On 10th February, at the National Cultural Centre, the Guyana Prize for Literature was presented at the Awards Ceremony, the marquee event of the Guyana Prize for Literature Literary Festival 2023. The Guyana Prize had suffered a six-year hiatus, having been set aside during the office of the previous administration, and its resuscitation should be viewed as a watershed moment for the arts in this country.
At a press conference on 6th September, 2022, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, Charles Ramson announced plans for the return of the Guyana Prize for Literature, emphasising that it was a directive from President Irfaan Ali. The minister stated that changes would include making it an annual event, as well as future plans for a festival and a symposium across the country. Other significant modifications to the Prize announced were the additions of a non-fiction category and a youth category with separate prizes for males and females, a publication award of $400,000 for winners and a monetary prize of $600,000 for the Best First Book. The Call for Submissions media advertisement declared that all submissions for the Guyana Prize for Literature 2022 had to be made by midnight of the 4th November, 2022.
Apart from the Awards Ceremony, other events, most of which were staged at Castellani House, included workshops on the craft of writing poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction, and one specifically for young writers. Readings by Guyana Prize winners and four renowned international writers, the National Poetry Slam finals, a book exhibition on Guyanese authors mounted by the University of Guyana and the annual Edgar Mittelholzer and Martin Carter Distinguished Memorial lectures, were also on the rather lengthy agenda. A line-up of the highest calibre of academia/ master writers was invited to conduct the workshops and deliver the lectures including UWI Professor Ian Robertson (workshop for young writers), Professor Stephanos Stephanides (poetry/Martin Carter lecture), former UWI Department Head and playwright Rawle Gibbons (writing plays), Cambridge Fellow Professor David Dabydeen (non-fiction), literary and arts critic Professor Evelyn O’Callaghan (poetry/Edgar Mittelholzer lecture), and Professor Funso Aiyejina, past winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa) (fiction).
The addition of the youth categories in the two genres of poetry and fiction are worthy of note. The dire need to encourage our youth to read and enhance their literary skills cannot be stressed enough. Everyday encounters with this generation, reveal that they face multiple challenges with basic reading and writing, and are stark reminders of this burgeoning problem. The storytelling exercise and writing workshops conducted at the festival should be replicated to reach as wide a pool of students as possible. The National Poetry Slam Finals, which was definitely a hit with the younger generation, is a useful vehicle to encourage awareness of the arts.
The festival concluded with the staging of the play Sauda, which won the Guyana Prize for Drama in 2012 and was penned by playwright Mosa Telford, at the National Culture Centre. This addition will certainly serve to broaden the scope of the festival. In a welcome move, the Department of Culture has taken the initiative to annually fund the production costs of four plays which have won the Guyana Prize. Local drama groups can express an interest in producing one of the plays, and if selected to stage the play, the group will be entitled to the box office ticket sales. With this incentive, it is hoped that interest in, and the standard of drama in the country will be elevated.
On the downside, it seemed that the general public was mostly unaware of the wealth of literary talent available to them between February 10th and 12th. Leading up to the Literary Festival, few people outside of the arts circle, even knew that it was approaching. Scouring the print media for information would have spawned few offerings, apart from Al Creighton’s (who was involved with the festival) Arts on Sunday column, “Guyana Prize festival next weekend offers literary smorgasbord” published on 5th February. Drama Prize winner and SN Sunday columnist Rae Wiltshire noted this lack of public information in his most recent article, “As regards the festival events, there was need for proper advertising. There was a flyer circulating but that was not enough. Many people were unaware of the literature festival. The list of activities and the shortlist for the Guyana Prize were mainly disseminated via WhatsApp groups the day before the prize-giving ceremony. There was no shortlist of candidates in the media for the Guyana Prize for Literature.” Was the failure to spread the word of the festival a deliberate ploy to downplay the event, or just plain incompetence? One way or another, this aspect of the event needs to be carefully reviewed before the next festival.
It is commendable to expand the festival with the additions of the staging of one of the Best Drama plays, the National Poetry Slam Finals, and the story telling and workshop sessions aimed at the younger generation, but were too many activities being squeezed into too short a timeframe? Perhaps the festival might be better managed over a four or five-day period, which would give persons the opportunity to participate in more events. The idea of dovetailing the festival onto the Mashramani calendar is also an excellent one, and with the proper planning and promotion one can only speculate as to the extent which this event could grow.
Whilst kudos are in order for reviving the Guyana Prize and staging the Literary Festival, there are other major issues that need to be addressed. The ministry has proposed that the Guyana Prize become an annual event as opposed to the biennial format which it had followed from its inception. As a very small nation, with an even smaller number of persons devoted to writing, there should be concerns with regard to sustaining the high standard of output, if the prize is to retain its international standing. Hosting the Literary Festival annually should be encouraged, but perhaps the idea of awarding the Guyana Prize on an annual basis should be put on hold for the time being.
The University of Guyana had been the custodian of the Guyana Prize from its inception. The prize has been nurtured and modified over time under its watch, undoubtedly with the usual problems that attend all things of this nature. Why shift it now to the auspices of a ministry? The long-term implied political ramifications do not augur well for the future independence of the Guyana Prize.
