed...
View Article
