Citation
Kyk-over-Al

Material Information

Title:
Kyk-over-Al
Uniform Title:
Bim
Portion of title:
Kyk over Al
Portion of title:
Kyk
Portion of title:
Kykoveral
Creator:
British Guiana Writers' Association
Kykoveral (Guyana)
Place of Publication:
Georgetown Guyana
Publisher:
s.n.
Publication Date:
Frequency:
Two no. a year
semiannual
regular
Language:
English
Physical Description:
v. : ; 23 cm.

Subjects

Subjects / Keywords:
Guyanese literature -- Periodicals ( lcsh )
Caribbean literature (English) -- Periodicals ( lcsh )
Genre:
review ( marcgt )
periodical ( marcgt )
serial ( sobekcm )
Spatial Coverage:
Guyana

Notes

Dates or Sequential Designation:
Began in 1945?
Dates or Sequential Designation:
-49/50 (June 2000).
Numbering Peculiarities:
Publication suspended, 19 -1983.
Issuing Body:
Issued by: British Guiana Writers' Association, 1945-19 ; Kykoveral, 1985-
General Note:
Vol. for Apr. 1986 called also golden edition that includes anthology of selections from nos. 1-28 (1945-1961).
General Note:
Description based on: No. 30 (Dec. 1984); title from cover.

Record Information

Source Institution:
University of Florida
Rights Management:
All applicable rights reserved by the source institution and holding location.
Resource Identifier:
12755014 ( OCLC )
86649830 ( LCCN )
1012-5094 ( ISSN )

UFDC Membership

Aggregations:
Digital Library of the Caribbean

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Full Text


KVK-
OVER-
AL


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39

DECEMBER, 1988


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FRIENDS OF KYK-OVER-AL
A great many individuals and organizations have contributed to the suc-
ces of Kyk-Over-Al since it was relaunched in December, 1984. We owe
a very special debt of appreciation to the following for their support of
issue No. 39. Their vigorous assistance so readily offered in strengthen-
ing an important part of Guyana's cultural tradition deserves the thanks
of the whole community.
Associated Industries Limited
Bank of Nova Scotia
Banks D.I.H.
Bauxite Industry Development Company
Brass Aluminium and Cast Iron Foundry
C. Czarnikow Inc. (New York)
C.K Newbridge (Guyana)
T. Geddes Grant
Guyana Fertilizer
Guyana Liquor Corporation'
Guyana National Cooperative Bank
Guyana National Trading Corporation
Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation
Guyana Stores Limited
Guyana Sugar Corporation
Guyana and Trinidad Mutual Fire Insurance
Hand-in-Hand Mutual Fire Insurance
Laparkan (Agent for Canon Copiers and Fax Machines)
National Bank of Industry and Commerce
Republic Bank
Shell Antilles and Guianas
Sir Shridath Ramphal (Commonwealth Secretary General)

The cost of printing and distributing a literary magazine is very heavy.
Please help us to strengthen Kyk-Over-Al by sending your subscriptions to
IAN McDONALD, c/o GUYSUCO, 22 Church Street, Georgetown, Guyana.
In the U.K. please apply to:
F.H. THOMASSON, 9 Webster Close, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 4NJ.

Subscriptions per issue (including postage):
G$50 EC$15 4 US$7
The Editors would welcome the submission of poems, short stories, articles
and reviews to consider for publication. Publication of course cannot be
guaranteed and because of expense it will not be possible to return manu-
scripts. Submissions may be accompanied by illustrations and photographs
of authors, suitable for black-and-white reproduction.
Copyright 1988. No reproduction by ny means, except for short
extracts for review purposes, without permission of the Editors.
ISSN 1012-5094







KYK 39 Edited by A.J. Seymour and lan McDonald
DECEMBER 198a8-r?


TABLE OF C







Aunty Panty
Playgroun
Fo Rent
Looking at the River
Folklore
Incident past Midnight, Bucksands
Scholar
Lost and Found

Three Drawings by Stanley Greaves

Fiction
Extract from the Novel
"Massala Maraj"
Nancy Pilgrimage
The Story of Amalivaca.

Articles
Reflections on the
Art of Stanley Greaves
Music in Portuguese Life
in British Guiana
Language and Identity in the
Poetry of Martin Carter
Extract from an Interview
with Wilson Harris

Reviews
"The Arkansas Testament"
by Derek Walcott
"A Shapely Fire. Changing the Literary
Landscape" Ed. Cyril Dabydeen


ecGray 10
CGray / 11
12
13
Vibart lan Duncan 15
Vibart Ian Duncan 16
McDonald Dash 17
Cyril Dabydeen 19
Ian McDonald 20
Ian McDonald 21
Gloria Escoffery 22

25,40,89


Rooplall Monar
Ras Michael
A.J. Seymour



Rupert Roopnaraiue

Sr. M. Noel Menezes

Stephanos Stephanides

Rovin Deodat



Anthony Kellman

Alim Hosein






ACROSS THE EDITOR'S DESK


Demerara Publishers
The last two issues of Kyk, Nos. 37 and 38, and this issue, No. 39, were
designed and typeset by Demerara Publishers Limited. This involvement
with that new Company marks a significant stage in the life of the magazine.
In recent years there has been a sad decline in book-publishing in
Guyana. At the same time lack of foreign exchange has cut the supply of
imported books to a trickle. The resulting readers' drought has coincided
with the coming of Television. Guyana is well on its way to becoming a
nation where the young will have no taste for books. The impact on literacy
and educational standards is apparent and the situation is worsening.
Those concerned must do what they can. A few have formed Demerara
Publishers as a non-profit foundation.
The Company was formed at the end of 1987 to undertake "Desk-top
Publishing" in Guyana. It is dedicated to producing and publishing maga-
zines and books (reprints and original work) in Guyana which will be useful
in education and which will make a contribution to the history, culture, and
literature of the country.
In twelve months progress has been made, considerably assisted by a
grant of Can$50,000 from the Canadian Government. Demerara Publishers
has helped in the reprinting of Peter Ruhomon's classic Centenary History
of East Indians in British Guiana, has assisted in producing the last 3 issues
of Kyk-Over-Al, and has played a part in the publication of half-a-dozen
other publications. Major projects now include the publication of Martin
Carter's Selected Poems and A.J.Seymour's Collected Poems, the produc-
tion of a History of the Chinese in Guyana, producing a new magazine for
creative talent in the oral tradition to be called Survival and a magazine for
children, and publishing a volume of Sir Sridath Ramphal's speeches.
Indeed, the danger already is that the submission of valuable material will
overwhelm practicality.
Kyk-Over-Al is pleased to be part of this vigorous effort to renew the
availability of good books and magazines in Guyana.

The Saving of Books
It isn't only in Guyana that book-reading is in danger. George Steiner,
an outstanding American intellectual, and Joseph Brodsky, winner of the
1987 Nobel Prize for literature, have both made speeches recently warning
of the death of books. In many cultures, Steiner points out, the reading of
books is neither natural nor native. A lot of the old impulse to write books
came from a thirst for immortality which is now felt to be "not only elitist
but simply embarrassing". Joseph Brodsky agrees, saying that holding a
book in one's hand is a little like fondling an urn already rustling with
someone's ashes.
Books, Steiner says, need the sort of private space and silence which is






hardly available any longer. Some 85% of American-adolescents "can no
longer take in a printed page if their act of reading does not have an
accompanying background of electronic noise". Steiner fears that people
may revert to listening to words while looking merely at pictures. "The
book today," he says, "is antiquarian, as luxurious an instrument as was the
illuminated manuscript after Gutenberg".
Joseph Brodsky feels that books have simply become too many. Read-
ing them takes too much time. The answer, he suggests, is to abandon prose
and concentrate on poetry which not only teaches "the value of each word"
but, above all, "develops in prose that appetite for metapysics that distin-
guishes a work of art from mere belles lettres". What the modem reader
should do, if his confidence in books is flagging, is to read all the available
works of major poetry in his own language in the last century. Within a few
months the reader's literary taste will be "in great shape".
The cure George Steiner offers for the reading sickness is much the
same. He tells the story of Erasmus, who, "walking home on a foul night,
glimpsed a tiny fragment of print in the mire. He bent down, seized it and
lifted it to a flickering light with a cry of thankful joy. Here was a miracle "
Steiner hopes that a return of "that sense of the miraculous in the fact of a
demanding text"-the virtue, above all, of poetry-may, in the end, be the
saving of books.

The Sandberry Press in Jamaica
We are extremely pleased to note the establishment of the Sandberry
Press in Jamaica. This new press has announced the first three titles in its
Caribbean Poetry Series:

1. LOGGERHEAD by Gloria Escoffery.
2. A TALE FROM THE RAIN FOREST by Edward Baugh.
3. JOURNEY POEM by Pamela Mordecai.

Orders for these books can be sent to DeBrosse, Redman, Black & Co.,
8 College Close, Kingston 7, Jamaica, West Indies.
We have received a copy of Gloria Escoffery's Loggerhead. Gloria
Escoffery is primarily a painter. However, a number of her poems have
been published in such anthologies as the two Caribbean Voices volumes,
Breaklight, and, more recently, The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse and
Caribbean Poetry Now. She currently contributes a regular and outstand-
ingly perceptive art column to the Jamaica Journal.
Loggerhead is a lovely collection of her very painterly poems-excel-
lently produced by The Sandberry Press. The book is a splendid advertise-
ment for this new and very welcome addition to the Caribbean's publishing
arsenal which needs all the augmenting it can possibly get. Readers of Kyk
and lovers of poetry will, we sincerely hope, buy Sandberry publications as
soon as they appear.







Imagination and Poetry
We have been reading an excellent new biography of Alexander Pope
by Maynard Mack. In the Preface to his magnificent translation of Homer's
Iliad Pope writes that imagination, or "invention", lies at the heart of poetry
and is the distinctive attribute of genius in all fields.
Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest Inven-
tion of any Writer whatever ... Nor is it a Wonder if he has ever
been acknowledged the greatest of Poets, who most excell'd in
That which is the very Foundation of Poetry. It is the Invention
that in different degrees distinguishes all great Genius's: The
utmost Stretch of Human Study, Learning, and Industry, which
masters every thing besides, can never attain to this. It fur-
nishes Art with all her Materials, and without it Judgment itself
can at best but steal wisely: For Art is only like a prudent
Steward that lives on managing the Riches of Nature. What-
ever Praises may be given to Works of Judgment, there is not
even a single Beauty in them to which the Invention must not
contribute.

"I Shake Hands With You In My Heart"
Harry Chambers, editor and director of the publishers Peterloo Poets in
England (celebrating the publication of its 100th poetry title on November
29th, 1988), has sent us an article, "Poetry Matters", in which he discusses
the triumphs and tribulations of a publisher of poetry. In a concluding
passage he sets out what he seeks in poetry:
What I am looking for in poetry is "heart-rending sense" the
phrase was coined by Robert Graves-or the "shiver down the
spine" described by A.E.Housman in The Fame and Nature of
Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1933). These come from
an originality of vision and a freshness of language brought to
bear upon the most important areas of common human expe-
rience. I feel that poetry should make us think more deeply
about our lives and our relationships and that it should often,
in Philip Larkin's memorable words, "nudge us from comfort".
I have a preference for poetry that is in touch with the language
of the age. I expect a good poem to move me. Like A.E.
Housman and Philip Larkin, I feel that poetry is a matter more
of the emotions than the intellect. I have no enthusiasm for too
much cleverness or obscurity, unless it is of the kind that Philip
Larkin (Radio Times, 16th August 1973) called "luminous and
wonder-generating obscurity". I am not keen on the poetry
equivalent of abstract painting, and I must confess to a liking
for poems that are peopled. I think good poems can be
complex, operate on many levels, without being difficult.








Leslie Stephen once wrote something like: "The poet's task is
to move our hearts by revealing his own, and not to display his
learning, or mimic the fine notes of his predecessors ..." Such a
magnificent motto-one that Hardy copied out into his note-
books and that Larkin was fond of quoting-is also good
enough forme. Good poetry should be accessible to all who can
read and have feelings. It should provoke the response of the
Old Domestic Servant who found some of William Barnes's
poems in a pile of books that she was dusting and wrote to him
in 1869: 'Sir, I shook hands with you in my heart, and I laughed
and cried by turns'.

That, we believe, is well said.

Offerings
This is an interesting publication which helps to meet thegrowing need
for home-based Guyanese writers in all disciplines to develop forums to
express their views and expose their work. There have been two issues of
Offerings to date-the first published in April, 1987, and the second in
November, 1987. The purpose of the magazine is crystallised in the second
issue as follows:

The aspiration is to reflect the plural and multi-cultural con-
cerns of the Guyanese society. However, there will be issues
that will feature academic and literary works specific to an
ethnic or other grouping such as women, professionals, etc.
Others, like the present one, will be more general in focus. As
suggested by the title, it is the intention of OFFERINGS to
provide Guyana with popular literature and simultaneously
offer writers a responsible vehicle for expression.

Among other items, the second issue of Offerings contains poems by the
promising Sasenarine Persaud among others, fiction by Rosetta Khalideen,
an extract from the unpublished novel 'DEAR DEATH', also by Sasenarine
Persaud, and articles by Frank Long on Indigenous Technology, Kampta
Karran on Planning, Iris Sukdeo on Hindu Customs, and Roy Brummell on
Folk Lore. One point to make is that in future greater care should be taken
in binding this magazine. The first two copies of the magazine that we
obtained had some pages bound out of sequence and some are completely
missing.
Offerings was founded, and is edited and published, by Kampta
Karran. Enquiries and contributions should be addressed to: Kampta
Karran, Offerings Publication, Belle Vue Pilot Scheme, West Bank Demer-
ara, Guyana.







The Cause of Fiction
With his kind permission we reproduce one of WayneBrown's brilliant
contributions to the Trinidad Express. This article, which appeared on
March 23,1988, rang a number of bells. Its relevance and appropriateness
to writing and writers throughout the West Indies (and further) does not
fade.

THE CAUSE OF FICTION
I want to write beautifully, create beautifully, not outside but in this
thing in which lam born, in this place where, in the midst of ugly
towns, cities, Fords, moving pictures, I have always lived, must
always live. I do not want even those old monks at Chartres, building
their Cathedrals, to be at bottom any purer than myself.
(Sherwood Anderson)
One of the small but recurring heartbreaks of writing this column is this.
Regularly over the past five years (has it really been so long?) young writers
have brought their manuscripts to my door for discussion; and to me has
fallen the wearying task of initiating them into some of the facts of life, and
watching their gaze cloud over, as I talk, with all the depressing D's: doubt,
dismay, disappointment, distrust, dislike. Few, so far as I know, have ever
left without at least harbouring the suspicion that I was "trying to make
them feel small." (Well, I was). None, so far as I know, has ever acquiesced
in feeling small enough to actually learn anything-beginning with the
notion of service. Indeed, one recent pilgrim left my house, telling me that
he found my line-by-line patience with his excitable prose "funny", since he
was--he informed me tensely-"a better writer than you."
Well, that's fine.
The surprising thing is not that so much of the work is hopelessly bad,
or just plain illiterate; because it isn't. That at least would leave one free to
toss at them the famous Naipaullian quip ("This is absolutely terrible!
Promise me you'll never write anything again. But listen, you have
beautiful handwriting! Have you ever thought of applyingfor a job as a law
clerk?"). But it isn't like that at all. By now I would lay claim to being
something of an authority on the unpublished, and unpublishable, manu-
scripts of young Trinidad; they constitute among them a kind of eerie,
invisible sub-culture in this loud country; and I hope you'll believe me:
there is more "potential," more "promise" for fiction writing in this country
than any population of a million-plus souls has any right to expect.
And yet, at the end of the day, it just isn't happening.
Thinking about this evoked for me the image of a yacht race that took
place in the Gulf recently. The wind was blowing strongly, but it stopped,
as if blocked by a wall, 100 metres or so from the next mark on the course.
The first boat to sail incontinently through that wall was immediately
becalmed, and sat there, sails disconsolately flapping, with nothing to do








and nowhere to go; and the following boats, recognizing this, turned away
to stay on the wind side of the wall. In this way the stragglers caught up, and
soon there were 25 boats sailing up and down along the perimeter of an
invisible semicircle, at whose centre lay the prized mark none dared
approach-not with the becalmed boat sitting there, sails flapping, like a
scarecrow warning: Come no further. So near and yet so far, you might say;
and that is the heartbreak of young fiction writers in Trinidad.
Why is this?
I don't know. I could trot out a dozen academic explanations, but the
truth is, I don't know.
But I know there is always some corruption: some ambition which is
either ludicrously wide of reality, or otherwise well-intended and sad.
Chief among the first is a kind of fiction within the fiction: the young
author's fantasy that the manuscript scalding his hands is destined to be "a
bestseller". Standing between bestsellerdom, and all that implies (money,
fame, money, reading tours, money, movie rights, money!) is only the small
hurdle of finding a publisher.
A bestseller!
Who do these kids think they are, and what country do they think
they're living in? Do they really believe that because they can put on
designer jeans and strut around in "malls" and "pubs", they are part of that
world that deals in bestsellerss," that all they need is to find a publisher? Can
they, by no means talentless, only young, really be so ignorant of the
privilege of our poverty, here, as to not know what fate awaits them? And
what will they do when they find out-stop writing, become a lawyer or a
doctor, sell something?
But you cannot argue with this type; cannot begin to introduce the
notion of service, or service to what. (One character told me insultingly in
conclusion that he hadn't really come for my opinion--only to find out if I
would help him find a publisher for his manuscript which, he was sure,
would be "a bestseller"). One should be inured by now to this kind of thing,
to play-play writers living in a play-play of the mind country. But it's
wearying, nonetheless: the same old iconography of betrayal of the gift,
year by year.
There is another kind of betrayal, one that is subtler, and sadder.
A young woman came to me the other day with a manuscript of stories
she'd written. I read them; and, not for the first time, was surprised and
pleased to see the fiction writer's gift displayed on the page. Her stories
were inexperienced and amateurish; they showed every sign ofhavingbeen
written by someone writing in isolation-someone who has had no contact
with older and better writers then herself. But her prose was literate, even
musical; her imaginative grasp was, most times, sound; and she had
shouldered, most of the time, with uncommon character, the double burden
of responsibility to her society (which means to say, to the suffering and the
poor), and to the muse of fiction, the balanced apprehension of felt life.







