“I guess I can be described as a rolling stone, except that, unlike the proverbial stone, I have gathered moss,” says Patrick George, the writer of “The Awakening.”
George, 67, says the story was inspired by a dream of almost dying after a plane crash several years ago, following which he had his own literal “awakening.”
George, who says that he has always had a love for reading, has been writing for almost five decades. He began at age 19 after the devastating effect of the loss of his grandmother, which resulted in him not leaving home for an extended period. He continued writing after processing the loss.
During the early 1970s, he says, he managed to get a few of his poems published in the Sunday Argosy newspaper, and as part of a drama group read poems and performed in skits at places like the Green Shrimp nightclub and the Pegasus Hotel’s Lotus lounge.
According to George, he started work at age 16 and held jobs intermittently for a few years as a land survey crew worker, office assistant, ship chipper and painter in a dockyard, and an educational books and records salesman.
In the late seventies, after becoming a father, he says he worked for four years at the then Guyana Electricity Corporation (now GPL) Kingston Power Station as a construction worker on its massive boiler and turbine rehabilitation project. At the end of that project, he became a permanent worker in the Turbine Generation department and worked his way up the ranks as Auxiliary Plant Operator, Turbine Operator, Boiler Operator, Unit Operator, Control Room Operator, Assistant Charge Engineer and Charge Engineer. He spent a total of 21 years at the company.
In 2000, George says he resigned from GPL and went to live in Botswana. He also used the move to visit a number of African countries, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. He says he was in Africa for six years, then spent six months in the US, visited England and returned to Guyana.
George has one published book of poems and has also had poems and short stories published in the Guyana Annual, as well as poems in the Anthology of Contemporary Guyanese Verse. He has also written a few short plays, one of which—‘The Stuff of Dreams’—won second prize in a 1991 Theatre Company competition.
From since he began until now, George says he has always considered himself a writer and a poet “above anything else,” except for his duties as a father to his five children. “Being a father takes top spot,” he says.
