Nine works on the Guyana Prize shortlist

Arts On Sunday
With Al Creighton
Stabroek News
December 17, 2000


The Guyana Prize for Literature for 2000 is to be awarded tomorrow three years after the nation's greatest poet, Martin Carter, was buried in the Hero's Circle of the Botanical Gardens. The 1998 programme of the Prize included special tributes and memorial citations read by Rupert Roopnaraine and Anna Benjamin, to Carter and Denis Williams, (novelist/artist/archaeologist) who died earlier that year. Carter, one of the region's leading literary figures, was himself a winner of the Guyana Prize for his book Selected Poems (Demerara Publishers) in 1989. It is therefore fitting to remember him, on the occasion of the presentation of the largest literary prize in the Caribbean. In fact, one of the items at tomorrow's Awards Ceremony will be the performance of a selection from Carter's poetry set to music and arranged by Deryck Bernard.

This year the Jury selected nine works out of the 48 entries for the shortlist - five in Fiction, three in Poetry and one in Drama. It was decided this year, to publish just the one shortlist in each of the categories fiction and poetry from which the winners of the major prizes, as well as the first book prizes will come. The lists are very brief and only one play was included. Its identity was not made public by the judges, and so we are not at liberty to comment on it until after the announcement of all the winners at tomorrow's ceremony. The lists are in alphabetical order.

Fiction
David Dabydeen, A Harlot's Progress (Jonathan Cape); Sasenarine Persaud, Canada Geese and Apple Chatney (TSAR Publications); Raywat Deonandan, Sweet Like Salt Water (TSAR); Esther McIntosh, The Salt of the Earth (Minerva); and Moses Nagamootoo, Hendree's Cure (Peepal Tree Press).

Poetry
John Agard, Weblines (Bloodaxe Books); Maggie Harris, Limbolands (Mango Publishing); Janet Naidu, Winged Heart (Greenheart).

Drama
Only one play named.

Dabydeen's A Harlot's Progress is an excellent example of the author' s handling of point of view. It is an absolutely brilliant concept and a work of sophisticated imagination. Very simply put, it takes a black character (Mungo) from one of Hogarth's famous prints and tells the story of how he came to England during the time of slavery and his experiences there. But Mungo does not tell his story willingly to the biographer who tries to interview him, and Dabydeen sets up an interplay between fact/history and fiction with sometimes deliberate ambiguity, so that it is not easy to tell which, if any, of the different versions of his life story that Mungo provides, is the truth. The complex craft that Dabydeen chooses to employ makes it a very demanding book to read, but there is delight for the reader in the strength and power of the author's vision. There is also delight in his use of language which includes, in parts, a parody of the eighteenth century narrator/autobiographer and at other times an intoxicating lyricism.

Deonandan's collection of short stories, Sweet Like Salt Water, is of uneven quality but has stories which work well and is, on the whole, quite readable. What works clearly in his favour is the power of the imagination, a certain freshness and good writing skills, even if, he is, at times obviously 'clever'; but so is Dabydeen. Writing as a Guyanese from Canada, he brings something new to bear on West Indian fiction and this is a significant quality.

Esther McIntosh's The Salt of the Earth has great strength in the way it begins which engages the reader and encourages him to expect something special from the remainder of the book. Mclntosh attempts something innovative with her treatment of chronology which, while remarkable, is sometimes rather unclear in a work that may be improved by further editing. If the reader does not get all that the book' s beginning invites him to expect but does not quite deliver, he can look forward to more work from a writer with obvious talent.

Hendree's Cure by Moses Nagamootoo is very autobiographical although the title suggests that it is a tale about the idiosyncratic Hendree who is not the author. Nagamootoo seems to want to tell the story of the Madrasis in Guyana after their arrival. It is a fascinating, sometimes humorous narrative by a new writer who is entertaining and has the ability to weave history into story-telling- The book has very good moments but falls into two perhaps unintentional parts; the first focuses on the Madrasis including a character who is no doubt, the author's father, with Hendree's story coming only in the second section. The political element is strong, not surprising from a writer better known as a radical politician producing his first book. It is, in parts, just a little short on craft but is rooted in landscape, a sense of the country and atmosphere.

Sasenarine Persaud produces a work that is uneven and different stories that are mixed in quality in Canada Geese and Apple Chatney. He manages quite an effective utilization of the Indo-Caribbean sensibility in some well wrought characters whom he uses to carry messages. This adds strength to the book when some of the immigrants he depicts come alive. Unfortunately, not all of them do and some too obviously carry the author's point of view. But he achieves a blend of different idioms arising out of a writer who has moved within Guyana, Canada and Florida.

In the poetry, John Agard's Weblines is not very far removed in tone and quality from an earlier work of his, From the Devil's Pulpit with which it shares drama, great humour and an irreverent wit. This is the work of a professional which very cleverly intertwines the traditional web of the archetypal Ananci of West Indian folklore with the modern web lines of the internet. It is a work which moves between the scribal and the oral, projecting the Ananci from Africa and the Caribbean into English society. It is not just about Ananci, but about the people whom the archetype represents.

Limbolands by Maggie Harris is a very accomplished first book in which the writing is bold and very assured. Not every poem works and some might even be weak, but most make a powerful impact.

She combines concerns of immigration with insights into a woman' s feelings and attitudes. While this sometimes comes over as a kind of obvious feminism aimed at a particular audience, it helps to give the book focus and continuity. As suggested in the title, it makes very good use of the notion of limbo, someone hooked between two countries, homeland and a borrowed land. It is the position of the West Indian immigrant. Janet Naidu's collection Winged Heart is described as poems of love, power and ancestral memories. It contains a range of topics, subjects and preoccupations growing out of the experiences of another of the many Guyanese writers in Canada. Within this is the exploration of "wandering souls" set against the "shadow on the sea dam", more anchored in home yet still elusive.


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