Apart from her inexperience, her only fault was an intermittent preachiness.
From time to time, betraying the inviolability of felt life, she stepped from
the shadows where every fiction writer belongs to lecture her audience
directly. But when I pointed this out to her, she baulked.
It was true, she said; too true, too true. But then, she concluded sadly,
maybe she shouldn't write fiction. She felt too strongly about certain issues
to have the patience to integrate and subsume them to the arctic imperatives
of fiction. Maybe she should write discursive prose instead.
Her sincerity was obvious, and it was difficult to tell her that her
attitude, too, was a betrayal. I know she will read this, and I hope she will
listen to me; listen to me!
Do you think that your views matter, any more than the President's, or
the gardener's? Do you think that an eye and an ear and a heart like yours
were placed on earth to discuss the Panday-Robinson nonsense, or women's
lib, or the state of the roads in Maracas Valley? What about your characters,
those people you made, and their right to live, with the grave vivacity of
everyman and everywoman? When you talk about being impatient, don't
you mean opinionated-don't you mean, sometimes, lazy and vain? How
will you, a woman of character, shot through the head with the gift-how
will you serve, not man, but God?
What can I tell you.
I remember once, when I was a kid...I used to take my poems, hot from
the typewriter, and zoom down to Derek Walcott's in Petit Valley. One
time, I remember, I grew impatient with his criticisms, and said something
like, "Ah, well, what the hell; I just write for funf' and then was surprised
(and secretly, cravenly pleased) when he flew into a rage, and weeks later
was still inveighing in print against young writers who "did writing for
fun". So I suppose it's my turn now. But I'm older than he was, and frailer,
and weary to the bone of watching the Muse kicked around, by gifted young
writers in this country, for reasons staunch or puerile. So here's what.
Here are a few quotes. I happen to agree with them.
An author should be more than content if he finds he has made a
difference to a handful of people, forgiven innocent pleasure to a small
company. (A.C. Benson).
It is bad to go out and look at things if you wish to write about them.
You must let them look at you. (Henry Ward Beecher).
Allauthentic writing comesfrom an individual;butafinaljudgement
of it will depend, not on how much individuality it contains, but how
much of common humanity. (John Peale Bishop).
Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living. (Gustave
Flaubert).
Add to these the quote at the head of this column, and the following
(from myself): "You will never write a bestseller."
Now, then. If you're content withall theabove, you can get in touch, and
we'll look at your hopeful moist and shining words together. If any of the








above dismays you and makes you want to frown, if you're even sublimi-
nally resistant to any of them, do us both a favour. Go join a civil rights
movement or a political party. Go get somebody else to help you find a
publisher for your bestseller. Stay away from this columnist. Leave this
columnist alone.


AJS at 75
Ian McDonald writes:
"Among other things, I would like this issue of Kyk-over-Al to be con-
sidered as a small but feverently expressed symbolic gift for AJS who
celebrates his 75th birthday on January 12th, 1989. I had hoped to produce
a book of his Collected Poems for the occasion but the considerable work
involved could not be completed in time. It will be done during 1989. In
delving for the poems AJS has written over nearly 60 years more than 100
unpublished poems by him have beendiscovered. It is a treasure trove to
be sorted and edited and made available for the benefit of all those
interested in the literary history of the Caribbean.
To me AJS isa poet first and foremost, but his overall contribution to the
cultural traditionof Guyana and the Caribbean is truly astonishing. I do not
think the younger writers and academics grasp it fully. The AJS bibliogra-
phy compiled by the National Library in 1974 was already 100 pages long
and since then must easily have doubled in length. This amazing man's
work contains poems, historical publications, reviews, essays, addresses,
entries in anthologies, forewords, lectures, talks, pamphlets, memoirs,
sermons, eulogies, magazine work, and books in such profusion that one
would be excused for thinking this was the record of a school, not one man
alone.
He has been honoured, yet he can never be honoured enough. Kyk is
hisbrain-child and the child of his heart. Let this issue stand as a small token
of the love and admiration countless people around the Caribbean and the
world feel for him on his 75th birthday."







CECIL GRAY


CARIBBEAN BASIN

Islands described as emerald border
this sea where once before piracy was law.
This basin that the present predators
slit with their fins like periscopes once saw
swift rape of gaping children just as green
with innocence. Their awe they gave as welcome,
but when the reek of blood brought cognisance
of guns to make them glutton's prey their staves
and darts in answer fought the wind like straw.

Yet innocence persists like upturned keels
of boats that will not sink: hearts no less ripe
for pickings and invasions open up
to messages of iron on the waves;
tides bear the doctrine of the sharpened claw
in fresh assaults upon benevolence
and television's magic dupes them with its reels
of El Dorado marked with stars and stripes.

It is the age-old decoy for the poor:
the ship of bounty sailing in to shore
before the after-life which comes to strike
uneven distributions from the score.
Meanwhile they learn to emulate the shark
cruising with avarice at their open door
and turn away from socialistic crap.
You can't eat ideology, he said,
and with one swipe wiped Christ off the map.








CECIL GRAY


CHILDREN

Was it for them I drove
that clanking street car
down the years
from its terminal of promise
clattering round bends and covers
with the structure creaking
and the bell clanging danger,
scraping along worn rails
bucking at stops
to pick up passengers?
There were so many times
it jerked me so sharply
jumping off was
the only salvation,
but faith was on red.
Was it for them
I held the course
and paid no attention,
thinking I was the rail
on which their wheels were running,
or did tram lines define
the only kind of courage
that I knew?

Bitter coins paid the fare,
what made myth so sweet
to swallow? Myth was the power
that kept the wheels turning.
I spun it well, but I did not know.
All that I knew was
I could not leave them.
I could not manoeuvre
the skid.








MARK MCWATT


LADY NORTHCOTE

And she must have looked
like a governor's lady
when they flung champagne at her
long time ago; all polished wood
and brass and delicate white
for the tropics.

But when I first saw her
at the selling at Kumaka
-a raw teenager out for kicks-
she seemed excitingly abused,
had taken her licks
from years of men and sea
with her pride and style intact
-or just sufficiently drained
that she could notice the attentions
of a mere boy like me.

When the storm hit
four hours from Waini Point
she danced as in a fit,
nostalgic for her frolic of the past
when she sparkled with polished brass
and with the wit of those
who journeyed for the fun of it.
she plunged and reared,
taking the breaking wave upon her breast
-flat and hard now, and dun,
but comforting, none the less,
especially to a traveller like me,
still young enough to think
that strong women are the best.

Then, in the grey light before dawn
she slipped quietly into harbour,
breathless, mysterious, a little naughty
--like all the "perfect ladies"
of my adolescent dreams.






MARK MCWATT


AUNTY PANTY

The male cousins of the compound
roaming with my brother's air gun,
and tired of holed lizards and guavas
and frail, sad bundles of feathers,
came upon the single, stark
flap of white upon the line:
"IookI Aunty panty!", someone said.
My brother aimed, fired;
the garment flipped
as in a sudden whip
of wind,
and snapped back-a frayed hole
in the crotch.
"Right in the pussy",
my cousin Eric, laughing, said.
We all took turns
until the thing began to shred
on the line,
and thoughts of consequences
suddenly came to mind.

"Wha' dey going say?"
-"Aw, is only Aunty".
As the thing fell to earth at last
"Only Aunty". "Aunty" was all
we ever called that tall,
drooping woman-remote
relative of my father-who had
returned from some far city of snow and trains
because she was sick--" a sickness
of the brain", my mother had explained.
"What she damn-well need is a man",
We'd heard my father say
above the women's protests,
and I've often thought since
that it was this last "truth"
-repeated and respected among us boys-
that pulled the trigger on that day.






I, as the group's hoarder of secrets,
hid the evidence, but
we were never found out:
poor Aunty went to hospital
and died soon after.
Years later, rummaging for something
amidst old scout scarves
and discarded socks and ties,
I came upon the yellowed shreds;
"Aunty panty", my mind said,
remembering.
But I prayed for the living,
not the dead.






VIBART IAN DUNCAN


PLAYGROUN

Come tek a walk
inside de playgroun
in meh mind
come tek a walk
in dis playground
of another kind


walk cross da board deh
come tek a walk in dis gutter
le we separate
de shit
from
de grass
de mud
from
de nonsense


dem people upstairs talking
tek a walk in dis rubbish bin
le we set up we self
wid some tinnin cup
an some mango seed


le we spill up some gutter water
le we get some wringworm and some latta


tek a walk in dis playgroun
leh we chase a fowl, pelt a dog
come le we play some hide an seek
between de bushes
inside de latrine


come tek a walk inside de playgroun in meh mind
come tek a walk inside dis playgroun of another kind.






VIBART IAN DUNCAN


FORENT

There is a roach
crawling around in my mind.
There is a rat
Gnawing away at my inside.
There is a mosquito
trying to get blood out of stone.
There is a snake
waiting in the bathroom to poison me with a bite.
There is the shaky step
that will not be repaired.
There is the broken windowpane
that will not be replaced.
There is the dust
for breakfast, lunch, dinner.
There is the stink
of this nightmare.
There is where I live.


And there is the landlord
coming to collect the rent.








MACDONALD DASH


LOOKING AT THE RIVER

Brown and passive is the river
Save for gentle lap of water
at greenheart piles at wharves

February sun scorches
Sandbanked and rusted wrecks in the
middle distance
memorials to the treachery
of tide and turning
Terracotta tanker glides upstream
Stack smoking in silent stillness
grey to meet blue sky
Disappear around the turn of mangroves

Thursday is silent river day
as Orinoc's daughter whispers secrets sinister

Fisherboat hurries out slowly
to Atlantic beds; its human
propellor singleted, sunburnt

River runs silently to sea
Under February noonday sun
on Thursday

I gaze on this scurvy stream
wonder about its secrets
that have eddied over centuries
from headwaters far down in the verdant west
River comes past Wappu and Akyma
The Bell, Spring Garden, Agricola
down to once staid Demerary's
capital

Men of war, muskets, scarlet coats
bloody scarves and corsairs
Dead dogs and little children
all have been in and under








Canvas and cocorite
and wallaba
all coming down down
stone and bauxite coming down
beggars and whores to and from
the upcities and holdings

Catching a queriman
Passing by Borsalen and her sisters
swimming tigers in dead of night
by Mabura

Silent secretive stream and scurvy
lifeline and lifetaker
sister to the Essequib'
and monstrous too in her secrets
Silent stream and still in
February noonday
No one can conquer you
But you are nature's swollen stream of tears








CYRIL DABYDEEN


FOLKLORE

This is my legacy: sugar, sun and topsoil.
A molasses time surrounding since man's evolution
From sugar-cane--and recoiling.

Hear the agony of twenty million from Africa,
Plantation's frenzy. Whiplash, more sun and rain;
Fevered rhythms in the longing to be free.

The edifices rise higher in London;
Europe's walls have ears. Further whiplash-
Bones rattling in wayward galleys;

Upon Atlantic's waters, foam of blood.
Wilberforce, Canning, Caxton. The English Parliament
Lurching forward. Indentured,

I listen on; I am sucrose too,
In the furrowed fields, breathing in the smell,
Half-cowering, this hour of sun-

Land overturned, ground seething,
My hands still on deck, backs welted,
Groin sweating, this meeting face-to-face

With you, as we are together grounded!








IAN MCDONALD


INCIDENT PAST MIDNIGHT, BUCKSANDS

The house silent, lampless,
All close to me sleeping:
Deep in the night, alone
I go down to the edge of river.
It is a black night, velvet, no moon,
Only the stars spread like panned gold.
In the middle of the vast darkness of the river
A batteau passes, paddle-chuckle just heard
And a song comes across the pitchy water,
One man singing, not loud, a clear voice:
"Holy is the wide river,
Song of glory!
Holy is the forest tree,
Hear the glory!
Holy is morning star,
Song of glory!
Holy is the forest tree,
Hear the glory!"
The batteau goes down river slowly,
Slowly the song of the man fades in the darkness.
I think of the huge river flowing to the sea
And the sea curled vast around the earth.
I think of the river coming from the great mountains
Where it begins in small streams full of gold.
I look up at the black sky strewn with the incredible stars
And the bright net they cast on the water too.
At my back the immense forest presses
Heavy with the weight of a continent of trees.

Like a dream that came suddenly
The song drifts to silence on the immense river:
The towering forest falls down towards me:
No one wakes and I know myself alone.
I want to talk, fill up time with noise,
Speak with friends how we live everyday.
Something breaks in me, shakes me utterly:
To light the lamps, to regain the ordinary,
I utter oaths and sing and shout and pray,
Cavort beneath the stars, anything to flee
The measureless absurdity of the glory of the world.






IANMCDONALD


SCHOLAR

The forest dears, socket of silence
In the huge green shout of trees:
Weather-greyed chapel, box-small, closed,
Dogs snarl and snap on long ropes
Round scarlet-blossomed trees.
My voice ripping the noon-day air
Summons the friar, frail as dried leaves.
Old age stoops him like a crescent,
One eye glass-white, skull clean-boned,
Teeth broken-black, his robe of threadbare blue.
He has never come down river.

There is no greater mystery than any man.
I see the old books I have come to see:
Shelves upon shelves in thousands once,
Latin histories, old maps, testaments and laws,
Thick books of traveller's tales and governments.
They all were brought from Heidelburg and Rome:
"A wild, green place for books,"
He gestures in the lustrous air.
"It seemed a good thing to be done.
I meant to write." He shrugs it off.
The books are crumbling, tumbled out of place,
Worm-holed, rat-eaten, damp-decayed.
They will go soon to dust like men.

I am allowed the old priest's journal:
Ten marvellous notebooks two thousand pages long,
Lined, yellowing paper half-a-century old.
I turn to April eighteenth, nineteen thirty-three:
"Rain fell night-long and in the morning
Gold-billed toucans skimmed the trees".

The last note is five year's back,
No more after. The old man shrugs again.
"To see the moon-blaze in the trees
Perfect itself. A clearer sight of God".
The entries end. The rest is blank.
Dust drifts in the warm, illumined air,
The shuttered room is still. He prays.






GLORIA ESCOFFERY


LOST AND FOUND

For Barbara
Dream people, places and things.


1

Dark page of hair bobbing in the wind,
A boy of fourteen or so walks downwind
Studying the ground his eyes do not see.
He does not know I exist.
He strides through the dark pages of my mind,
his long brown hands
craftily pocketed.

2

In a field where packages of rice
are doled out at the turnstile along with the tickets
there are too many people; some receive no picnic packets.
I hand mine over to a stranger who seems lost
without a handout; and return
to the sweet solitude of my studio.

3

Now they are hastily assembling new mechanical contrivances
So the minibuses can hold more baskets
and people; everyone is looking for something deposited somewhere.
Will the topheavy buses hurtle off the road
at the usual illfated bend in the mountains?
It is too late to choose
not to take one's seat for the journey.

4

In this maze of darkened streets
I have mislaid my car again,
forgotten where I parked it,
forgotten the licence number.
Have you seen my straying Lynx Escort
sand coloured and discreet?






Wrong lane, wrong colour, wrong side of street for the hour-
I fear the Manhattan cops have towed it away
never to be seen again.

Driving the car for which I'm searching
I'm frantic for directions:
What is the name of this street?
Does it lead to the exit where I dropped off my driver?
Young man discreet with his wild girls
nameless as a pack of clubs with their trefoiled bars.

Oneway streets with no signs,
turnings with no signs or sighs,
signals more confusing than the twinkling eyes of the plain...
in the ascent
to the top of this wold named Stony Hill;
where one could choose to roll off the edge.
No more persons to question or be questioned by as to
where and wherefore.












The drawing on the facing page, done in pen and ink by Stanley Greaves in the
1960's, was made in response to this poem of C.E.J. Ramcharitar-Lalla:



THE WEEDING GANG

I know the girls are coming,
For I hear the gentle humming
Of choruses they're singing on their way;
I hear their saucepans jingling,
And their cutlasses a-tingling,
Which as their music instruments they play.

They fill the silence after,
With their peals of merry laughter
Which float upon the pinion of the air;
And also ease their walking
With some idle silly talking,
With Kheesaz and boojhowals very queer.

Then once again their singing
They resume, until the ringing
Of their voices mingles with the whistling breeze;
I love to see their faces
With their smiles and subtle graces,
And I love to hear their charming melodies.







