By Vidyaratha Kissoon
Vidyaratha Kissoon lives and works in Guyana. This article evolved from one of his blogs at https://churchroadman.blogspot.com
Saturday afternoon of the festival
Castellani House was the main venue for the Guyana Prize Literary Festival which was held from Friday 10 February, 2023 to 12 February, 2023. The Festival was held around the awarding of the Guyana Prize for Literature.
People are sitting in about half of the seats arranged near the beautiful paintings. The paintings are from the National Collection.
Professor Stephanos Stephanides delivered the Martin Carter lecture. He talked about working in Guyana, about going to Blairmont to be involved in Kali Mai puja and about Martin Carter encouraging his poetry. He is from Cyprus, more violently divided (fractured) than Guyana. He talked about the Mediterranean and Caribbean. He talked about “reverse gaze” and deconstructed Greek and Sanskrit words and terms like ‘theory.’ He referred to the dilemma of boundaries and nation states especially when people are moving or are moved or displaced. And he explained “Memory Fiction”.
He said that when asked for his bio for the lecture, he told the moderator, Professor David Dabydeen, “‘you are a fiction writer… go on, write something and invent me…”
I understood it all when listening but have forgotten some stuff as I did not make notes and the Ministry of Culture has so far not made the lecture public.
The moderator had to indicate ‘time’ – as it is with festivals, everything is tightly packed and squeezed into a few days – but there was space for interesting questions and answers around language, and other things related to writing in Guyana.
Professor Stephanos Stephanides indicated that he donated his book ‘The Wind under my Lips’ to the University of Guyana Library. The UG Library exhibited books and manuscripts which had been shortlisted and otherwise associated with the Guyana Prize. The exhibition also included displays of some of the books by Wilson Harris and Edgar Mittelholzer which the UG Library holds.The exhibition was part of the ‘Guyana Literary Festival’.
However, the National Library and other book institutions were notably absent from the ‘Guyana Literary Festival’.
A young writer and reader said the event felt as if a box had been checked on the Government’s part, where money was spent to demonstrate an interest in culture from one subject Minister, rather than say an entire National Assembly of political parties representing people across Guyana. In other words, a PPP, Georgetown Literary Festival rather than a Guyana Literary Festival.
Sunday morning of the literary festival
I see a woman going to mandir as I go to Castellani House to open some of the books which we hear about but do not have easy access to read.
The big event the night before – the slam poetry competition- was apparently successful, well attended and going early into the morning. You could tell the success from the plastic bottles and paper and plastic containers on the grass around the beautiful white chairs which are slightly displaced in the Castellani House grounds.
There seems to be less trees and green lawn in the grounds than the last time I visited, making way for more paving and concrete. Prosperity and development in Guyana seem to be connected to the concreting and paving and removal of plants and trees. One gets no sense that greenery will be sustained or replaced.
Does the Dubai vision of Guyana include desertification?
Some of the books in the University’s Mittelholzer collection have been preserved from the older libraries in Georgetown. It is a privilege to pick up the books, browse them even while feeling a bit nervous about mishandling the yellowed pages on some of them.
One of the attendants said ‘we do not get a chance to exhibit often, there are not many book events’. There was an event a long time ago when Stanley Greaves exhibited his paintings related to Wilson Harris’ work. It would have been nice to browse the Wilson Harris books then too, even if the writing is difficult to understand.
One of the poems in Stephanides’ text, Wind Under My Lips, was written in Guyana, and is dedicated to Kali Mai. The poem, and location of writing – Berbice, Guyana – are translated into Greek.
Guyana in Greek letters.
Guyana has been ‘greek’ to many of us who have tried to find ways of understanding and living and not despairing.
The exhibition included some of the other collections of poems from people associated with Guyana. I am not a poems man but I opened Bones by Mahadai Das as I think of the young Guyanese of Indian and other origins who are writing poetry and have not heard of Mahadai Das.
One of the poems is ‘for Anna Karenina,’ about suicide. The poem’s words invoke graphic images. In his poem about Old Kaie and Kaieteur, A. J. Seymour had also invoked graphic images of death by suicide. Pauline Melville is another Guyana Prize winner. She has two short stories in her latest collection, The Master of Chaos and other Fables, connected to characters who die by suicide. And in the Edgar Mittelholzer collection is ‘the Wounded and the Worried,’ in which the characters discuss attempting suicide and dealing with despair.
