The Guyana Annual 2004-2005 looks backwards and forwards
Arts with Al Creighton
Stabroek News
January 1, 2005
The month of January has returned, looking back at the year 2004 that has just ended while opening up the very broad gate to the new year 2005. This recalls January's very significant association with Janus, Roman god of the two faces, one looking back at the past year and the other looking forward to the future. These qualities of Janus, and the month that bears his name conjure up many symbolic, metaphorical and real associations with literature in Guyana at this time.
A backward glance at 2004 might well leave a glow of satisfaction on the hind- face of the god because of the many important strides taken by Guyanese literature both at home and abroad during the year. Several important publications appeared, both fiction and non-fiction, some of them locally written and published, others released overseas. Books by Guyanese authors in the diaspora gave an impression of a literature on the move claiming a place in world writing, while the number, and sometimes the strength, of the local releases could belie the existence of inhibiting problems.
The glowing images of these strides cast by such developments will then certainly cause a hopeful ray of light to shine outward from the god's forward visage, since the literature can only look ahead to continuing progress in the years to come. But the underside of this is still the darker shadow cast by the remaining fact that Guyana's emerging talents, both at home and abroad, still struggle to reach that light because of the limited opportunities that persist. They do not find it easy to get their work edited, published and improved.
At the change-over of years, we therefore confront these two opposite faces of Guyanese literature, and if anyone is looking for a real reflection of this, The Guyana Annual 2004-2005 is a good place to start. It is first of all a real product of local Guyanese writing, it has a long and informative history, it actually has a mandate to safeguard the future and continuity of local writing, and it has the capacity to forecast some of that future and give an idea of the kind of talent that is emerging. Indications of all of those are to be found in the latest volume of this revised periodical, edited in 2004 by Petamber Persaud. It was the last of its kind to come off the press in December of the old year, and is the first publication to come to hand in January of the new. Janus-like, it allows a look at both.
The Guyana Annual is the revised version of an old periodical, whose early efforts date back to more than 100 years. Intentionally an annual publication, it has appeared under different publishers, associated with different newspapers, including the Argosy, the old and the present Chronicle. Over this period, it has gone through different names, including Christmas Tide and Cariba (see David Granger's Message, in The Annual, 2004-2005), before becoming the Chronicle Christmas Annual. They did not quite make it every year, and there were a number of lapses, until this latest revival in the 1990s when it broke the tradition of association with the Chronicle newspaper and changed to its present name. During its long life/lives its editors have included some very distinguished names, among whom Vincent Roth, also associated with the now defunct RACS's Timehri journal, stands out.
Among those responsible for the latest revival, are Tulsi Dyal Singh, Allan Fenty, Vic Insanally and Guyenterprise, the present publishers. After that long tradition in the establishment, it seems they decided to rotate the editorship and handed it over to the Janus Young Writers Guild. This strengthened the association with the Roman god, since a magazine that looked back beyond 1915 was put in the hands of the future generation of writers for a forward look. This lasted two years with Ruel Johnson, then Kojo McPherson, two writers discovered through the pages of the same magazine, serving as its editors. After that brief period, the mantle was handed over to the experienced Petamber Persaud, whose work in local literature has recently been widening and growing in importance.
The 2004-2005 Annual contains the range of regular features, short fiction, poetry, photography, sports and other articles with prefatory messages from Ian McDonald and David Granger. Visually, it is very well put together and the inclusion of a number of useful additions shows that, surely, the editor brought a few valuable ideas to structure and content. But while these, and much of the content, are progressive, a magazine as important as this is not as finished in its presentation as it ought to be. That necessary page with vital bibliographic detail is not provided, depriving readers who might need editorial information, volume number, dates, publication details, a sense of the journal's history, as well as the names of authors on the title page, inter alia.
Careful proof-reading might have caught the many typographicals that escaped, but there are more important editorial misdemeanours, such as the category in the competitions after the 3rd Prize winners, strangely called 'Honorable Mentioned,' and the unacknowledged poems. It was an excellent idea to include a few poems from the past to assist the magazine's historical reach and to present interesting samples of earlier Guyanese literature. Two selections do this admirably, The Weeding Gang by Ramcharitar Lalla and Meditations of a Man Slightly Drunk by Edgar Mittelholzer. But first, the authors are not named, and then, they are dedicated to Dr Dyal Singh. Of course, he thoroughly deserves the honour, but since that dedication was not so directed by the poets, there is need for an explanatory note by the editor.
The rest of the volume, and the service it provides make it easy to overlook those and appreciate the Annual's necessary contribution. The long-standing short story and poetry competitions, which have been mainstays of the Annual, are retained, including the winners of the Youth Poetry and Prose categories. University of Guyana English student Edison Jefford wins the Fiction Prize and gets an Honourable Mention in Poetry, while Robert Fernandes dominates the Open Poetry, carting off First and Third. The Youth winners are Danielle Swain for the Short Story and Aliya Shamshudin for Poetry. The other places in the Open categories go to Indrawati Flaks and Mohamed F Yasin (Fiction) and Renee Chester (Poetry), while Karl McPherson (2nd and 3rd, Short Story) and Natasha Yusuf (Poetry) complete the winners in the Youth categories.
While there is much to be said concerning quality in some cases, it is of great importance that the Annual should remain anchored around these competitions. Not only does the magazine provide outlets for new developing work, but it rewards and encourages. From time to time, it discovers genuine talent as in the cases of eventual Guyana Prize Winner, Ruel Johnson, Kojo McPherson and Franklyn Langhorne.
Added to those is an interesting range of features of mixed quality and importance. Of notable depth are Lloyd Kandasammy's well-researched Brief history of the theatre in British Guiana during the Pre-Emancipation era, and The Origins of Afro-Guyanese Folk Music by Deryck Bernard, which though informative, is only an introduction. One needs, however, to be careful when pronouncing upon origins of such items as folk cultural traditions and music, as Bernard in this article is well aware. However, the author of Chutney Music is badly in need of that warning judging from his assertions, which suggest a want of thorough research into the material on chutney.
The Guyana Annual 2004-2005 is therefore a mixture of types and efforts, but overall, a significant achievement for which its editor, Mr Persaud, deserves some credit. The revival and continuation of this Janus-headed periodical is an extremely useful intervention. Given the current context of local writing in Guyana and in spite of the great strides made by Guyanese literature and scholarship in the wider world, the outlets and opportunities that it provides within the country remain immeasurable.