Extract from the novel


MASSALA MARAJ

by ROOPLALL MONAR


Maraj crawled out the old iron-framed bed silently and rushed into
the kitchen, built in front the logie.
His heart thumped as though he had suffered a nervous spasm. He
picked up an enamel cup from the shelf and filled it with water, drawn
from a clay goblet. He drank the water in quick gulps, sat on a low
wooden bench, belched and uttered: "Think me stoopid? Me is a brah-
min. Backdam work is not proper fo me caste. Me have to get one
transfer morning time... have to tell overseer Brown..."
Maraj paced the kitchen now as though he had envisioned a
triumph.
The big Sugar Factory brass bell had announced One. Factory
grinding cane like mad, Maraj told himself. It was dark outside. Crick-
ets and beetles whirred and hummed outside the long barrack range,
divided into twelve barrack rooms called logies. The wind blew in gusts.
Maraj knew whenever much rain fell the Nigger Yard was quick to be
inundated. Malaria and dysentry created havoc. The place turned
gloomy. Death followed. Maraj hoped it didn't rain much.
Maraj felt suffocated. The logie with its dark musty kitchen threat-
ened to strangle him. An eternal enemy ever since his wife and himself
moved in ten years ago.
"Damn bloody matchstick house," Maraj would curse, scratching
his head as if looking for a solution... to escape this cramped living. "Is
like you in coffin. No place to stretch you hand," Maraj would say at
times, watching at his wife accusingly.
His wife, an orthodox brahmin woman, would smack her tongue
perplexedly, and hustle into the bedroom. She knew Maraj would slap
her if only she answered. But her mouth was strong, the words vibrating
in the logie. Can't allow this man to push he finger in me eye, she would
say whenever Maraj was out, then burst into a Hindi bhajan.
Maraj had a terrible temper. In such moments Maraj's temper
would flare like a lighted dry bush in a cow pasture. He would curse the
Estate, his brahmin caste, and wished he had never been born in this
blood sucking Sugar Plantation where the driver and overseer "think
you is some mule. Kicking you like football about the place," clenching
his fist, and felt like cuffing the logie-walls, buff-buff, as though gripped
by a fever. The fever that made him feel divided. "One foot here. One
foot in India," as the elders said.
He paced the kitchen a few more times, then sat on the low








wooden bench, braced to the wall, dividing the kitchen from the dining
room, and began thinking. He wanted a perfect excuse to give overseer
Brown. An excuse that would warrant him a transfer from the Chop-an-
Plant Gang to another Gang until he worked out another excuse. An-
other transfer until his goal, his true calling in life had been realized. Eh-
eh, is what the use living when you can't find you true self?
"Is been a long time now since me wukkin in this Estate. Every day
me turning like packsawal mango. All juice from me body draining out.
If me don't make a move this time, me going to come like dry bamboo.
Empty inside. And me is a brahmin. High caste Hindu. Me na suppose
to work in canefield. Is why me never take up the pundit work? Is
Ramdass pundit cause it. He alone want be pundit in this Estate. Bad-
minded brahmin bitch. They should put two cent-piece on he eye top
when he drop dead. Is tikkay Ramdass pundit throw blight at me? All
brahmin in this Estate cunning like spider. Heh! You could never trust
them shadow self."
Maraj churned over this self-monologue which had increased in
dimension throughout the years. It was like another person speaking
inside him. A person whom he was unable to quell, specially when he
was alone, sitting between the front door of the logie in the evenings,
self-absorbed. Impassive.
Soon after, he would burst out with a Hindi bhajan, sweet like
sugar, people said.
During some nights while lying in bed, pretending to sleep, he felt
this person wanted to come out, out of him like a chicken wriggling out
of an egg. Take formlike a man, and do the things he was unable to do:
cut-ass Ishmael driver and Nauth driver. Twitch overseer Brown balls.
Break Ramdass pundit neck, then ascen4 the Sugar Factory and laugh.
Me is the boss now. Me is the big Manager...heh heh heh, feeling like the
Hindu monkey god, Hanuman, flying over the whiteman's compound, a
lighted torch in his hand. Heh heh heh...
Maraj shook his head twice as if to dismiss the person speaking
inside him, aware now that dogs barked in the Nigger Yard, perhaps
glimpsing the Moon in the western sky. Dawn was on its way. He had
to work out an excuse quickly, join his fat snoring wife in bed, and wake
up early. Excuse in his head. Use me brahmin sense.
He scratched his head, ruffling his sparse hair, caved-in his brain,
struggling, seeing himself a weary traveller trudging up a mountain,
ideas rebounded in his head like canepunts clanging against each other.
Crickets and beetles whirred, buzzed among beezie-beezie, and
blacksage bush outside the logie. Maraj felt they were buzzing inside the
musty kitchen. He wanted to scream, shooing away mosquitoes which
surrounded him in a circle droning an incessant chorus. He wanted to
crush the kiss-me-ass mosquitoes, feeling triumphant. But the killing
sound, mosquitoes crushed on his bare skin, would awaken his wife.








"Like you get jumbie in you head man," his wife would say when
she saw him in the kitchen at this hour in the morning. "Is why you na
see pundit? It every two three night this asura jumbie coming in you
head..."
Blasty woman can't understand cent from big jill, Maraj would tell
himself whenever such an encounter had taken place. He couldn't sleep
while the other person in him kept on talking. Sitting alone in the
kitchen, drinking cupfuls of water, scratching his head, he would slowly,
patiently quell the voice in him, putting the person to sleep.
His wife, Marajin, believed an asura, a Hindu evil spirit, haunted
Maraj, especially when Maraj woke-up during midnights, complaining
of terrible nightmares, sweating, eyes glazed.
Stoopid woman! Don't know head from bullfoot, Maraj would say
to himself. If me no break me back in canefield to get money, is how she
going to eat? Is me badluck to get brahmin wife. And is shame and
disgrace fo brahmin wife work in canefield. Chu chu chu... stoopid
woman. She ain't know is me god does talk in me?
Maraj became alert. A fat mosquito droned around his head. He
wanted to trap it. Crushed it. The dank musty smell emanating in the
kitchen invaded his nostrils. He wanted to vomit. The mosquito kept
threatening, buzzing, bent on the kill.
Like you get jumbie in you head man. The words echoed in his
head. He relaxed himself and shooed the mosquito, using his hands.
The excuse, the plan kept developing in his brain. Yes! Yes! He smiled
by himself. The excuse assumed a form. A body. Maraj's twin brother.
Good, he uttered silently, then jumped as if stung by a marabunta. He
cursed.
He picked up the cup, refilled it with water from the goblet and
drank it as though he had not drank water for days. He belched quietly,
and felt a crawling sensation in his stomach. He hoped he wouldn't
have to visit the latrine at this time in the morning. He knew of the
many jumbies, evil spirits of dead people, which prowled the Nigger
Yard at this time in the morning. He knew that many of the evil spirits
were looking to extract revenge. He knew that sometimes the innocent
paid for the guilty. But me never push me finger in nobody eye, who
dead and gone, Maraj consoled himself as though exonerating himself
from self-guilt.
Maraj constricted his bowel, the excuse forming into a person quite
like his own twin brother. He shooed away a mosquito, loitering by his
ears, and said quietly: "Me get overseer Brown in me hand. Me get the
bitch," doing a little dancing.
He crawled into bed quietly, covering from head to his feet with a
floursack sheet. Mosquitoes droned. Me get overseer Brown in me
hand, he repeated in his mind until sleep dawned in him.
Ouch ouch! "Like this back want kill me," he told Marajin in the






dew-mist morning, watching at her like a sly mongoose.
She wrestled with the iron cooking pot, and canaree, in the smoke-
filled kitchen. She had finished cooked the rice and the boulanger curry.
It had not dawned fully as yet, but sugar workers had already awak-
ened. Their musty, dingy kitchen buzzed with activities. By the time it
was daybreak most walked out their logies: cutlasses, shovels, forks,
hung across their shoulders, bags with working clothes and lunch sauce-
pans slung on them.
Maraj flitted about in the logie, the excuse taking a shape. Ouch
ouch! he moaned, eyes darkened, watching the logie-walls which housed
cockroaches and ants. He had already changed to go to Order-Line. As
he ate roti and curry, sitting on the low wooden bench, his wife packed
his bag, a daily morning ritual enacted for years. How he hated it. But
me time going to come, he reminded himself, aware of the other person
inside him. Is one-one dirt does build dam.
Ouch! he moaned again, seeing overseer Brown in his mind. Damn
bully! Feel he own the Estate. Own the people. Me going to show he
who is sense man. Smart fly. Me is a smart brahmin.
Maraj didn't want to alarm his wife by saying: "Me going to ask
overseer Brown fo one transfer "
She would rile, then sulk into a corner, cursing her fate to be born
a woman. Her previous karma ought to be blamed, she would tell her-
self, vowing to extract the answer from Lord Shiva when she did her
puja the coming Sunday morning.
Is damn lazy he lazy, she would tell herself, impotent to voice her
views in such a precarious matter where their future was concerned.
Maraj had a presentiment of his wife acting in this way. Deem him
a lazy man. Chut! Is me have to bring in the money. Not she, Maraj told
himself, eating quickly. He decided to kep his mouth cose. He
owned behind the facade, moaning frequently.
She threw him a sharp look. It stung him like a followme insect.
O Gaad Shree Bhagawan! like this woman know the inside of me mind,
Maraj told himself. He washed his hands quickly, gargled through the
kitchen window, belched, then hustled to pickup his working bag and
cutlass.
"See you Marajin," Maraj said sweetly as he passed through the
logie front door. He trotted to the main walking path dampened with
morning dew, feeling released. Like the woman know me up to some
trick, he asked himself, unsettled. Brahmin woman proper smart. But
me is a smarter brahmin, he reminded himself, imbued with pride.
Think backra man more sensible than me? Is now me eye open to the
real thing. Is me and overseer Brown now...
He walked quickly, concentrating on the backbone that would
make the self-induced backache look serious, critical in the presence of
overseer Brown.







Something in that man mind, Marajin's instinct told her as she
dusted the kitchen flooring with a coconut branch broom. He up to
something but Shree Bhagawan going to tell me. True! Soon after, she
would tend the vegetable garden, cultivated behind the logie, examining
each plant, their roots, to ensure that nobody's fowls, or a rat, had dug
up the root during the previous night. Neighbouring fowls usually cre-
ated havoc to the plants. She had seen herself on many occasions, pin-
ning one of the fowl on the ground with her feet, slicing out the fowl's
claws with a cutlass until it bled, uttering "damn badmass" in Hindi.
Something in that man mind, Marajin told herself again, per-
turbed, heading in the small, stuffed-up bedroom to make-up the bed.
By now the morning looked pale, colourless, the wind blowing
slightly cold. Overnight drizzle had dampened the Nigger Yard. Dusty
dams dotted with muddy lumps. Morning dew had still clouded above.
Mist like smokestalks settled on cork tres, and on logie roofs.
Maraj experienced a slight chill as he clambered up the creaking
wooden steps, wedged-on to the High Bridge, which acted as a gateway
that led into the Nigger Yard' It was an old bridge something like an
antique, still sturdy, bearing the weight and frustrations of countless
footsteps, that had daily traded on it throughout the years, echoing with
footprints of cringing, indentured immigrants.
It spanned a blackwater stream... the water always cold, iridescent,
tempting to little boys. Moss was perpetually seem in both corners of the
stream. Silverbait fish and shrimp teemed in the water. The stream
began from the deputy Manager's yard in the east, and snaked into the
canefields, joined by other smaller streams, running in different direc-
tions passing through mango-walks, coconut fields, bramble fields, and
further down into more canefields, and the Lamaha Canal.
It was a favourite stream to sugar workers, the water being used
for religious purposes. It was called blackwater-trench by them.
Maraj was joined by a batch of sugar workers as he descended the
Bridge, and landed in the redbrick road. It was dampened. The big, old
wooden Hospital was on the opposite side of the road. An aroma of
disinfectant, tablets, iodine, and putrid cotton wads emanated from it.
Maraj felt the smell in his nostrils. He coughed. The Hospital looked
frightening. Maraj avoided becoming a patient in that Hospital.
That going to drive me to me grave, he reminded himself anytime
he was plagued with either fever, chest cold, acute bellyache, or head-
ache. He preferred consulting Miriam, the African woman, whose herbal
remedies always arrested his ailment.
The workers discussed the inhuman treatment meted out to them
from the hands of Ishmael and Nauth drivers. The low wages being
paid for years now. "Is only a proper cut-rass on Ishmael and Nauth
could stop this blasted eye-pass."
"We should do what them Non Pareil people do," a canecutter







named Seeram talked, eyes reddened. "Is how long we able tolerate this
kiss-me-ass bullyism?"
Maraj agreed wholeheartedly, willing his backbone-structure to re-
spond to his emotion. Have to get this transfer, he reminded himself.
Chop-an-Plant going to swinge me like ripe mango in hot weather.
Backdam work ain't fit fo me brahmin caste. Me is a high nation Hindu,
and is time me use me sense now. Maraj chuckled, conveying the im-
pression that he was laughing at a joke, just cracked by one of the cane-
cutters.
The joke concerned Nauth driver. Two weeks ago on the Tuesday
night, Nauth nearly killed himself with fright, running towards his logie,
cursing on the way. Nauth driver nurtured a deep belief that Baizee's
ghost-the spirit of Baizee's dead body, wanted revenge on him. He
lived in constant fear.
While being a shovelman in Nauth driver's gang, Nauth used to
make it hard on Baizee due to Baizee's rebellious temperament. Baizee
felt the shovelmen were being robbed of their true value as shovelmen.
There was always an outburst, heated arguments between Nauth and
Baizee.
"Sixty cent a day can't pay,"Baizee would shout, stamping his feet
on the ground, tone harsh, eyes furious.
One hot midday in the canefields during an argument, Baizee told
Nauth: "If me dead before you, me going to haunt you, and you family
til coffin catch them."
Nauth shivered. Felt a chillyness in his spine. He knew such a
threat could be dangerous. Notebook and pencil trembled in his hands.
Should Baizee ponder on those words constantly, and say it aloud, dur-
ing the time his death was drawing near, the words could assume a
spectral form, bent on creating havoc to the living victim. Nauth be-
lieved such things happened. It occurred to others. Ghost coming back to
extract revenge...
A year ago, after issuing the threat to Nauth, Baizee died due to
the ravages of T.B. Since then Nauth was not the same. He imagined
seeing Baizee's ghost several times. The mule-boys knew of Nauth's
fear. They exploited on it whenever the opportunity arose.
On this Tuesday night it was dark and gloomy, tinged with a
silence that was frightening. Nauth was returning from overseer
Stanley's bungalow, found in the Compound. He was walking on the
redbrick road, heading towards the High Bridge. A grove of big, flowing
fig trees with the Hospital further in, lined one side of the road. Blackwa-
ter-trench ran alongside the other side of the road. Across the trench a
few cakeshops and the Masjid were seen. Further in, rows of barrack
ranges ran alongside each other.
Every object in and around the road was capped with a darkness,
compounded with a lurking silence likened to a deadly, alert snake in






crouching canetrash.
Nauth shivered as he walked, cautious, peering his eyes among
the still'd pregnant trees. Crickets and beetles whirred, hummed. It
broke the monotony of the silence. In such moments Nauth always
recalled Baizee's words: "If me dead before you, me going to haunt you,
and you family til coffin catch them..."
This man Baizee like a pest in me soul, Nauth told himself. He
never fathomed that the night, yet early would have changed into this
eerie, frightening state... "like a damn jumbie behind you shadow."
He kept on walking, uttering a mantra from the Hindu Puranas.
Why this man Baizee don't go and rest in peace, Nauth told himself,
walking quickly, still peering his eyes.
Dinki and three mule-boys held conversation under the big cork
tree, growing by the edge of Blackwater-trench in the Nigger Yard sec-
tion.
Two hours before, as evening was turning into night, Dinki and
the mule-boy had seen Nauth as he crossed the High Bridge, landed in
the redbrick road, and headed east. They suspected that Nauth was on
one of his nightly visits to overseer Stanley.
"See the dog? He going to take news to overseer," one of the mule-
boys had said, spitting in the trench. "People like them is leech."
"Hold on. Rain don't fall at one man door," Dinki talk. "He own
rope going to strangle he. Remember madman Rusty? How he slice-off
Sambo driver cock, and put it in Sambo mouth like sweetie?"
"Ha boy! Man don't see, but Gad seeing. How long you believe he
going to get sugar in he mouth?" the second mule-boy talked, and spit-
ted as if the spittle was a thorn in his flesh. He eyes blazed with hurt and
revenge.
Dinki and the mule-boys eyed at Nauth until Nauth turned into
the smooth, redbrick road, lined "with sweet-smelling flowers, growing
on both sides. The road led into the fenced-in Compound, filled with
electric lights, beautiful bungalows, well-kept lawns. A Compound inac-
cessible to Dinki and the mule-boys, except on business. A world where
God-blessd people lived, Dinki and the mule-boys always said. Nauth
disappeared in there.
Dinki and the mule-boys resumed their conversation: mules, man-
agers, struggle of the Indian people in India, wedding-houses, weeding-
gang, women...
They were about to go to their respective logies when they spotted
a man, coming out from the Compound. They recalled Nauth. Dinki
mounted the High Bridge. He peered at the walking figure. "Is Nauth
self," Dinki said, and vacated the Bridge quickly.
They knew of Nauth's fear. Baizee's ghost. It was still rumoured
to be around. Elders claimed seeing it, prowling the Nigger Yard in
quiet moonlight nights during the early morning hours.








