In December, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports awarded Jemima Chottu for her poem “Guyana the Fighter”, a spoken-word piece that she penned following the arrival of the pandemic last year.
That, coupled with the effects of Guyana’s general elections, made last year far from normal and Guyanese putting in more than double the effort to find stability in their lives. This motivated Jemima to pen the piece on the events and of a Guyana that never gives up. The poem was featured on the National Communications Network for World Poetry Day, celebrated on March 21.
Jemima was sexually abused when she was only seven years old, and her abuser was a woman. Instead of letting that tragic experience take her on a downward spiral like many other abused women or letting it remain a secret, Jemima channelled the pain into writing poetry. She was 12 years old when she found this way of expressing herself and poured her heart out through her pen.