Global Voices Online

St. Lucia's Caribbean Book Blog thinks that mobile banking might just be “that glimmer of hope” that helps bridge the economic gap in the region.

“In the Caribbean you’re more likely to wake up one day in summer and find it snowing than find a writer or poet who believes that the way to get ahead in the book trade and the literary field is to look to the governments for support”: St. Lucia-based Caribbean Book Blog takes a look at the state of the regional publishing industry.

Repeating Islands features Leïla Bizet and her bèlè, “a traditional folk dance practiced on islands like Dominica, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, and Martinique; hailing from the days of slavery, it has become a time-honored symbol of African legacy.”

The threat of rising sea levels is of concern to CARICOM [the 15-nation Caribbean community]. Repeating Islands explains.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Abeni reports, along with Repeating Islands, that come this October, “an inter island ferry service based in Grenada will be officially launched”, adding: “Given our disgust with LIAT [a regional air carrier] it should be interesting to see the response.”

“My thesis is that Caribbean governments today are run exactly like the plantations of old, the only difference being that there are fewer white people cracking whips; the overseers have taken over the Great House”: Barbados-based Trinidadian blogger B.C. Pires builds on the late Lloyd Best's Theory of Plantation Economy.

Guyanese blogger Imran Khan draws attention to the curious circumstances surrounding the death of a toddler in St. Lucia.

As St. Lucian Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott withdraws from the race for Oxford Professor of Poetry, Repeating Islands posts an update: “The nearly unanimous response…from newspaper reporters, commentators, and bloggers has been one of regret and of condemnation of the tactics that pushed him to that decision.”

Repeating Islands reports that St. Lucian Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott “has withdrawn his candidacy for the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry citing a smear campaign designed to sully his reputation.”