"Baizee jumble want something," elders would say, hardly ventur-
ing outside until four o'clock in the morning "when all jumble gone and
deep."
Dinki and the mule-boys, also, believed Baizee's ghost wanted
Nauth, after hearing of Baizee's threat to Nauth while Baizee was alive.
"Ahwe play Baizee jumbie pon Nauth," Dinki said, smacking his
tongue as though he had eaten a delicious mango.
"You damn right. Let he shit cut," one of the mule-boys said,
mischief abound in his eyes, memory opened to past encounters which
took place during moonllight nights in the Nigger Yard-people playing
ghost at people.
"You hide under the bridge," Dinki said, anxious, watching at
Nauth.
The mule-boys scamperd under the Bridge, uttering quietly:
"Good if he rass could fall down and dead."
Dinld was slim-built and darkskin in his late teens. He took out
his shirt and fitted it around his head. His shirt was whitish in colour.
Across his head it looked like a loose orhni. People in the Nigger Yard
sometimes described a ghost, looking the way Dinki's head looked now.
Dinki hid behind the big cork tree stem, waiting on Nauth to cross
the High Bridge, and entered the Nigger Yard. Dinki's body from his
neck downward hardly showed. He was dark. The night was dark. He
looked like a terrified ghost with a white-white head, the kind of ghost
elders told their children about, seen mostly in the canefields during
moonlight nights.
"White-head jumbie!" elders pronounced, fright showing in their
eyes. The children huddled in a corner, eyes tight-shut, kerosene lamps
flickered like candleflies... logies eerie and silent.
Dinki waited, caught in suspense, heart thumping, eyes flitting at
Nauth, laughing inwardly.
Nauth avoided looking at the Hospital. It drove more fear into
him. He quickened his steps, and clambered up the High Bridge.
The mule-boys heard Nauth's footsteps. They crouched, subdued,
enduring black ants which stung their skin, mosquitoes which menaced
their faces. They were anxious, hearts palpitating.
Dinki felt the same way. As he looked around no one was spotted
in the vicinity. Good! Dinki told himself, aware now that Nauth was
coming down the steps, entering the Nigger Yard.
He squeezed his nose, and emerged from behind the tree stem, tip-
toeing in the manner a ghost was seen walking.
"Nauth driver is you me want." Dinki's tone sounded nasal. The
words slow and drawling. He walked up to Nauth.
Nauth was taken by surprise. He halted, felt his feet heavy. His
heart pounded, perspiration gathered on his foehead. Fireflies flickered
about him.








Dinki tip-toed slowly towards him. "Is you me want Mister
Nauth." Dinki's shirt flapped now like a flag after being slackened from
his head.
"O Gaad! this is Baizee jumble self-self," Nauth screamed, devi-
ated from Dinki's approach, and ran screaming on top his voice, acceer-
ating more speed on the dry mud dam, running alongside the Blackwa-
ter Trench. His instinct led him to his logie.
Half the sugar workers were out their logies when Nauth landed
in his logie, and fell down frothing.
Next morning Nauth's neighbours reported they heard Nauth tell-
ing his wife that he planned to enlist Ramdass pundit in his plan. Him-
self, and Ramdass pundit would visit the burial ground one dark night
and pin-down Baizee's grave. Tie Baizee's jumble in the bloody coffin,
spiking the grave-top with seven nails, and bury a bunch of garlic leaves
in the grave.
"Is only that going to cool Baizee jumbie forever. Pin he ass in the
grave until he bone rotten," Nauth told his wife Beti after he regained
his senses. It was around ten o'clock the very night.
The neighbourhood heard everything.
Nobody know Dinki and the mule-boys had staged this act. They
never divulged it. They knew the consequence of such a disclosure.
Nauth driver would take them up to the Head Manager.
But it was news the next morning. Baizee jumbie scared the shit
out of Nauth. "Next time he going to break Nauth neck..."
"Baizee jumbie should break Nauth neck the same night," one of
the cane-cutters talked, tone heavy with contempt.
"You damn right," Maraj said, beginning to display a slight stoop in
his walk. Me action to overseer Brown must be clear like daylight, Maraj
said to himself, keeping abreast with the canecutters.
Maraj and the canecutters walked past the Hospital mortuary, the
Head Manager's white painted bungalow, and the lawn tennis court. On
the other side of the redbrick road, across a blackwater stream, were
crumpled little cottages which housed the African sugar workers. Fur-
ther ahead was the Pay Office, the Foundry, and the Engine House.
Further inland, behind the Storeroom was the big sprawling Sugar Fac-
tory, and the Workshop.
Maraj and the canecutters crossed over a wooden bridge, the mule-
stable seen opposite, and swung into a broad, grassy muddam. About
twenty five yards ahead sugar workers clustered in different groups
around their respective drivers and overseers.
This was Order-Line. Here the sugar workers were given orders
for the day. After, they would head into the canefields, walking in
batches.
The morning mist was dying away like ice in water. The sun
peeped between thick, puffy clouds. Mule-boys' voices echoed in the








stable. The claybrick factory chimney kept belching out thick, blackish
smoke which sailed away in a western direction.
Maraj and the four canecutters joined the big gang of canecutters.
Marajs backbone responded to his self-induced emotion. He felt burn-
ing pain in the back.
Have to get this transfer he told himself, watching at Ishmael
driver and overseer Brown. Is me and overseer Brown...me know he is a
smart fly...








NANCY PILGRIMAGE


by RAS MICHAEL

Nancy Tory!
Nancy Tory!
Nancy Tory!
Nancy story ain't got bad word. Nancy story is what come out of Nancy
mouth. Wha' Nancy see with Nancy eye.
Nancy!
You been dey? Well Nancy been all about. Even when Georgetown was
a small small town and people use to send to the ice factory for ice and only
Putagee girls use to work in them store in Water Street, Nancy use to spin
he web wherever he see they going have story. That is how Nancy get to
know about Hector. He went home that night in Hector pants fold. The
same night that Hector did brace he self againstt Beth behind Beth front door,
running he hands all over she.
"Oh God Beth. I got to see you again. Igoing pick you up tomorr... nah,
nah not tomorrow.........Oh God Beth but I got to see you again."
Right then Nancy climb down a web and crawl up Hector pants fold,
entered the new model Datsun and when Hector foot mash the accelerator
to drive out the Ghetto, Nancy been dey with he.
'Well I would of never believe it,' Nancy say to herself when he investi-
gated Hector's house next morning. All these years of Nancy life, Nancy
never live ina house like this yet. But Nancy smart,Nancy investigate every
drawer and cupboard and corner from the minute he dropped out Hector's
pants fold that foreday morning.
Living with Hector was like living in a different world to how life was
in the ghetto in the room with Beth and the children. At first Nancy was
astonished by the amount of rooms the house had and the amount of beds.
Everybody had a room with bed in the ghetto but these beds... Nancy just
up and climb all over and feel the softness. Nancy tour the whole place but
take up residence inside the toolshed under the 'downs tree' since it remind
he more of ghetto life inside there where you had odds and ends. He spin
a web over where some 'downs' fall through a hole in the side of the wall
and start rottening. They had some fat fly down there.
Is not that Nancy didn't appreicate the comforts of Hector's house,
Nancy usetospend hours in front of the T.V.each day and Nancy had a web
right under the telephone table where he use to listen in on quite a few calls.
Is not inside the house Nancy use to be whole day?
NANCY!
(The reader got to shout...) TORY!
Right! Is not that Nancy didn't appreciate the comforts of Hector's
house but he did notice in the kitchen that Hector had a maid, two cob-web
brooms, two tins Baygon plus a tin of Shelltox in the up-stairs bath room






where Hector wife use to bathe. Hector does bathe in the downstairs
bathroom. However, Nancy make 'Heights' and set up herself right where
he was dining. Hector's kitchen he left to Hector, Hector's family and
Hector's maid.
Hector's family consisted of Hector's wife who Nancy got to know quite
well on distant terms, she had her own bedroom. Hector's teenaged
daughter (Nancy couldn't take she at all but he used to check she out for
kicks), she had her own roon.
Hector's son had his own room too. He was cool with Nancy. Nancy
had a web in there too. And Hector. Hector was forty-seven and an
important man. Hector's runnings was confidential. Being an important
man Hector sometimes use to get a telephone call from the Minister's
Secretary and Hector use to got to go and talk at meetings with the Minister
and with committees and the Bank Manager, sometimes for hours, then the
newspaper would publish that Hector going away on a 'Government
Mission'. At that time a lot of people use to phone Hector and some use to
come and see Hector at the house and talk to he quiet quiet in the study.
Nancy would overhear them enoughh time whilst he up on some shelf
running through a volume of Selected Poems which was a favourite of his
or "Capitalismand Slavery" by Eric Williams which wasequally delighting
to him. Nancy would sometimes overhear them and on a few occasions
Nancy had noticed people giving Hector some small squarish packages
before going to their cars and driving away.
Hector use to go away for a week or two weeks but Nancy didn't go as
he did pick up reasoning in the ghetto about foreign travel 'bout how Bob
Marley did pass out there and that Bunny Wailer don't travel by plane.
Nancy was a original 'Wailers' fan. As a matter of fact was some of these
same reasoning from the ghetto and Nancy experience as a ghetto spider
that save Nancy life enoughh time in he fight for survival.
NANCYI
Reader shouts ....... 'TORY!
Nancy and the maid had a constant battle for survival. Nancy and
Hector wife had a constant battle for survival. Even Hector and Hector's
daughter used to test Nancy skill. Everyday Nancy had to rebuild or repair
a web. Only Hector son didn't use to'dig nothing'. TheonlywebthatNancy
never had to worry about was the one in the T.V. room. Hector house had
a special fancy room with lacquered walls, trophies, fancy furniture and
plenty Ivy plants running up the walls.
Nancy build a house between the ivy and the wall and he call that he
tropical residence. From up there Nancy use to watch the twenty-one inch
T.V. and any other thing that taking place inside the room. Like when
Hector gone away and the children out, Nancy use to enjoy the sex films
with Hector wife and she special friends. Hector daughter use to have she
own runnings in the T.V. room too, but that use to be when she was alone
by she self. Sometimes she use to do it in she bedroom in front the mirror






or when she lay down in the soft single bed. These things use to amaze
Nancy cause they was different to what use to take place in the ghetto.
Hector son was normal. He use to smoke marijuana like everybody else.
It happen sudden. Everything in Guyana does happen sudden. Since
January everybody does belooking out for the May-June rain and yet when
it fall it does fall sudden. It come as a sudden shock to Nancy. No not a
shock, Nancy don't feel that, but like a surprise. Was only the night before
Nancy was watching late night T.V. with the whole family. Some friends
did even drop in and up in he web Nancy did hear when Hector did say
quite vehemently "They should jail that bitch!"
Well Nancy look down to see if was because the Minister was rubbing
up Hector wife leg in the dark that make Hector say that but was the T.V.
Hector did talk to as they was broadcasting Col Northe testimony and
showing Reaganface pon thescreen. During the rest of the night everything
went alright. They was drinking and smoking and eating and the Minister
who did drop in with a few friends was joking with Hector and slapping
Hector's back whilst Hector wife was pouring the Minister a fresh drink and
fulling up the Minister plate with corn-beef and chow-mein. Everybody
was happy until next morning.
Well it was Nancy who first read it in the Sunday Papers. Nancy had
another web in the letter box from which he use to read the daily papers
whenever the daily papers come early. Nancy saw it on page 3. "Hector
Under Government Enquiry". It had a photograph of Hector and the story
though brief was that the Government wasn't too happy 'bout how Hector
use to conduct the Government business. They even say that they was
taking a careful look at Hector's salary and Hector bank account. Nancy
burst out a laugh, if they was looking for Hector runnings they would have
to look for it in the other house that Hector did buy and not even Hector wife
did know 'bout that. Hector did make the carpenter build a special hiding
place and Hector did hide a whole set a square purple paper there. Nancy
did get to know that these was money from since he days in the ghetto cause
it was quite popular and people called it inflationary. However, was the
smaller gray-coloured foreign ones that Hector did like most.
Well, whole day the telephone ringing. Nobody didn't come to the
house but the Minister and all phone and he tell Hector wife not to come by
the office or check he out right now as he was busy. The Minister and all was
in the news-papers. On page four the papers did read that the Minister was
to turn a Senior Minister and that the Government was sending he to Africa
on a mission. Is not that these events that was playing out was anything big
to Nancy. Nancy born and grow in the ghetto. Nancy know 'bout runnings.
When Papa did snatch the payroll by the Bank of Guyana, Nancy been right
pon the corer gutter plaiting one another hair; same time Papa burst the
corner, clear the gutter, the payroll sail through the air; it land on sister Benji
step; Papa dear the six foot pailing-Nancy been to the party in the ghetto
that night.






These things was no big things to Nancy. Hector worries was small
potatoes to Nancy. As a matter of fact Hector didn't have no worries
compared to Beth neither. Beth had three young children, she self and the
house rent Hector had he own house, he salary, he runnings plus he had
he family. But Hector had problems. He certainly had problems because
Nancy did see he wrinkle up he forehead when he had to take off some of
the small grey money from off a pack in the new house he wife didn't know
'bout.
A few days later it come over the news that the enquiry against Hector
get dropped, and Hector resign the job. He did even go to the embassy and
talk to some body there to get a visa. That is how Hector begin travelling.
He didn't become a trader. He was just a traveller. Nobody never see he
carry anything or bring anything. Ask Nancy?
NANCY!
Reader shouts....... "TORY!
Nancy notice the small packs in the hiding place in the new house
growing fast. How Hector got them Nancy couldn't say. Nancy herself
never went overseas with Hector. He had recently read that scientist had
made a fly and fishermen use them on hooks to catch fish. Nancy say not
me. He never went.
Hector put on more weight now. He voice get more gruff too. Nancy
got a new web too, right under the passenger front seat of Hector's brand
new Mercedes one-eighty. Is anybody's guess as to how long that residence
going remain. The Mercedes got a mini vacuum cleaner. Hector wife and
the Senior Minister is even better friends now. The two of them start go up
to the new house together after Hector give her the key. He building another
one. Beth? Well Beth is another story.

NANCY!
Shout 'TORY nuh.













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THE STORY OF AMALIVACA


by AJ. SEYMOUR


Dear Ann & Joan & Margaret,

Your faces were full of a wide-eyed and shining wonder when I
told you the beginning of the story months ago, and I think it was that
wonder that made me imagine how an old blind poet John Milton who
lived some three hundred years ago might have begun it. To match that
wonder in your eyes, he might have said:

No one can tell from what far land he came
Amalivaca, or by what intent
Or whether accident. It is the same
Sometimes, chance or design, when Heaven is bent
Upon her purposes for mortal men
And shapes them as blind instruments of ill
Or good just as the pattern warrants them.

So whether it was chance or his own will
Avalivaca came.

It was a very long time ago, because all the stories seem to agree
that Amalivaca came to the land of the Caribs at the time of the Flood. I
suppose you know that there is some story of waters covering all the
earth to be found in the early history of nearly all nations, and it is fitting
that Amalivaca should come in his ark or canoe while the waters were
returning from off the earth; because the very name of our country,
Guyana, is an Amerindian word meaning "the land of waters" and his
story is mixed with our history that depends on too much or too little
water on the land.
I would say that he came in the afternoon. You could have seen no
land anywhere at the time of the flood-it was all sea and then gradually
the level of the waters fell and the mountains of Guyana began to show
their heads.
Our friend the poet would probably write:

The circling sun had not yet swung his wheel,
Leaned still his light out of the eastward sky,
The day the fabled spate came to an end
And the mantling flood contracted from the earth.
First King Roraima brought his forehead cear
Towering behind with seaward-looking eyes,








And his broad shoulders emerging from a waste
Of seething waters steel-faced like a shield
Which slowly sank!

Then Kukenaam
And next Wei-assipu-they caught the sun
And Ayanganna, so splendid in its pride
And many a mountain more, whose name to tell
Would make a hoarse deep music and would beg
The storm for thunder.

And while these islands stood
On ocean-hooded, resurrecting land
Amalivaca came.

I can imagine the great canoe coming steadily and powerfully
across the sinking waters from the direction of Trinidad. Perhaps Amali-
vaca wore a towering headdress but I want you to have the sense of his
power as he drove the canoe along.
By this time the waters had not dropped sufficiently to discover
the channels of the rivers and he had passed over the length of what is
the Essequibo, before he came to one of these rock islands we have
named as mountains. And he stopped there and did a peculiar thing.
He had on his finger a ring with a stone in it that is harder than
rock and to mark his first sight of land again, he took the stone-we
would call it a diamond nowadays-and scratched upon the rock. Any-
one of us would have cut our names perhaps but Amalivaca carved out
upon the rock a symbol of the sun which makes things grow upon the
earth and of girls dancing to show their pleasure at the fertility of the
world.

Men call the place Amalivaca stayed
The Tramen Cliff above Imbaimadai
And there he carved upon the mountain rock
Strange figures of maids dancing in the sun
Shining above them.

