Stream of consciousness and the 2015 Godfrey Chin Prize for Heritage Journalism

The man said he was glad I stepped up the writing from the blog and got on to the Coil. He described one of the sentences I wrote as "nice flow, stream of consciousness" .

The blog was awarded first prize for the 2015 Godfrey Chin Prize for Heritage Journalism. The prize is managed by the Guyana Cultural Association of New York Inc. The second prize was awarded to Dr Maya Trotz for a video recording of an interview with her father Dr Ulric Trotz. The third prize was awarded to Akima Mcpherson and Stanley Greaves for the series "Conversations on Art" in the Stabroek News.

In 2014, the blog won second prize. It was an honour then to be nominated. I was surprised that the blog was nominated again this year.

 

I feel nice that the blog win a prize. I feel anxious too , even more so than last year, about the feeling that I should keep writing 'well'.  There are some people who I wish would blog more . Some of them are journalists and have stories which might not be reported formally like this one from Jomo Paul

The Coil has consumed more of the time and anxiety than this blog recently. I have not mastered the art of knowing what kinds of writings are going to be 'hits', though the blog is an opportunity to write any kind of thing regardless of who reads.

These posts got more than 150 views, though these might be because of sexy key words rather than any high quality writing.

This blog about the first Anniversary Groundings was popular.
The political posts were hits during the last year. The chatree coolie posts - this one about the fear, the denial, the

Elections 2015 - 'if i wuz a beauty queen interviewing Ms Harper' , the All Fool's Day Manifesto which was published in the Diaspora Column in the Stabroek News, the Elections against Transphobia and Homophobia and why I not hugging black people fuh./ 
The post about not voting in 2015 and making change had some controversy.

The post to the reporters who heard bheri ramsarran curse the woman who questioneed him had some views

This musing about Bad People doing Good things had a lot of views, and the one about Real Men buying Sanitary Pads for women they barely know 

There is also the post apologizing to Ashley Boodhoo and the children killed by men like me.

Two posts about books had a lot of hits - about Morning at the Office and Coolie Woman. 

Courtney Crum-Ewing's funeral resulted in "4 beer fuh 1000 and he must go now.."

There are many other things which I wish I had written about but the words did not come.

I asked two young men to do their blogs. One is a very smart graduate of economics and the other one is a market vendor pursuing a University education. Both of them said they are busy.

I felt slightly foolish thinking that I could have been doing more profitable things rather than typing words in a space which could disappear after two clicks.

However, the words themselves are probably not as important as the relief which comes from writing them and from knowing that people are reading them.