Arts on Sunday

Mrs Quasimodo’s Divorce (an excerpt)                   . . . We lived in the Cathedral grounds.

A lively and valuable gift for the season and a rousing way to end a year whose flame was somewhat dampened by a prolonged pandemic, is a blast of folk songs.

The study of indentureship since its establishment in British Guiana in 1838 has two historical landmarks.

They are here again. Despite the strictures of COVID-19, masquerade bands have already begun to appear on the streets of Georgetown for the 2020 Christmas season.

For Don Drummond                 Dem say him born with a caul, a not quite opaque white veil through which he visioned only he knew   At birth dem suppose to bury it under some special tree.

Attunement of the Senses             Who has an eye for Nature’s beauteous forms And lends an ear to trap her melody, Will see the rose a sudden scarlet blush When shyly bursting forth in dewy morn; Observe the riotous splash of colour spilled Across the palest blue of Heaven’s dome; Will harken to the noise of kneeling grass Which furious, fitful winds keep trampling o’er; Will hear the symphony of weeping skies Euphoniously played on tresses green; Will smell the dampness of the rain-scoured earth And deep inhale the fragrance of its flowers; Will taste the freshness of the laughing brook And smack the lips in sheer delight of being; Will feel a oneness with Divinity, Dynamic; indivisible; serene All these and more perceived and understood Is proof .

Albion Wilds Dear Solitude! Where peace and concord dwell, Whose smiling beauties quell The soul’s inquietude.

Bill Rogers is still a household name here so many decades after he was active in show business, musical recordings and popular entertainment in Guyana, the Caribbean, the USA and the UK.

Transfiguration In the ceremony of White The cyclamen girl would answer To her name   Aphrodite!

2020 has been dedicated to the commemoration of 100 years since the termination of the system of indentureship in the Caribbean.

There were two very important items of interest to literature in the news over the last fortnight. 

Though there are those who create and perform for the love of it, because it is a hobby, or because they are in an environment where professional theatre is not developed, theatre around the world today is big business.

(Michael Jordan, Kamarang, Georgetown, published by Michael Jordan, 2017; with illustrations by Harold Bascom; 500pp.)

Throughout history, tales of the Indies were often as romantic and sensationally exotic in appeal as they were superficial, but today playwrights produce work of more depth.

During September, celebrated as the Indigenous Heritage month in Guyana, we are paying another visit to the unfathomable depths of Guyanese Amerindian literature. 

III     There is a drum upon the plains of Maita Outside the cavern where he lived – a stone Hollowed to beat the mutter of the thunder Moving within the deep Brazilian sky.

The role of Oliver Samuels in Jamaican theatre and his influence on Caribbean theatre are worth noting.

Caribbean theatre began to experience very fundamental changes, formal developments, diversification, and other advancements from the end of the 1960s and through the 1970s.

Poetry Shimmering cloth, green and gold, in two hours she knits a scarf, every now and then she shows me her work unfolding perfectly, every movement poised and deft.

The Song of the Banana Man                                   Touris, white man, wipin his face, Met me in Golden Grove market place.