And from time to time Amalivaca would stop his canoe and carve
these figures and strange emblems upon the rocks. They are still to be
seen to this day and men call them "Timehri" but the message he wrote
is not always clear and writers are still trying to say what Amalivaca
meant. But Amalivaca was not only an artist and he did not spend all his
time writing poetry on the rocks, because that is what he made, a special
kind of permanent poetry. He wanted to apply his thought to his
people.








I hope you will not ask me to tell you where the other Amerindians
came from, after the Flood, because the records are not clear on that
point. There are different stories, one that four Caribs climbed to the top
of a kornoo palm and these the Flood did not reach. And yet another
says that Louquo, the God of the Heavens, or Makonaima, the Great
Spirit, took pieces of cassava and threw them backwards over his shoul-
ders and a marvellous thing happened. Those pieces of cassava, he
threw over his right shoulder changed shape and sprang up as men, and
those he threw over the left shoulder became women-perhaps because
that Is nearer to the heart.
Anyway, the Carib story goes on to say that the world was peopled
again and lived in their villages and Amalivaca came among them.
He did many things to help his people. For instance, when the dry
land was to be seen, it was found to be very rough, so Amalivaca made
the sides of many hills smooth and also the land at the bottom of the
hills. And Amalivaca said "What's the good of having a community
here and a community there and keeping separate. You must not stay
apart. You must visit one another and learn what the other tribe is
doing. The best way is always to have a path leading from your village
to the river, because the river is your road and for centuries and centu-
ries the rivers will be the only roads in this land. So make your clearing
by the banks and the rivers will bear you one to another. You have no
future as a people unless you come together and I shall teach you a new
word, federate. You would grow apart and think you lived in separate
worlds instead of separate rivers, unless you had communication and
shared your good id4as one with the other."
One day Amalivaca went out to the edge of the shelters that the
tribe used as huts and he saw men planting and asked them what it was
they were doing. They told him they were planting arrow wood, to
make arrows to protect themselves when another tribe came.
Amalivaca was angry. "How many nights have I not spent talking
to you and your wives out in the light of the stars and telling you of
Makonaima who made the stars that they should live like sisters in the
sky and men that they should live like brothers on the earth. Don't you
see that you are encouraging yourselves to war and to fighting by plant-
ing this wood. Plant more cassava, you would be planting food to eat,
not arrow wood. Arrows will never protect you from the way you feel in
your hearts whether or not you win the war with another tribe. You
must learn to protect yourself inside, from your own self, not from the
outside, with arrows. Your real enemy is inside of you, not without."
He warned them too about keeping themselves in close touch with
Makonaima, the Great Spirit A people without religion would always
disintegrate, he said, they no longer became willing to make the sacri-
fices that were necessary for a people to become great and to endure.
Because it was only when a tribe or a community cared for him the








individual, that a man gained a sense of purpose and faith in belonging
to his tribe.
Amalivaca-what did he look like? I would say that he was not
tall, but broad in the shoulders, like that other figure in stories who re-
sembles him, that old Greek, bald-headed and talkative sailor we know
as Ulysses. He was very strong and had great powers of endurance. He
could go for days on a small meal of cassava and meat or fish.
But I would be sure that he had remarkable, penetrating eyes, the
kind of eyes that would be looking at your mind and how it worked
through the windows of your own eyes and then, suddenly, you would
know that he was not seeing you anymore, because he was thinking
deeply on what he saw there.
I told you this story of Amalivaca once before when we were sit-
ting around the dining table but later I found myself wondering whether
I shouldn't write the story all down and give it to you as a Christmas
present. You see, other girls and boys may want to read it too and there
is one reason why this story of Amalivaca belongs to all the children in
Guyana and to children living in other places too. The men who study
these matters and who have written great heavy, brown-covered books
with gold lettering on them, tell us that the name Amalivaca is found
sprinkled all over the Caribbean sea, an area of some thousands of
square miles. It keeps cropping up in the legends of the Caribs that a
mother tells her children while the sun is going down to put them to
sleep, and now and then she would add, "Now dear, go to sleep and
Amalivaca will watch over you."
So perhaps Amalivaca did exist long, long ago and we're taking
scraps of stories that the Caribs have left, perhaps some in Antigua and
some in Belize and knitting the fragments together. This is just another
piece of unrecorded history that the Amerindians have given to us here
in Guyana. It has come down by word of mouth and been mingled with
so many children's dreams.
While Amalivaca was with the Caribs in Guyana he was asked to
help with the tides. As a result of the great flood, the rhythmic action of
the tides had been affected and there was only the current of the river
flowing down to the sea.
Amalivaca taught them how to make canoes, how to select certain
trunks of trees and hollow them, mainly by fire, and then shape them
into instruments of grace and power upon the water.
Then certain men complained to him how difficult it was to paddle
against the current of the river. Could he not make the current to flow
up river on one side while it was flowing down on the other. They say
that Amalivaca toiled mightily but for all his skill, he could not do what
they asked. Then he remembered the sea and he caused the tide, so the
story goes, to flow up the river many miles and as it does to this day.
But the rivers said "Should the tide go higher, all will be covered again."






So Amalivaca ceased from his labour. There is a picture I have in
my mind of Amalivaca brooding upon Kaieteur Fall. I don't know
where the picture has come from. Perhaps it's a legacy from the Amerin-
dian blood that is mingled with other blood in my veins-a sort of racial
memory-that suddenly finds expression in me after many silent genera-
tions. But here is the picture. He had gone up the rivers from near the
sea and the land had gradually changed its complexion. All had been
flat unbroken waste of trees standing sentinel upon the river's banks and
then after days the land began to swell gradually into slopes and hill-
ocks.
And then suddenly Amalivaca was in the other Guyana where the
huge cliffs clad in green trees stand at attention on either side of the
narrow river ribbon that winds in and out among tall green walls. Every
now and then, there would be a crack in the mountain walls and through
the cracks, Amalivaca could see a second rank of mountains, green clad
and standing on parade and behind them again more mountains.
Up the narrow river bed Amalivaca travelled and then, with a
twist in the ravine, there was Kaieteur, falling in ceaseless flood with a
continuous white foam breaking like modern gun-fire smoke at the bot-
tom of the fall.
In the picture that my Amerindian racial memory paints for me,
Amalivaca has climbed to the top of the fall and is on the plateau looking
down at this ceaseless vast plunge of water that has continued until the
plunge seems an almost stationary act through the centuries.
And brooding upon Kaieteur, Amalivaca is moved. Not many of
his sayings have come down to us but his sole companion on the Kai-
eteurean escarpment has left enough for us to realise that Amalivaca,
looking upon Kaieteur was moved to a sense of the littleness of man
before his Maker, and the futility of existence without Him. The few
fragments we possess of this part of the sayings of Amalivaca bear some
resemblance to the sermon on the Mount given by a Greater than he.
Amalivaca seems to have referred to some great sin that the Amer-
indian nation had committed in pre-history days-mention of which is
carefully removed from the sayings-and he prophesied how the nation
would gradually decline and sink into the position of an universally
inferior people. The land of waters, Guyana, would become the home of
peoples from all the continents of the world, some coming as conquerors,
some as slaves. And Amalivaca prophesied that for hundreds of years
these different races would live side by side until they learnt, through
joint disaster and catastrophe, to live together.
Proudly the sayings went on to tell of the fact that in the very dim
future the whole world would look at Guyana and its races living to-
gether amicably and take a lesson from the country to apply to its own
war-torn breast. Then and then only, said Amalivaca, would the Great
Spirit wipe out the sin that the Amerindians had done and that had






driven them out wandering from their original home in China, near the
Russian borders, to this Caribbean sea.
This part of the sayings of Amalivaca has come in for much criti-
cism from all as being the utterance of a visionary and some have called
it worse, but it must be set down with the others in this story.
Amalivaca also knew about music, it is claimed. To this day, there
is a large hollow stone on the plains of Maita outside a cavern where he
lived and the older Amerindians used to call it an instrument of music-
the drum of Amalivaca. His brother Vochi has also left some tales of the
wildwood wisdom of Amalivaca and the knowledge he had of stars to
guide through the forest and across the sea and of herbs to help sick ones
that he knew the magic of, in the forest ways.
Finally, there is the legend of his growing wisdom in the Guyana
region, for he knew all things, and how one day some Amerindians came
to him in a strange approach and said that they wanted to worship him
as one of their gods. This made Amalivaca very angry and then very
sorrowful and he told them that they had not understood what he had
told them. So he would have to go on to another place and teach the
same things to the people there. So one evening at sunset the Amerindi-
ans in the villages nearby came to the edge of the river to bid him good-
bye. They knew they would see Amalivaca no more and their hearts
were heavy as he climbed into the great canoe and began pulling power-
fully away from the bank out to sea, out to where the sun was setting,
down in the west.
His headdress waved in rhythm as he bent forward and back at the
paddle and the canoe steadily grew smaller. Then it seemed to them on
the bank that the canoe was heading right into the sun and it became a
mere black speck against the huge red gold disk of the sunset. Then,
suddenly, the speck was gone and the gathering darkness thickened
slowly over the empty heaving waste of waters.
And that is why to this day Amerindians say that Amalivaca went
back into the sun, from whence he had come.






REFLECTIONS ON THE ART OF STANLEY GREAVES


by RUPERT ROOPNARAINE


In real art theory does not precede practice, but
follows her. Everything is, at first, a matter of feeling.
Wassily Kandinski

I remember almost to the day when a painting of Stanley Greaves'
first burned itself into my mind. It was a late afternoon in August 1960,
over a quarter of a century ago, when I first encountered "Evolution", a
painting in the collection of Dr. Frank Williams, a discerning and early
supporter of young Guyanese artists. Unframed, it was affixed to the
Northern wall of an airy, elegant drawing room in an old plantation
house at Cove and John on the East Coast of Demerara. I recall having
been told that it rep-
resented the painter's
response to H.G.
Wells' Outline His-
tory of the World. I
may even have been
told even then that it
was a response to a
particular page of
that book.
It could have
been the big green
eye, innocent of ex-
pression with its per-
fectly curved lashes,
looking back at me
from the head of the
foetus in the exact
centre of the picture.
Or the single giant
leaf, going dry and
brown at the edges,
surprisingly tattered
considering the
supple strength of its
stem curling like the
neck of a bird from
out of the white lips
of a smooth, round, EVOLUTION






green seed. But it was not the eye of the foetus nor the leaf of the seed
that I remembered, but the long curving column of human figures, in
perfect perspective, tiny in the distance, tall and looming on the crest of a
rock in the left foreground. The column originated out of a hole in the
side of a craggy mountain: slash of bright red deep in the dark. The fig-
ures are in simple yellow outline, without detail, except for the first two
where there is detail enough to distinguish man and woman. And in the
top left of the picture, three orbital rings each with an astral body in
motion. The largest of the rings loops around the sharp tip of the leaf.
The rings are white, as is the outlined curve of the back of the foetus that
is the segment of a fourth inter-locking ring.
It is Greaves' meditation on a page of Wells. And it is very much the
young painter's enthusiastic homage to Salvador Dali and Hieronymus
Bosch. And over the years, Dali has remained for Greaves the grand-
master of technique under whose hand everyday objects were trans-
formed into luminous symbols. In the work of Bosch he was to make
contact with the power of the sense of dread and to understand its regu-
lation by the phantasmagoric image.
In all the years of remembering Guyana away from Guyana, it was
this painting, first seen on an August afternoon in the countryside, that
would bring the old house and much of the essence of Guyana back into
my mind. I was to see it again twenty years later-it is still there, grac-
ing the Northern wall of the old house-and I have come to realise that it
had been, that afternoon, the first time that any painting at all had had
such an effect and was to lodge such clear traces of itself in my mind.
"Evolution" was painted in 1955, during the period of Greaves' appren-
ticeship and earliest investigations. Looking at it now, in the company
and the context of his other works of that period, I am struck by the
extent to which all these works, and indeed all the subsequent works in
the full variety of their subjects, forms and materials, can be seen to
constitute a world, an imaginative universe with its own internal laws
and rhythms, its own codes, its own distinctive aura. An imaginative
universe renewing and enlarging itself in a restless dialogue with the real
world of men and women and nature. Every exchange recomplicates the
disposition of the elements of the imaginary world. The really important
exchanges-and some are far more important than otheM-alter the very
bases and parameters of the enquiry. On those occasions a kind of leap
takes place, and a seminal work comes into the world.
Taken all together, his sculpture, ceramics, carving and painting,
from the early 1950's to the present time, are best understood as mo-
ments of one global project, aspects of one imaginary world. In this
sense, an artist's world is something more than the accumulated output
of work. It is not in the first place a matter of quantity: a painter of a
hundred paintings, by virtue of that impressive volume of production
alone, has not necessarily created a world; whereas, in their complex of






inter-relations, the 20 pieces of another may constitute just such a uni-
verse. Although, in the case of Greaves, it is worth noting that we also
happen to be discussing a large volume of work produced consistently
over more than thirty years. Greaves' work invites us to view it as a
totalised unity within which variety and difference abound, but always
inside the boundaries that circumscribe and enclose the world. With
seemingly infinite scope for internal experimentation and refinement, its
investigations unfold within a specific space of enquiry which may ex-
pand or contract, but which exists always in strict relation to a fixed
centre. Open to external influences, whether formal and artistic (like the
Mexican Jose Clemente Orozco) or psychological and philosophical (like
CS. Jung), it draws these into its system to be absorbed or rejected as its
laws allow. The Greaves world is a particular world with its own
compulsive theoretical and technical preoccupations, its own atmos-
phere, its distinctive fauna and flora that are ruled over by its own black
sun. It is systematic, this tight network of mobile elements at home and
at play with all the other elements of the whole. It is a zone that is
immediately recognisable on entry. His is the art of totalising impulses,
powered by a narrow yet inexhaustible range of obsessions. The world
of Greaves is marked by seriality and repetition, by reflexivity and self-
allusion, and by the restless pushing outwards of frontiers from a centre
that is fixed and still.
"Askari", ("Ancestral Images No.4"), a 20" x 16" colour woodcut, is a
reduction print, one of a series that Greaves executed in 1979-80 during a
period of formal study at Howard University.
A boy is sitting in the middle ground, slightly to the right of the
print's centre. Around his head enigmatic shapes hover and swirl,
shapes of masks/faces/shields/spears/leaves. The shield-faces are
heart-shaped and anticipate the explorations of the late 80's. There are
six of them, grouped in three pairs. Another pair of faces looms in the
left foreground. These, like the small boy's, are depicted in considerable
detail, amounting even to expressiveness in the face closest to the specta-
tor, as it watches over the scene, protectively. It is the figure of the
mother. The other face, her companion's is in sharp profile. Mother,
companion and child are the only figures depicted in a naturalistic way:
the head-tie of the mother is one such naturalistic detail. These three
humans exist on the plane of reality. They are of this human world. The
other three pairs that occupy the entire space above the boy's head are
abstracted, sexless, and are not of this world. They are organised in as-
cending order, each pair larger than the one preceding. While the first
two pairs are the same way up with the points downward, the final pair
are head to toe: the second of the two, or the last of the six, is inverted
and more like a leaf/spear. In a picture full of eyes, the boy's face is
eyeless. Instead, two eyes are off to the left and right of his face, one
brown, the other green. They are closed, with teardrops falling from the

































ASKARI


right one.
The picture is muted in tone and colour and it has a strange, other-
worldly aura. For this ancestral study Greaves has chosen yellow ochre,
green and brown. Brown, the darkest and last to be applied, tinges eve-
rything. -The final brown- asserts the relation of this colour with the
yellow and green. As we shall see, it is entirely in keeping with the
integration of Greaves' world that it is the identical palette used three
years earlier in the "Canecutters" of 1977. The mysterious power of
"Askari" is partly accounted for technically by the tension between activ-
ity and passivity, business and repose, experience and innocence, that is
the informing principle that structures the print. It is a picture about
receptivity, about receiving and absorbing from the forces of knowledge
the energy and guidance human beings need if they are not to flounder
in the confusion of the world. The picture dramatises the externalisation
of the desires of the self and the journeying inward of the self's experi-
ence. The figures, some of which appear stern and menacing, that hover
around the head of the small boy are the ancestors, the truth-bearing


