Ian on Sunday

Today marks the 100th birth anniversary of A J Seymour, Guyana’s greatest man of letters.

Some weeks ago I enquired what had been gained by small and vulnerable countries like ours in the recently concluded World Trade Organisation deal.

Who can doubt that in Guyana in 2014 clenched fists of the past must be opened so that hands can reach out across embattled ground for the good of the nation.

Writing a column on the celebration of Christmas is a little like trying to illustrate the scope and scale of Shakespeare with one or two quotations; you can succeed about as well as the man who tried describing the marvellous cathedral at Chartres by showing a carved stone and single piece of stained glass as specimens of the building’s majesty.

The World Trade Organisation announced recently that a deal has been reached to which all 159 member countries have given their assent.

It is strange how the words sport, game, play, which in the dictionaries are associated with fun and frolic, have more and more lost their original meanings.

I find it hard to accept that old age has come upon me.

Intermittently through the year, and especially during memorable times up the immense and soul-redeeming Essequibo, I like to read Shelley – as we all should do from time to time since he is pre-eminently the poet of hope.

The spirit grows weary with the weight of woe in the world at large and here at home.

By what values should we strive to live in order to achieve a community in which differences are accommodated, a community where there is diversity of discourse but a recognition of the common good regardless of politics, religion, race and personal beliefs?

My heart hurts to see the sad and deteriorating state of the Guyana sugar industry.

If you think about it carefully it seems impossible to reconcile two things which most people would very much like to believe – one, that they enjoy free will and in some ultimate sense are masters of their fate, and, two, that the God of all creation is omnipotent and has a master plan for us all.

The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins – glancing and incandescent – is some of the most extraordinary to be found in English.

Bitter party political animosity divides the nation and holds back united efforts to solve the multitude of problems which need our combined human resources. 

Seamus Heaney, great Irish poet and Nobel Laureate, died last month aged 74.

It is an honour to have received in the awards for 2012 a Guyana Prize for Literature for my latest book of poetry, The Comfort of All Things, published by the Moray House Trust.

My tutor at Cambridge, Professor Nick Hammond, authority on the history of ancient Macedonia and on the life of Alexander the Great, used to coach me on what he called “exercises of the mind.”

One might have thought that as time passes the heart might harden as arteries harden and the sense of loss grow less acute as the five familiar senses most certainly tend to do.

In the intense, ongoing debate about the Amaila Falls Hydro Electric Project I confess to finding myself mystified.

Famous poems have been written on the deaths of those who have meant more than life itself to the poet.