Much more needs to be done to encourage writing Arts On Sunday With Al Creighton Stabroek News December 31, 2000 In the year 2000 the Guyana Prize for Literature included a fairly extensive series of literary events and yet both the judges and the prize winners were able to comment that a great deal is still yet to be done for the development and encouragement of writing within the country. It was noted that much more support for local writers was necessary especially in the infrastructure, in the areas of technique development, workshops and the opportunities for editing and publishing. The series of Guyana Prize events paid attention to another important area which has to do with reading and the widening of the literary experience through exposure to international writing. It started with "Olive Senior at the Tower" in which visiting writers read their work to the public in programmes staged through a collaboration between the Prize, the University of Guyana and the Hotel Tower. This association opened the newly decorated Black Magic Bar in the hotel as a venue for cultural events, continuing the interest and support for the arts demonstrated by the management under Christopher Ram. One of the leading Caribbean writers, Olive Senior of Jamaica, read from her poetry and short stories in the first programme. She introduced and presented selections from her latest collection of fiction Discerner of Hearts, her most recent volume of poetry, Gardening in the Tropics and from new collections not yet published. Audiences were exposed to the mind behind these creative works, to some background, a glimpse of the creative process and some of the circumstances that prompted the writing as well as to readings by one of those too few writers who are able to read their own work in reasonably entertaining and dramatic fashion. But Senior is internationally celebrated and in great demand in several countries for readings of her work, as she is for editing and creative writing workshops. Senior, herself a Commonwealth Writers Prize Winner (Summer Lightning, 1987), a former judge and an administrator of the Commonwealth Prize, is a member of the Jury for this year's Guyana Prize. The public events continued with the "Visiting Writers Series" at the same venue in which other Guyana Prize judges, John Gilmore and Frank Birbalsingh, gave public lectures. Gilmore is a creative writer who also read from his fiction (for which he is better known) and his poetry as a part of the "Olive Senior at the Tower" programme and gave his lecture on a subject from the field in which he has made his name as a published author. He analyzed the work of Francis Williams, the first black poet of the British Americas, setting out the background to poetry and scholarship in the West Indies in the eighteenth century. His book on that subject is The Poetics of Empire: James Granger's 'The Sugarcane' (1764). Professor Birbalsingh focused the writing of West Indians and Guyanese of East Indian origin in both the selections he read in the first programme and his public lecture. He read from Jahaji, the collection of short stories he has edited and spoke about the fictional representations of Indo- Guyanese society during the Burnham era as presented by selected Guyanese novelists. This seemingly unusual alliance between bars and literature as has surfaced in Georgetown at the Black Magic is not unprecedented. It has been a feature of fashionable and not so up-market society for some time in New York, England and Europe. In mainstream literature it has been fairly common on university campuses and elsewhere and has been a major feature at the annual Poetry International Forum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It is now finding fashion in Georgetown at the Tower. The Black Magic room was also the venue for recent cultural events to mark an anniversary of Alliance Francaise. Olive Senior also had a long, lively session with students of the English Department on the Turkeyen campus of the University, chaired by Adeola James, and Gilmore lectured to a class studying Eliot and dramatic literature. Then, in an attempt to move Guyana Prize activities out of Georgetown, both Senior and Gilmore gave lectures to the first year students of Fiction at the new Berbice Campus of the University. This was extended to the first public social event of the campus when Guyana Prize Winner, David Dabydeen gave a public lecture and readings from his work at Tain in a session attended by students, staff and members of the wider community. A Special Judges' Award For the third time since the Guyana Prize began, a Special Judges' Award was presented. The first was to Rooplall Monar for Backdam People and Koker while the second went to Beryl Gilroy for Stedman and Joanna. This time the award was of a different nature and was a part of the Prize's recognition of contributions to local writing. Roopnandan Singh had a novel, Roll Play on the Fiction shortlist in 1998 and his entry in 2000, Shadow in the Dark, prompted the judges to comment on the development of the local Guyanese novel. Singh has written a number of popular novels such as Eve and Wild Maami which have the potential to evolve into an industry. Then his work achieved more highly regarded literary qualities with Roll Play (especially). But Singh also made very valuable contribution in the area of publishing in a climate in Guyana in which it is extremely difficult for local writers to get work published. It is very costly and there are no opportunities for professional editing. Singh has published his own work as well as two books of fiction by Monar, Ramsingh Street and Tormented Wives. That was not all. He has been a leader of the local writing community with the establishment of the Guyana Association of Writers and Artists; he has edited (along with Monar) and published anthologies of work by these and other writers, Mosaic and Eternal Quest and organized public readings which have served as a source of encouragement for new writers and kept literature alive in the public domain. For this contribution, Roopnandan Singh was recognized by the Guyana Prize. Follow the goings-on in Guyana in Guyana Today