Several weeks ago, I was invited to meet some students who had volunteered to serve as tutors for the recently established writing centre at the Belmopan campus of the University of Belize. It was an opportunity to engage intellectually with students at the University in a way that I have not done since being appointed its President in 2011. During the ensuing conversation I suggested to the student-tutors that it is important to think about the complexity of writing as a craft and as a vocation.
As the conversation evolved, I encouraged the students to explore the multiple images recorded in the line – and hair was a mass of fire! – from Martin Carter’s powerfully evocative poem Black Friday 1962. That poem captures the emotional intensity of a riot that has proven to be a watershed in modern Guyanese and Caribbean political life.