Arnold Itwaru and diversity in contemporary Guyanese literature

Arnold Itwaru

                             arrival                                          

 

this is the place

mark its name

the streets you must learn to remember

 

there are special songs here

they do not sing of you

in them you do not exist

but to exist you must learn to love them

you must believe them when they say

there are no sacrificial lambs here

 

the houses are warm

there’s bread there’s wine

 

bless yourself

you have arrived

 

                listen

keys                       rattle

locks                      click

doors                    slam

                silence

 

 

roomer

 

here I cower

from the day’s

drain and glare

a shadow

a wrinkled skin

cover me gently

night’s linen

prepare me

prepare me

 

                       separate ways

 

stranger in the sunset

I long to know you

To touch the poem of your presence

To dispel this loneliness

But the sun darkens

And we go our separate ways

 

                                Arnold Itwaru

 

These selected poems by Guyanese writer and academic Arnold Itwaru make statements about contemporary Guyanese literature and about Itwaru’s contribution to it.

They appear in the anthology Concert of Voices edited by Guyanese literary critic and academic Victor Ramraj in a collection that he further subtitled “An Anthology of World Writing in English”.  We have noticed this publication before, referencing the way the anthologist draws together in one volume a sample of world literature that shows something of various national literatures. The selections make statements about literatures in English, although, with no surprise, it is predominantly of the Commonwealth and North America. 

In the case of Itwaru, it is Guyanese poetry.  Dr Arnold Harrichand Itwaru was born in British Guiana and moved to Canada in 1969. He studied at York University and became the Programme Director for Caribbean Studies at the University of Toronto. Apart from non-fiction writing about the Canadian experience, he has published collections of poetry, which include Entombed Survivals (1987) and Body Rights: Beyond the Darkening  (Tsar Press, 1991). The outlook in the poems of the latter is very much what is reflected in “arrival”, “roomer” and “separate ways” reproduced above.