I)I






spirits through which we connect
with all we have been, all that we are
and all we can become. The mother-
figure draws her power and authority
from them, graphically expressed in
the sweeping lines that connect her to
them. It is a small boy who is receiv-
ing the ancestors, not a grown man.
The young boy, innocent, open,
usually at the foot of an elder, is a
recurring figure in the early paint-
ings.
"Askari" expresses and celebrates
the guardian aspect of the ancestral
spirits. It is a study on the theme of
PREACHER (Detail) guardianship. These wraiths are one
with the forest, arising out of it and
ready to melt back into it in the twinkling of an eye. They are at home.
Where the ancestors dwell, all is harmony and immanence. Theirs is that
epic place that was before the fissure of self and world. This idea of a
complete fusion with the environment of life, the dissolving of lines of
separation, is central to many of Greaves' most important paintings. It is
dramatically expressed in the seminal "Canecutters" of 1977: the labour-
ers are themselves smudged with the ash of the burnt cane, subhuman
stalks emptied of individual identity, indistinguishable from the burnt
out cane they have produced and become. "'Fore-day morning' on 1 De-
cember (1905) found the Ruimveldt factory grinding. It began to consume
coals, cane, and human labour from 4.00 A M...." Thus Walter Rodney,
writing on the 1905 Riots and expressing in that play on "consume" a
similar idea and understanding.
It is not surprising to find the signs of so many of Greaves' estab-
lished themes and permanent interests inscribed in "Askari". We have
not mentioned his deep and long-standing interest in African origins nor
sought to explain the significance of the Askari's curious social location
in the activities of penetration and conquest. Who were the Askaris?
They were the African tribesmen who accompanied the white hunter on
his safari, first guiding him to the quarry and then providing the ulti-
mate protection, even at the cost of their own lives. Should the white
hunter come under attack, his Askari would if necessary place himself in
the path of the charging animal. The Askari was the white hunter's
hunter, his eyes and ears and right hand. He was in fact his guardian.
Importantly, "Askari" is a reduction print, end result of a process of
production uniquely well-suited to Greaves' interest in the ethics of pro-
duction. The printing of each successive colour means a reduction of the
actual printing surface of the block. The first colour established will







therefore establish the number of prints that can be made. Once com-
pleted, the edition cannot be repeated. Because the printing block is pro-
gressively emptied/consumed/destroyed in the process, the final prints
are the only prints. It is, from within the very process of production and
reproduction, the assertion of the authority of the original, of its "aura",
in the age of mechanical and electronic reproduction. The print of "As-
kari" which is before me as I write is number 8 of the 10.
It is easy to understand Greaves' attraction to the reduction print as a
process of labour, with its delicate wood-carving and the sensual contact
with tools and materials it requires. The streaks in some areas of the
picture and the sharp, hard angularity of the edges are accounted for by
the particular type of block that was used. Unlike the "Ancestral Images
No. 3", another reduction print of the time, which was made from a
linoleum block, "Askari" was printed from a plywood block. The
streaky effect and the hard, sharp edges (even of the circles and curves)
were imposed by the grain of the plywood.
He would have been drawn also to the restricted colour possibilities
that brought the exacting monochromatic ideal closer. It would have
been no less a question of rigour and limits. Most importantly, with its
built-in immunity to commodification (mass-production), the reduction
print "Askari" raises the question of artistic morality and takes a stand.
In the terms of political economy, the reduction print confronts the ex-
change-value of the commodity with the use-value of art. It does this by
setting limits to its own reproducibility. Reduction prints like "Askari"
invite consideration of the antagonism between the abstract labour that
produces commodities for the market and the concrete labour that pro-
duces art for human fulfilment. From the standpoint of classical political
economy, "productive" and "unproductive" labour, respectively.
Greaves' versatility is for me a source of constant wonder. Academi-
cally trained in sculpture, he has given free play to his curiosity and
delight in adjacent and not so adjacent disciplines: steel welded figures
("Ancestral Figures", "The Cage is the Bird", both of 1980); wood carv-
ings ("Little Man", 1970, "Orissa", 1976); ceramics, pottery, prints,
mixed-media objects ("Amatuk Waterfall", 1967-mahogany, aluminum
and formica; "Flayed Culture God (Xipe Toltec)", 1970-mahogany, can-
vas, wool and wire; "Diamond Box", 1970-mahogany, glass, plaster and
paint; "Timehri" and "Dancing Figures", 1974-wood, painted tin, and
wire; and so on). In the mixed-media pieces, he is drawn to the idea of
tension produced by the interaction of the different materials. It is, in the
realm of material, a proposition about the unity of opposites. We will
see how, at certain key moments of his investigations, the resolution of
some sculptural problems will demand that particular equilibrium of
forces exerted among different materials when they are brought into
relation one to the other.
We can do little more at this stage than take note of Greaves' range








of skills and his mastery of many modes and processes. For the pur-
poses of this paper, I will confine my remaining observations to the
paintings. I have used the word "investigation" on more than one occa-
sion to indicate the intellectual curiosity, that sense of theoretical restless-
ness that is at the heart of Greaves' project. Note the tenacity with which
he sets out, in the paintings of the 1950's, of which "Preacher" and "Beg-
gar and Urchin" are typical, to resolve certain problems which begin, or
at any rate which propose themselves initially, as problems of technique.
I have in mind here the problem of the outlining of the figures. In a
practical sense, this is the challenge Greaves sets himself in these early
paintings. In one of the few commentaries on Greaves' work, Basil
Hinds, that diligent servant of art, called these paintings the "People of
the Pavement" series.




















PREACHER
In painting after painting, notwithstanding the undoubted variation
of scene, action and characters, nor the differences of strength and tone
and emphasis, the essential and original problem of the outlining of the
figures is pursued with what we have come to recognize as Greaves' un-
usual persistence. This problem will eventually resolve itself in two
ways, or better, in two forms: into considerations of the edge, as in
"Canecutters", "Black Beetle" (1977), "Channaman" (1978). And, sec-
ondly, into propositions about the inter-connectedness of people with
the space they inhabit, about the dissolving of the lines of separation and
difference that stand in the way of oneness and community. So what








began as a matter of technique has revealed itself a matter of vision. In
the best sense, Greaves is a painter of ideas. Not a thesis painter. Be-
cause the intellectual investigations are rooted in the soil of form and
technique and spring from it. And because nothing is forced.
A brief and preliminary observation on his use of colour. It was not
until his second period-through the sixties and early seventies, up to
the decisive "Mazaruni" of 1976-that Greaves began to seriously en-
gage the problems of colour. The early paintings, with their bold reds
and greens and blacks, show little evidence of interest in the expressive
use of colour. The main problem then, we recall, was the place where
colours met, not the colours themselves. Since then, however, colour has
played an increasingly important role in his work. He is today working
with fewer and fewer colours. It is as though, for reasons of artistic
scruple and rectitude, he is in rebellion against the lack of necessity, that
terrible anarchy of possibilities which confronts the painter who is free to
paint a human face green, yellow, acquamarine. There is even a witti-
cism along these lines in his "Channaman" of 1978, where the Indo-
Guyanese channaman's face and hands are bright blue, the colour of
Lord Shiva's throat. Currently, in the "Hearts and Diamonds" series,
Greaves is experimenting further with the freeing of the colours, allow-
ing them to blend and flow, nudging them here and there, guiding them
to mingle and separate as they will. These are no action paintings. More
than technique is at stake. Greaves has expressed to me in conversation
his ambition to make use strictly and only of the colours of nature-the
browns of mud, the greens of ferns, the perfectly modulated greys of a
moth's wing. He believes that purely monochromatic paintings are his
eventual destination. As in the case of the reduction print, the matter of
colour raises questions that go far beyond technique, questions that go to
the heart of the artist's relation to his art. The consideration of colour
leads to the fundamental issue of the relation between artistic freedom
and aesthetic necessity.
His current researches, being pursued with extraordinary single-
mindedness in the ongoing "Hearts and Diamonds" series, show that the
informing intelligence is more restless than ever. The rhythm of enquiry
is quickened by the urgency of the quest for repose. To date, March
1988, there have been nineteen paintings in the series. In 1986 he began
to explore the themes of hearts and diamonds in sculptural forms.
That year he executed 3 Hearts and Diamonds stoneware pieces-2
bowls and a pedestal dish. Also in 1986, the first of the two mixed-media
pieces on the theme-a vase with wooden plugs. He continued the
following year with several pieces in earthenware-4 dishes and 2 pairs
of loving cups. And then, the second mixed media piece-"Pyramid of
the Heart" (wood, velvet, mirror glass and coral), proposing a summary
and a resolution of problems that had arisen in the course of the sculp-
tural investigations. He had called on the pyramid before, in 1980, at



























PYRAMID OF THE HEART


Howard University, the season of "Askari": "Pyramid of Power" (glass
and wood) draws together wood and crystal to celebrate that glory of
symmetry that the pyramid enshrines.
From the first of the "Tantric Landscapes" of 1985 to the "Mountain
of Hearts and Diamonds" of 1987, these are the paintings of Greaves'
maturity. There can be no mistaking the mastery of technique, including
now the control over the paint. In work after work Greaves expresses his
"fascination" with what he identifies as an aesthetic as well as a mathe-
matical principle: "the principle of symmetry (which is) an aspect of
harmony." (These quotations and those that follow are taken from the Cata-
logue Notes of the joint exhibition of work, HEARTS, DIAMONDS AND
FLOWERS by Greaves and his wife, Alison Chapman-Andrews, held in March
1988 at the Barbados Museum in Bridgetown). Greaves sees these re-
searches extending to related principles: "reflection, refraction, inversion,
progression, chance and inferences of infinity." The paintings search out
the forms that express "man's need for order and for transcendence."
They are to be "looked into", not only "looked at." For all that, these are
strange and troubling pictures. The symmetries of Hearts and Diamonds
may be grids of order brought down on chaos. Yet the chaos overspills
the templates of order. Nor can all their joy of design conceal the spirit's
desolation at their heart. In "Mountain of Hearts and Diamonds", high
over the radiant mountain side the black sun that held dominion over
the landscapes of yesteryear is today's black heart































YELLOW HEARTS/WHITE DIAMONDS

What is the source of this dread that haunts canvas after canvas in
this extraordinary series of paintings? Take the painting named "Yellow
Hearts/White Diamonds". It was painted in March 1985. It is a seminal
painting.
Intricate patterns of blue lines of an even thickness stand out boldly
from a background of colours used in different tonalities and hues, mov-
ing from deep orange to yellow and orange red, and from white to neu-
tral shades of orange. It does not take us long to realise that this is no
innocent background. It is nothing less than the depiction, entirely
through the use of colour, of the vertiginous space of chaos and contin-
gency.
Whereas the blue of the grid is stable, as befits the primary instru-
ment of order, the orange ranges vertically along the black and white
tonal axis, and horizontally along the hues axis from yellow through red
to red purple. This is readily seen as soon as we refer to the Newtonian
colour wheel.
This mobility of the secondary orange along the vertical (from
patches of white to neutral shades) and the horizontal (from yellow to
orange red) is in marked contrast to the fixed and primary blue. Orange


fu
It~gCF~ :1








WHrtE
RED /
puriO ora



BLACK



BLUE ALLOW
green

is taken through a range of hues and tonalities: in its movement along
the hues axis to red purple, it stops at a point where red is a kind of
burden of the past and purple a promise of the future. Most significantly
of all, orange in its true spectrum aspect is absent from the painting. Or-
ange is implied in the tension between yellow and red. It is the occluded
middle between yellow and red. It is an orange of the mind. We are in
the midst of a methodical exploration. Even as this background of mo-
bile orange signifies the zone of contingency it does so by means of
systematic method, raging against disorder within its very articulation.
The grid of blue is brought down on to the pulsing orange. It is not a
true spectrum blue. It is a blue whose intensity is held in check by the
patches of neutral shades surrounding some of its sections. It has also
been lightened by the admixture of yellow. We will return to the dy-
namics of this blue/yellow discord.
At the level of pure form, the blue lines are both straight and curved,
now meeting at acute angles, now describing segments of incomplete
circles and ovals. The entire structure rests on the point of a triangle
enclosing two smaller triangles with which it shares a base. A parabola,
a perfect semi-circle, meets the apex of the large triangle exactly at its
midpoint. This point is also the mid-point of the slightly curved segment
of the parabola which is the base of another triangle. From the apex of
this smaller triangle, two triangles fold outwards to form a diamond.
Four hearts, right side up, are blocked in various tones of yellow. Each is
outlined or partly outlined in a fine white line that runs along the centre
of sections of the blue lines and curves, forcing these sections out further
from the canvas. This has the effect of introducing an additional dimen-
sion to the blue plane. One heart, blocked in white and upturned, fills
the apex of the first large triangle at the bottom, balancing the large
yellow heart at the top. Three small diamonds are blocked in white and







again are variously outlined in white lines running through the blue. At
the centre of the pattern, structuring it, is a cross, its vertical running
from top to bottom and dividing the painting exactly in half; its horizon-
tal, interrupted at the intersecting right angle to accommodate the central
diamond, runs straight across the canvas from left to right. The bottom
of the picture is a straight line of colours meeting the white of the canvas.
The other three sides are unfinished, smudges of colour untidy on the
white. The painting, which is four feet high and three feet wide, is a
maze through which the eye hunts for pattern and the mind for mean-
ing. The eye comes to rest in relief on the perfect semi-circle crowning
the perfect triangle at the base.
"Form alone," Kandinsky has written, "even though totally abstract
and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion. A triangle (without
the accessory consideration of its being acute or obtuse-angled or equilat-
eral) has a spiritual value of its own."
As we have seen, the painting is framed on its four sides by a border
of the unpainted white of the canvas. And we have seen how arbitrarily
the paint meets the canvas at three of the four sides, marking that "ero-
sion of the contours" that has haunted the modern philosophic mind
from Nietzsche to the existentialists. But this framing is important for
another reason: it establishes the plane (the empty canvas) above and
below which the two other planes of the picture exist. The significance of
this assertion of the three planes of the picture becomes clear as soon as
we see that the painting itself consists essentially of two planes separated
by a volume of space. Of what do these planes consist?
First, there is the blue plane, the plane of the grid of order. At the
top left and right of the picture, arcs of the blue grid are haloed in white
and white tinged with blue and purple. These haloes exist on the same
plane as the blue arcs which they surround. So too do the white and
yellow hearts and the white diamonds. Two of the yellow hearts and a
single white diamond are "complete" as forms of yellow and white. The
other hearts and diamonds are intimations, rendered incomplete by the
blue lines of the grid that mark them off and divide them.
Then there is the orange plane, the plane of organised chaos. Both
the yellow of the hearts and the white of the diamonds are among the
colours mingling and spreading on this plane. It is as though the white
and yellow have been drawn up through the volume of space that hangs
between the planes, to be caught and held in the blue grid of the first
plane. A similar movement between the two planes occurs in sections of
this second plane, where the dark shades of orange-purple are not al-
lowed to "bleed over" into the adjacent sections. Instead, a discontinu-
ity: patches of light yellow orange, where the light yellow orange is on
the first plane. This movement across the space that separates the two
planes is the essential dynamism of the picture. It is also the source of
anxiety, the space of vertigo. Hence, the reassurance of the borders of






white of the original canvas. It is after all only paint on a canvas surface.
We can anchor here. Another important relation between the two planes
is that of conflict, expressed by the juxtaposition of discordant colours.
Areas where the blue of the grid is adjacent to the red of the background
establish one of the two major discords in the painting. The other is the
blue/yellow discord, this time occurring at the level of the first plane.
The yellows, like the blue, are reduced in intensity. Hence, they are less
"disturbing". (Kandinsky: "Yellow, if steadily gazed at in any geometri-
cal form, has a disturbing influence, and reveals in the colour an insis-
tent, aggressive character. The intensification of the yellow increases the
painful shrillness of its note.")
Of blue and yellow, the visionary Wassily Kandinsky has further
written:
Two great divisions of colour occur to the mind at the
outset: into warm and cold, and into light and
dark...Generally speaking, warmth or cold in a colour means
an approach respectively to yellow or to blue... The movement
is an horizontal one, the warm colours approaching the specta-
tor, the cold ones retreating from him....
Yellow and blue have another movement which affects the
first antithesis-and ex- and concentric movement. If two
circles are drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue,
brief concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading move-
ment out from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the
spectator. The blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself,
like a snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the
spectator.

In the case of the painting under discussion, the blue is not permitted
to recede. It is held in check by its linearity. Large swathes of blue
would have had a tendency to retreat, but lines of blue reduce the move-
ment away and into itself. The blue is held even as it strains to leave.
This is a point of tension in the picture and resembles in its function the
zones of strife where discordant colours meet. This tension is most dra-
matically expressed in the yellow hearts and white diamonds glowing on
the plane of the grid. As we have seen, two of the hearts and one
diamond are complete forms of hearts and diamonds. They bear no
marks of the grid. The other three hearts and the other diamond are
caught and held in the grid, as yet unfree to emerge as final forms. The
movement of the yellow began in the depths of the lower plane and
moved up through the illusionary space to the upper plane where it is
partially held and partially free.
Finally, of the pairs of complementary colours, blue and orange have
for Greaves a particular and transcendental resonance. Characteristi-
cally, nature is the point of departure: the colour harmony of this paint-







ing was supplied to Greaves by the colours of the macaw, with its bril-
liant blue back, its breast of brilliant golden orange and the neutrals
(black and white) of its head.
The yellow hearts and white diamonds are jewels come up from the
deep. The painting suggests that victory over the fear of the abyss may
lie in a kind of surrender to it. Within itself, the painting indicates the
paths of future exploration: they begin precisely at the points of strife
and discord. It is for this reason that I have called this painting seminal: it
contains its own future.
It would be instructive to trace the evolution of motifs that recur
throughout the paintings: the potted plant, the cage, the bird, the foot,
the leaf the simple things of this world which accumulate a radiant
power from painting to painting. See how the leaf grows, now alone on
a branch, now multiplying, now magically sprouting from a staff. In
"Magic Pepper Tree" (1976), leaves spread open like fans, trinities of
leaves and branches, and are mysteriously unattached to their branches.
Where leaf should meet branch, a hot space, a field of force. In "Big
Bread" there are five plants whose stems and leaves are haloed with the
same light that glows around the great plaited loaf from which they
sprout. In different paintings (sometimes separated by years) each motif,
each recurring element, is explored for shape and texture, for colour and
pattern. The single bird flying under the great kite, its companion of the
air, multiplies into the four graceful spurwings stepping daintily across
the water lilies floating in a trench. Then a birdless cage full of the
absence of bird. And in "Blackbirds" (1981) there are seven blackbirds
sitting in a tree. The seven leaves are caught around the edge of the
segment of a circle. Seven leaves to equal seven blackbirds. Or is it
seven trees, each with its resident blackbird? In any case, the many
leaves in the top right of the picture can stand for all the trees in which
blackbirds might sit. It is a cold picture, all greens and black: blackbirds
under a black moon, forming patterns, establishing symmetries. Lines
from a famous poem of Wallace StevLns' come to mind:

I was of three minds
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

Greaves' concerns in paintings like "Swamp Birds" (1978) and
"Blackbirds" (1981) are no less about ways of seeing and imagining and
knowing. Again Stevens:

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.