Mittlelholzer’s ability to write about people in locations including the Berbice River, an office in Trinidad and Tobago, an English village and a country house, has not been demonstrated by any other writer who was born here.
Edgar Mittelholzer died by suicide.
There is a poems collection by one of my Facebook friends, who I do not really know. Trinidadian-Bahamian poet Christian Campbell’s Running Dusk includes a poem Iguana which invokes Guyana.
It is nice to see Guyana from the Cypriot – in Greek – and from the Trinidadian-Bahamian.
The exhibition from the UG Library shows that most of the writing about Guyana seems to be from the diaspora. Diaspora writers often write – apparently beautifully- about a place which I do not recognise but that is the nature of illusion and reality and so on. The tourism and Government supporters also write beautifully about a place which I do not know.
Fictions not only in memory.
The exhibition included the Guyana Prize submissions by authors from the Caribbean whose later works we have discussed in our book club. Authors from the Caribbean who had submitted to the Caribbean and Commonwealth categories of the earlier manifestations of the Guyana Prize for Literature and who went on to write more and win other prizes.
Desmond Hoyte must have had some kind of Burnhamite grand vision of Guyana being an active facilitator and nurturer of writing from the Caribbean and Commonwealth and maybe the world, and at a time when Guyana was poorer than we are now (One of the memories which is not fiction is that Desmond Hoyte of the PNC was President when the Guyana Prize for Literature was conceptualised).
It was also under Desmond Hoyte’s administration that Iwokrama was created, to contribute to global efforts at sustainable living when prosperity and development were emerging as threats to the environment.
Now of course, oil is de ting in Guyana, and for many, prosperity in Guyana is deeply connected to the barrels of oil and the destruction of the environment, rather than the number of poems, books, art works and other creative works which could sustain us.
I am not a poems man, though later on that same Sunday I sit in the Ram Ayodhya Mandir in Hope, ECD, on land made sacred by ‘people from India,’ and we sing some of the poems brought by the ancestors from India.
The session seems far away from Castellani House, the Guyana Prize for Literature and the literary festival in Georgetown.
But when we sing the jogiya, I remember the surprise at seeing one in Rajiv Mohabir’s chap book na mash me bone – “adha roti dherh karaila, sab jogi milke khanna” . This collection is a translation of Indian origin ‘folk’ songs. Rajiv Mohabir had submitted two of his other works to the Guyana Prize.
Festivals are supposed to be celebrations and help to bring people together. It would be nice if the Government used the money to decentralise the ‘Guyana Prize Literary’ Festival to include writers and readers from all over the country; and to include the National Library, the book sellers, the book clubs, the groups of writers and creatives. And to have it over a longer period. Kind of like Christmas.
Tuesday after the festival
Vanda Radzik and Professor Stephanos Stephanides invited poets to a workshop at Moray House. They are kind enough to include people like me who don’t really do poems or poetry but are keen to learn. Most of the poets who come are young.
The workshop participants shared poems and discussed things like the use of creolese, cuss words, rhyming, literal vs abstract representation and the need for editing. Their poetry deals with a variety of topics including trafficking in persons, inflation, love and a few things which I did not get.
One young poet, Nikhil Sankar, shared his poem Sunrise, which he wrote about connecting to his origins in Indian indentureship. The first line invoked Mahadai (Das). Professor Stephanides and Vanda Radzik described their connection to Mahadai Das. Another member of the audience also shared her memories of Mahadai Das. I felt a deep emotion as the experiences were shared , and it seemed that there was a slight surprise that the calling of a name could invoke such emotion.
There was a generosity in that inter-generational interaction which made a dead poet come alive for the young poets. There was another generosity in how the older people used their power and privilege not to decide what becomes literature and who is worthy of becoming a writer, but rather to encourage and to nurture the expressions and to celebrate the efforts of the poets.
If the Guyana Prize Literary Festival is ever owned by the people of Guyana, rather than the Government , hopefully there will be more interactions across differences, in different places in Guyana and with all of the people who like, and even do not like, to read and write.