This flight into the infinite comes immediately after the stanza that
speaks of the blackbird's implication in what the poet knows:
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
The lines are from Wallace Stevens' 1917 poem: Thirteen Ways of
Looking at a Blackbird.


BEGGAR AND URCHIN


It would also be useful to examine the pictorial representation of
self-consciousness within the paintings, places where the picture reflects
on its own processes. Certain of Greaves' paintings are self-reflexive in
this sense. This can be seen in the early observer figures.
In "Beggar and Urchin" (1958) he is standing off to the right, hands
clasped behind his back, not of the scene, but its essential witness.
In a later painting of the same period, "Beggars", he becomes in-
volved in the scene, an actor in the drama of the street. And see how at
the very moment that he stops being a mere witness and joins in the
activity of the world, another figure from within the group stares out of
the picture, directly at the viewer who in turn is drawn closer to the
action.








In the process, the viewer has changed places with the former wit-
ness to become the street's latest spectator.
The self-reflexivity is there, in a surprisingly whimsical way for such
a serious picture, in the little loaf lying quietly and out of sight under the
baker's table where the big loaf is laid out, a perfect little replica of the
grand original. "Big Bread", with its religious allegory and private sym-
bolism, was painted in 1971 out of Greaves' experience of his father's
dead body laid out on the mortuary table. In its most abstract form, the
representation of self-consciousness is there in the white L marking a
right-angled intersection in "Jasper Hearts and Diamonds". The white L
flaunts the sign's freedom to be a sign in and for itself. It asserts its right
to signify nothing beyond itself. Such flashes of defiance from time to
time light up the dread zone of perfect form where hearts and diamonds
meet.
I have said nothing about Greaves' writing. He has written poems
and important essays on the historical development of Guyanese art. He
is currently at work on a History of the Guyanese Art Group, having
completed the final draft of the History of the Working People's Art
Class. I have not spoken of his keen interest in calligraphy and in the
making of musical instruments. In this last area, he was a respectful
student of the old master, Louis LaRoche.
Greaves' is an exceptional art, passionately committed to the truth of
form that is at once the truth of vision.


BEGGARS



























THE WEEDING GANG


I end by venturing this: if all other records of modern Guyanese life
were to disappear, a study of Greaves' paintings of compassion of the
fifties and sixties wquld be enough to tell us how we lived, what yards
and houses we inhabited, what tools our hands held, what musical in-
struments consoled us, what forms of commerce we engaged in, what
hats and pants and dresses and shoes we wore, what leaves and birds
and flowers lit up our lives.
It is a splendid human achievement from an artist now at the height
of his powers.
And the abstract paintings? Kandinsky, finally:

The more abstract is form, the more clear
and direct is its appeal. In any composition the mate-
rial side may be more or less omitted in proportion as
the forms used are more or less material, and for them
substituted pure abstractions, or largely dematerial-
ized objects. The more an artist uses these abstracted
forms, the deeper and more confidently will he ad-
vance into the kingdom of the abstract. And after him
will follow the gazer at his pictures, who also will
have gradually acquired a greater familiarity with the
language of that kingdom.








NOTES


1. Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Translated with
an introduction by M.T.H. Sadler (Dover Publications, Inc., N.Y., 1977).
Quotations are from this edition. They are all drawn from Part II, Chap-
ters V and VI: "The Psychological Working of Colour" and "The Lan-
guage of Form and Colour."

2. In the order in which they arise in the discussion, these are the paint-
ings and objects of Stanley Greaves I have alluded to:
Evolution ................................................Hazel Williams Collection, Guyana
Askari ............................... Aubrey Williams Collection, Washington, USA
Preacher .........................................................National Collection, Guyana
Ancestral Images No. 3 ..........Dorothy Taitt Foundation (DTF) Collection
Canecutters .............................................................. DTF Collection, Guyana
Ancestral Figures ..........................Howard University, Washington, USA
The Cage is the Bird....................................................... Howard University
Little Man .................................Andre Greaves Collection, New York, USA
Orissa ...................................................................... Artist's Collection, DTF
Amatuk Waterfall................................................................... DTF Collection
Flayed Culture God (Xipe Toltec) .........................................DTF Collection
Diamond Box .......................................................................DTF Collection
Timehri .................................................................Artist's Collection, DTF
Beggar and Urchin............................................National Collection, Guyana
Black Beetle ......................................Wilson Harris Collection, London, UK
Channaman ............................................................................. DTF Collection
Mazaruni .......................................................National Collection, Guyana
Pyramid of the Heart...................................... Artist's Collection, Barbados
Pyramid of Power ........................................................Howard University
Mountain of Hearts and Diamonds.................................... DTF Collection
Yellow Hearts/White Diamonds ...........................................DT Collection
Magic Pepper Tree ..........................Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba
Big Bread .......................................................National Collection, Guyana
Blackbirds .......................................................................... Artist's Collection
Swamp Birds ........... ....................................National Collection, Guyana
Beggar and Urchin...........................................National Collection, Guyana
Beggars ..........................................................National Collection, Guyana
Jasper Hearts and Diamonds .................................................DT Collection
The Weeding Gang ..........................................National Collection, Guyana






MUSIC IN PORTUGUESE LIFE IN BRITISH GUIANA


by SR. M. NOEL MENEZES, RSM


As one writer noted: "The Portuguese are a small nation with a vast
history".[1] This vast history embraced the most renowned achieve-
ments in navigation and it is not too far-fetched to observe that Portu-
guese navigators could be considered the astronauts of their day. One
fruit of their discoveries was the wooded island of Madeira, 535 miles
from Lisbon, discovered by JoAo Goncalves Zargo and Tristao Vaz in
1419. With Portugal in the fifteenth century enjoying internal peace and
stability, a nation on the tip-toe of adventure, outward-looking and dy-
namic, Prince Henry the Navigator gave Goncalves and Vaz full support
in carrying out the povomento -the peopling of an uninhabited island,[2]
which by 1500 became one of the most productive sugar producers in the
world.
Since the legendary history of Madeira began with a love story, an
adventurous tragic drama, drama seemed to become an integral part of
the life of the island. Every writer of Madeiran history portrays that
fascinating story of Robert Machim and Anna d'Arfet who, after eloping
from London and driven off their course to Normandy by a storm,
landed on the wooded island where they eventually perished. The Eng-
lish connection was more firmly and historically established by the
Treaty of Windsor in 1386. There was more drama in the 17th century
when Madeira almost became part of Britain's possessions in Catherine
of Braganza's dowry on her marriage to Charles II. From then on special
facilities were granted to English settlers on the island; by the end of the
seventeenth century British factories, mostly wine, were established on
the island. More exciting drama was played out in the early nineteenth
century with the occupation of the island by British troops during the
Napoleonic War as the island had gained much strategic importance.
The repercussions of the constitutional struggles in Portugal, the de-
cline in the sugar trade with the consequent increasing poverty made
emigration for the hard-pressed Madeiran peasant a necessity. In the
1830s and 1840s emigration to the Madeiran seemed the key to livelihood
and possible prosperity. The movement of these people from their small
island home across the ocean to many distant lands was the main drama
of nineteenth century Madeira. The outward-looking nature of the Por-
tuguese had been nurtured by their history of maritime enterprise and
high adventure into the unknown, a movement immortalized in the epic
poem of Luis de Camoes, The Lusiads, published in 1572-a saga of
Portuguese discovery, exploration, expansion and dissemination of cul-
ture.
Yet in the 1830s the Madeirans, descendants of these adventurous







explorers, were pushed more by necessity than by romance to seek the
shores of far-off British Guiana to work on the sugar plantations soon to
lose their cheap, steady and continuous labour. Early reports of these
Madeirans high-lighted their industry and their cheerfulness.[3] Too
"imprudently laborious" they soon suffered from sickness and death
through fevers, dysentery and diarrhoea.[4] As better and more sanitary
accommodations and improved medical assistance were provided,
deaths decreased as one gets a more delightful picture of these emi-
grants; they dance and sing as the vessels dock in Georgetown and "on
their arrival at the dep6t of Plantation Poaderayen [Pouderoyen] they
begin to tune their guitars, and a general dance follows...."[5] The inher-
ent love of music, which later became expressed in the establishment of
musical bands in the colony, was one of the characteristics of the Madel-
rans, unfortunately down-played and mostly ignored.
Historical accounts of the Portuguese in British Guiana over-empha-
sized their economic prowess; they became labelled as the notorious
rum shop, provisions shop and dry goods shop owners who carried on
cut-throat competition which severely undermined the economic growth
of other ethnic groups. Mannie, the ubiquitous shop-keeper, became a
term of opprobium. It is hoped that this article will offset this long-held
view and indicate that the Portuguese played their part in the develop-
ment of aesthetic life in British Guiana, side by side with other Europe-
ans and coloureds.


FOLK CULTURE OF MADEIRA

Bronkhurst noted that "The Portuguese, not only made British Gui-
ana, a SECOND HOME, but a SECOND MADEIRA."[6] This was par-
ticularly noticable in the transmission of their culture, especially in the
line of music and drama. As a Madeiran historian noted, "...music gives
a certain polish to the most inferior stations in life".[7] Most Madeiran
peasants played a guitar of some sort, the machete or the rajdo.[8] It was
their custom to sing while labouring on the sugar plantations and crush-
ing grapes in the vineyards, composing the words of the songs as they
went along. Many of the soiigs were imbued with a saudade, a state of
longing, nostalgia for a person or place-an attribute which would be
most noted in the songs and music of the emigrants. In Madeira, "all the
trappings of a fully developed high culture"[9] co-existed with a vibrant
folk culture, expressed, above all, in folk literature (contos-tales) and in
folk songs (ballads) together with folk music, involving folk instruments
and dances performed in bright coloured costumes.
This folk culture of the Madeirans--an outpouring of song and
dance -became an integral part of their religious celebrations, their fes-
tas, in their adopted land, so much so that the English priests, unused to







that type of exuberance in church, branded their faith as a "Madeiran
type of Catholicism".[10] This love of music, in song and dance as well
as their penchant for drama, did not remain confined to church celebra-
tions. Not long after the Portuguese had secured some economic stabil-
ity they turned their attention to the arts. The desire to launch out in the
fields of drama and music would have been stimulated by a social need
to form closer links within their ranks, the need to play together, not
only work together, a need that is always the more acute when people
find themselves in an alien land with an alien culture. In 1854 they
formed a group of Portuguese Amateurs and gave an Amateur Dramatic
performance in aid of the Girls' Orphanage run by the Ursuline Sisters.
The press noted that this was the first effort of the Portuguese in this
field.[11]
It was by no means the first effort of the Madeiran Portuguese in the
field of the aesthetic and fine arts. Since the eighteenth century acade-
mies of various types had been established in Madeira-the Academia
Real das Sciencias (1779), Sociedade Funchalense dos Amigos das Sciencias e
Artes (1821) mirrored on that of the Acadmia Real Sciencias de Lisboa.
Nineteenth century cultural life in Madeira became a microcosm of
Portugal's.
The Madeirans in British Guiana introduced their culture into a very
Anglo-Saxon milieu. By the mid nineteenth century a number of Portu-
guese had made their fortune in the colony. Some of them returned to
their island home to spend it; they lavishly distributed charity to beg-
gars in Funchal and the villages, and donated large subscriptions for a
feast or public entertainment both in the city and in their own parishes.
They were termed by their Madeiran compatriots-"Demararistas". The
novel life of the Madeiran retornado intrigued the famous dramatist/
writer Snr. Dr. Alvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo. In 1859 he produced a
drama, A Familia do Demerarista, loudly acclaimed in the Madeiran
press which stated that the name of its scholarly author was sufficient
recommendation for the work.[12] When the play was produced in
Funchal in 1860 it was considered "um triumph certo ao autor e ac-
tores".[13]
It would be no exaggeration to state that the expansion of the Catho-
lic Church in British Guiana contributed to the growth and development
of the cultural activities of the Portuguese community. At the same time
the success of the cultural performances contributed very financially to
the growth of the Catholic Church. It was already noted that the pro-
ceeds of the Portuguese Amateur Dramatic group were for the benefit of
the Girls' Orphanage. The majority of performances was in aid of some
charity or church. Joel Benjamin, quoting Holmes writing in (1831) and
Schomburgk in 1840, indicates that though theatres had been in vogue in
British Guiana in the early part of the nineteenth century they did not
play a vibrant role in Guianese cultural life.[14] There seemed to be a







turn in the tide in the late 1850s and in the 1860s, which saw the estab-
lishment of the Anthenaeum where a number of plays was performed,
the Assembly Rooms and the Philarmonic Hall. Cultural societies, both
musical and dramatic, mushroomed and the latter half of the nineteenth
century was marked with a rash of plays, balls and concerts both sacred
and secular. Side by side with other amateur and professional groups
the Portuguese entered the cultural stream of music and drama in the
Guianese society.
In 1869 the Georgetown Philarmonic Society secured the services of
Dr. O. Becker as their conductor and encouraged him to open under their
auspices a music school, the Demerary Musical Institute, similar to the
conservatories in Europe and America.[15] Before this Institute got
under way, a Portuguese artiste, Miss Mary Christina De Vasconcellos,
held a Grand Concert of Sacred Music in the Assembly Rooms, built in
1857, which became the scene of innumerable concerts, theatrical per-
formances and balls until its demolition by a disastrous fire in 1945. The
second sister, Mary Amalia De Vasconcellos was also a noted singer and
featured on the programme of 8th March 1869 together with Dr. Becker.
The items on the programme illustrate the classical type, mostly Italian
works, of their selection, viz.:

1st PART
1. Introduction by the Band
2. Qual Giglio Candido, Solo from Mercadante
(by Miss Mary Christina De Vasconcellos)
3. Loetantum Coch Solo Offertorie
(by Miss Mary Amalia De Vasconcellos)
4. Duo, Flute and Piano -
(Mr. Vieira and Dr. Becker)
5. Ego Sum panis, Duetto Battorglia
(by the Two Sisters)
6. Finale of the 1st Part by the Band

2nd PART
1. Introduction by the Band
2. Cujus animan, Solo from Rossini
(by Miss M. C. De Vasconellos)
3. Quittolis, Solo Capocci
(by Miss M. A. De Vasconcellos)
4. Duo, Flute and Piano
(by Mr. Vieira and Dr. Becker)
5. Qui Sedet, Duetto Terziani
(by the Two Sisters)
6. Finale of the 2nd Part by the Band








GOD SAVE THE QUEEN
Admission 4 shillings
To commence at 8 [16]


The concert was all De Vasconcellos; indeed Mary Christina De
Vasconcellos was considered the leading artiste in British Guiana, the
"prima donna" of her day. The Colonist, reporting on Dr. Becker's
Second Grand Vocal and Instrumental Concert in the Assembly Rooms
later in 1869 noted:
Although it is not usual to name amateurs and criticise
their performance, we feel bound to say that Miss Vas-
concellos quite sustained her reputation as a singer in
the piece ("Miserere" from Trovatore) which, too, was en-
cored....[17]


ESTABLISHMENT OF BANDS

With Miss Vasconcellos blazing a musical trail in Grand Concerts the
Portuguese decided to establish a musical band. Here again they were
carrying on a Portuguese/Madeiran tradition. In Portugal band stands
were as ubiquitous as churches. They arose primarily in the Passeio
Public where royalty rubbed shoulders with commoners and bourgeois
on Sunday and the innumerable public holidays. Symphonic concerts,
sacred concerts, charity concerts, performances by military bands were
all heard in the shade of the garden where stood the band stand. Even
after the Republican Revolution changed much of that life style the band
stands remained in some cities and provincial towns.

On holidays and festival days, rival bands, often
perched on improvised stands, strove to outplay each
other, frenziedly egged on by groups of supporters who,
as often as not, ended up in physical combat, with the
wielding of sticks and the eventual transportation to the
local hospital for first aid treatment; and the interven-
tion of the Republican Guard to restore peace to its fes-
tivities. [18]

Scenes around the stand were not always so turbulent for it was a
famed setting for the arrangement of marriages and, as a Portuguese
writer so aptly deduces: "Perhaps we would not be here today if our
grandparents had not fluttered an eye, had not exchanged an acquiescent
smile, while up there on the band-stands the bands played on..."[19]
Madeira also had its Passeio Publico as well as its PraCa da Constituicgo








where on Sundays and holidays the bands played, "the people listened,
promenaded, talked, debated and flirted from afar."[20] Though every
village did not have a band stand every village had its band of local
musicians.
In this tradition "an influential body of Portuguese gentlemen" in
British Guiana founded on 1st December 1876, a musical band to which
they gave the name of the Primeiro de Dezembro in honour of the anniver-
sary of the day on which Portugal threw off the Spanish yoke-1st De-
cember 1640.[21]
Its members were already members of a charitable association and it
seemed that one of its aims was to develop a more "useful and beneficial
organization."[22] They promptly sent off the Europe an order for a
batch of musical instruments. This band grew and flourished, at one
time having over 200 subscribing members and 30 bandsmen. It played
at every known festivity in the colony. No church celebration was com-
plete without the sweet music discoursed by the Primeiro de Dezembro
band. It played on the Sea-Wall, in the Botanic Gardens, the Promenade
Gardens, the City Hall, the Assembly Rooms, the Philarmonic Hall, at
weddings, galas, bazaars and balls; there was no excursion organized by
the Portuguese without the attendance of the Band. One of its most
renowned bandmasters, Senhor JoAo Nobrega de Noronha, a former
bandmaster of the "Recreio dos Lavradores" band of Camara dos Lobos,
a fishing village in Madeira, was a talented musician who played the
flute, clarinet, violin and piano among other instruments. [23]
The Band always observed their anniversaries in grand style. On
their eleventh anniversary postponed one month later they celebrated at
Belfield at the home of the well known Portuguese racing enthusiast, Mr.
Luis Fernandes. "After a sumptuous dejeuner," reported the Daily
Chronicle, "and some lively airs were discoursed the band marching
through Victoria Village at intervals of about an hour... gave the people
the full benefit of their musical skill".[24] 1888 seemed a red-letter year
for the band; they came under a new baton, that of Mr. John Miller of
the Militia Band, and for the first time appeared in their new uniform.
These uniforms were quite arresting and made the news:
The tunic and trousers were made of blue-black cloth. A
small red seam is on the outer side of each leg of the
pants, and the tunic is braided after the style of the tu-
nics worn by the Police Inspectors. On the upper side of
the collar band, which is of gold lace, there is a red seam,
and the sleeves are also adorned with gold lace. They
also wore a peakless cap of the same texture of cloth, the
front being marked by a silver ornament plated in
gold.[25]

On Easter Monday the smartly turned-out band entertained a large







crowd in the Botanic Gardens from 4 to 6 p.m. with the following pro-
gramme of music:

PART I.

1. Quick March...."101" ........ STASNY
2. Polka.... "Kirmess" ...... FAUST
3. Potpourri ...."Les Huguenota".. MEYERBEER
4. Waltz..... "Nach des Tages last" FAUST
5. Quadrille.... "Le Mirror aux Belles" BLEGER

PART n.

1. Overture..... "Wallace"...... BISHOP
2. Mazurka....... "Constance" ... ZIKOFF
3. Selection .... "Robin Hood" ... BIRCH
4. Polka ........ "Un Ballon d'End" FAUST

It will be noticed from their repertoire-their selections of pieces and
composers-that this Philarmonic band was European-oriented in their
musical taste. Here was an example of the high culture of their Portu-
guese heritage. At the same time the folk culture expressed in the render-
ing of their simple, tuneful and meaningful songs, an integral part of
their village life in Madeira, existed side by side with the European
adoptions, and could be heard in the strumming of the rajtos outside the
shops and in the hodses.
Possibly to express this other side of Portuguese culture another
band was established in 1892--the Estudiantina Resauracdo de Demerara.
Its concert given in the Town Hall in September 1892 was hailed as "an
unequalled success".[27]
It seems that a few years later in 1898 this band was re-organized
under the title of the Tuna Unido Recreativa Portugueza composed of
twenty young Portuguese under the baton of Mr. A. Serrao. The band
consisted mostly of strings, the flute being the only reed instrument em-
ployed. There were mandolins and braggas (a kind of small Portuguese
guitar), guitars, cellos and lighter instruments.[28] Such a band was
typical of the many bands of young musicians found throughout the
island of Madeira, particularly in the villages.
The Estudiantina String Band seemed to have been newly organised
in 1898 to correspond with the lavish celebrations planned by the Portu-
guese to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the sea
route to India by the famous Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama.
1898 was a memorable year for Portuguese all over the world and the
Madeiran Portuguese in British Guiana joined with their compatriots in
honouring the achievement of da Gama in a number of activities. The








Primeiro de Dezembro Band played a major role in all events. At a concert
held on 15 July-the day of celebration-in the Promenade Gardens, the
B.G. Militia Band joined their fellow badnsmen. On this day all Portu-
guese businesses, even the rum shops, were closed, as the day was ear-
marked for festivities.[29] It was reported that the performances of the
Primeiro de Dezembro Band attracted a large audience; on that day they
must have excelled in their playing.
This year also the Primeiro de Dezembro Band celebrated the twenty-
second anniversary and was joined by both the Estudiantina Band and
the B. G. Militia in giving a moonlight concert in the Promenade Gar-
dens, At this concert the perfromance of the Estuidiantina Band was
"deservedly applauded";[30] even more noticeable were their pictur-
esque costumes, typical of the Madeiran folk dress. In British Guiana
moonlight concerts were a great favourtie among the people and these
were held in the Promenade and Botainic Gardens and on the Sea Wall,
the entrance fee being the princely sum of four cents!
For the String Band the new century brought a new look-the intro-
duction of young ladies who played the bandolins, violins and piano.
They were considered the big feature of the vocal and instrumental con-
cert given in the Town Hall on 1 June 1900.[31] They received "unquali-
fied applause" by a large audience. It was especially noted that "The
Waltz music by the bandolins was perhaps the most popular item of the
evening, the young bandolinistes being Mrs. M. L. Da Costa, Miss. E.
Serrao, Miss. V. Teixeira, Miss. M. A. Teixeira, Miss G. Henriques, Miss.
M. C. Serra, Miss. J. De Souza and Miss M. P. Gonsalves, piano.[32] A
few days later the band, fresh from its success, was again in demand
giving a patriotic concert in the Promenade Gardens, this time for the
government commemorating the entry of Lord Roberts into Pretoria.[33]
Through the first decade of the twentieth century the band played
on. On 1st December 1901 the Primeiro de Dezembro Band celebrated its
twenty-fifth anniversary. A letter to the press gave great praise to the ac-
complishments of this band, showing that over the years its playing
powers had been generally recognized and appreciated. However, it
seemed that in the last few years, absence from the colony, death and
lack of both interest and funds had thinned out its ranks. In 1901 only
sixteen playing members remained of whom Mr. V. X. de Silva, the
President and Conductor of the Band, was one of the original members;
Mr. A. Angelo de Nobrega, the Secretary and Treasurer, had joined in
1881. It was very much hoped that financial help would be forthcoming
to purchase new instruments, new uniforms, and new music. Above all
the band, claimed to be "the oldest Portuguese institution in the colony,"
stood in need of new blood.[34]
Although the band did not really return to its original complement it
was still in action, especially delighting the crowds at moonlight concerts
and on special occasions. One reads of their performances at a grand






Moonlight Coronation Concert in August 1902 on the Sea Wall to honour
the coronation of their Majesties, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra
at which they played a medley of popular English patriotic airs, includ-
ing "Rule Britannia" and "The British Grenadiers".[35] Although they
honoured the British patriotic events they never forget their own and on
such occasions the band would entertain the Portuguese Consul or Vice-
Consul at his home.
One would have noted throughout the text the observations that the
bands played to large audiences, while some reports espeically com-
mented on the fact that those large appreciative audiences were com-
posed mainly of the Portuguese community. However, it must not be
concluded that only the Portuguese enjoyed those musical entertain-
ments. The moonlight concerts held in the Gardens and on the Sea Wall
on special occasions or on public holidays were frequented by the Geor-
getown crowds, a mixed ethnic group. Comments of a crowd in a
happy, holiday mood summed up the merits and de-merits of the Portu-
guese band as illustrated in this delightful dialogue overheard on the Sea
Wall on a public holiday morning. The trams were running fully
packed. The scene was described as "a disturbed ants nest but with all
the ants in excellent humour". A donkey cart had brought the musical
stands for the band and the men had arrived in ones and twos. Shortly
after six o'clock the music began and the crowd gathered round to listen
and to criticise.
"Dey is not like de Militia," said one. "Dey will neva reach de Mili-
tia."
"Oh, dey do very well," said another. "You tink is a easy job fo' play
music, no? Wha' instrument you can play at all?"
"'E can play de fool very well," suggested a third; and there was
laughter at the expense of number 2.
The bandsmen also came in for their share of bantering criticism. It
was conjectured that the thin one had come "widout 'e tea", while it was
agreed that the bass had been made for his instrument.[37]
Whether it was the classical music of the Primeiro de Dezembro Band
or the popular music of the Estudiantina String Band; whether the music
was played at the Town Hall, Philarmonic Hall, Assembly Rooms,
Promenade or Botanic Gardens, or the Sea Wall, the Portuguese bands
were very much part of the musical scene in the colony and contributed
in no small way to the social entertainment of a wide cross section of the
population.






NOTES


1. Sarah Bradford, Portugal (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), p. 7.
2. Francis Rogers, Atlantic Islands of the Azores and the Madeiras
(North Quincy, Massachusetts, The Christopher Publishing House,
1979), p. 49.
3. Governor James Carmichael Smyth to Earl of Aberdeen, 25 May
1835. N.A.G.
4. Monthly Returns of Portuguese Emigrants-enclosures in Governor
Henry Light to Lord Stanley, No.55, 22 November 1841.
5. Mr. James Hackett to Gov. H. Light enc. in No.4, 5 July 1841-Papers
Relative to the West Indies. British Guiana, 1841-42.
6. Rev. H.V.P. Bronkhurst, The Colony of British Guiana and Its
Labouring Population (London, 1883), p.101.
7. William Combe, A History of Madeira. With a Series of Twenty-
Seven Coloured Engravings, illustrations of the Costumes, Manners
and Occupations of the Inhabitants of That Island (London: R. Ack-
erman, 1821), p.77.
8. The machete resembles a small guitar, though it has but 4 strings all
of catgut. The most difficult and classical music can be agreeably
played on the machete. See Anthony Drexel Biddle, The Land of the
Wine, being an Account of the Madeira Island at the Beginning of
the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia and San Francisco: Drexel
Biddle, 1901), n, 62.
The rajAo consisting of five strings is a well-known musical instru-
ment of the Madeirans. It was known as the local guitar in Ma-
deira-"similar to the cavaquinho of the Minho-which was taken to
Hawaii where it was adopted as the ukelele. See Emesto Veiga de
Oliveira, "Portuguese Folk Music Instruments", Atlantis, Vol. 7,
No.3 (May/June, 1987), 33.
9. Rogers, p.391. Over the years high culture penetrated folk culture in
what Rogers called "a see-saw movement", p392.
10. B.G./15 Fr. Walker to Fr. Provincial, 6 November 1861, f.481. Jesuit
Archives, London.
11. C.O. 116/16. The Colonist, 5 April 1854.
12. O Direito, No.l Quarta Feira, 2 de Novembro 1859. Archivo de Re-
gional, Funchal ...- -...
13. Ibid., No.22, Sabbada, 7 de Abril 1860. No evidence has yet been
found of this play being produced in nineteenth century Demerara.
In May 1985, however, as part of the 150th Anniversary celebrations
of the arrival of the Portuguese in British Guiana, the drama, trans-
lated by Sandra Grainger, Moder Languages Department, U.G., and
produced by the U.G. Drama Group under John Rollins, Division of
Creative Arts, waspresented over Radio Demerara.







14. Joel Benjamin, "The Early Theatre in Guyana", Kyk-Over-Al, No37
(December, 1987), 30-31.
15. The Colonist, 5 February 1869.
16. Ibid., 2 March 1869.
17. Ibid., 28 July 1869.
18. Roby Amorim, "While the Band Played On", Atlantis, Vol. 6, No.2
(May/June, 1986), 17.
19. Ibid.
20. Luis de Sousa Melo and Susan E. Farrow, Impressions of Madeira
in the Past (Funchal: Patio-English Bookshop, 1983), p.29.
21. The Watchman, 8 December 1876. N.A.G.
22. Ibid.
23. The Daily Chronicle, 25 January 1893. N.A.G.
24. Ibid., 31 January 1888.
25. Ibid., 4 April 1888.
26. Ibid., 1 April 1888.
27. Ibid., 14 September 1892.
28. Ibid., 9 October 1898. The bandmaster, A. SerrAo, was a composer in
his own right, conducting five pieces of his own composition. The
braggas were played quite admirably by small boys.
29. The Daily Chronicle, 16 July 1898. One writer signing himself
'Luso' expressed the hope that Portuguese employees in English
business places would also be given a holiday. For said he: "I am
almost certain that the English gentlemen will not deny this request
knowing especially how England benefited in the discovery of the
sea route to India by this illustrious Portuguese sailor".
30. Ibid., 2 December 1898.
31. Ibid., 3 June 1900.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 12 June 1900.
34. The Argosy, 30 November 1901.
35. The Daily Chronicle, 17 August 1902.
36. Ibid., 14 March 1888; The Daily Argosy, 17 November 1908.
37. The Daily Argosy, 17 November 1901.







LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY
IN THE POETRY OF MARTIN CARTER

By STEPHANOS STEPHANIDES

1. Introduction
The work of Martin Carter, foremost Guyanese poet and no doubt
one of the most distinguished writers of the English speaking Caribbean
to date, has been acclaimed both regionally and internationally by critics
and scholars.
However, for most readers of literature in the industrial countries of
the north, the literature of the English-speaking Caribbean begins and
ends with the Trinidadian V.S. Naipaul. It has now been agreed among
many critics that a good part of Naipaul's distinction internationally,
among equally meritorious Caribbean writers, is due to his negative
evaluation of the Caribbean experience. His writing confirms prejudices
of the industrial countries of the north regarding the south. Interestingly,
his lesser talented brother Shiva, has gained a readership in North Amer-
ica and the United Kingdom but not in his native region. Paradoxically,
his novel A Hot Country, in which Guyana serves as a model for the
fictional country Cuyama, a paradigm of a failed post-colonial society,
has never been mentioned to me in Guyana. Shiva Naipaul's novel does
little to evaluate the nation's experience through colonialism, slavery, in-
dentureship, and the post-colonial struggle for survival as an independ-
ent nation. Perhaps the difficulties and upheavals of transition from
colonialism to independence have been felt more deeply and are more
visible in Guyana than in the other English-speaking Caribbean nations
making it easy prey for Shiva Naipaul's political satire. Martin Carter
offers a radically different perspective on the Caribbean experience to the
Naipaul brothers. The approach to language and identity separates Car-
ter from the Naipauls. For the Naipauls, man's identity is defined by the
negative verdict of his history. They seem ashamed of their Caribbean
identity. In antithesis to this attitude Carter explores identity in the
ceaseless tension between man's Desire and man's fate, which is repre-
sented by Time. For Carter, language is man's key of access to the
Desire-Time polarity. In its artistic expression language can articulate
man's quest for identity. Carter's work represents a quest for life within
and without to reintegrate the individual in a divided social nexus and a
fragmented historical experience.

2. Caribbean Identity Viewed in A Hot Country by Shiva Naipaul
The novel opens with reference to a history lesson taught in
Cuyamese schools, which as in V.S. Naipaul's The Loss of El Dorado,
depicts Guyanese history as a disappointment from the arrival of the
Europeans:








It was told how Sir Walter Raleigh had come to this
wilderness. But he had found nothing worth finding-
only the overwhelming forest and tribes of miserable
aboriginals; men barely progressed beyond the Stone
Age; who painted their bodies; who lived off roots and
small wild animals; who shot fish with poisoned arrows;
who, occasionally, hunted each other's head. He came
and went away to be beheaded in the Tower of Lon-
don.[1]

Later a teacher describes the ethnic variety of Cuyamese. Rather
than a sense of the potential of a varied cultural heritage, this causes a re-
sponse of bewilderment among his students:

So it was that all the people we call Cuyamese came,
creating a blend of many peoples, many religions, many
cultures. All different and still all Cuyamese.
They looked at him and at each other and did not
know what to think or how to respond. (HC. p. 5)

The conclusion of the novel defines the Cuyamese as having no self
or soul and no creativity:

But, down deep in their hearts, the mob did not
want to create. Creation was not possible for them. (HC.
p. 184)

A void. Darkness. Unspecified hunger. That was all
they had-their darkness, their hunger. They did not
have a self, a soul, to call their own. (HC. p. 184)

3. Carter
Carter is in antithesis to the above view, not because he embraces a
facile nationalism or social optimism in the face of the negative legacy of
the colonial past and the uncertainty of no straightforward path into the
future, but because for him language is a living thing. For the Naipauls
language is a dead thing defining a static reality that has no possibility of
change. For Carter, language is a means for transformation and an at-
tempt to rescue the human being from a language that institutionalizes
its own fragmented subjectivity.
Carter puts language under scrutiny as part of his moral and artistic
concern to distinguish between a language which fosters the centering
and growth of the human being in the community and the world, and a
language which consolidates a world inimical to his fulfillment in con-
spiracy with time, 'the time', 'our time', the negative verdicts of history.








Language is a valuable tool as it is able to open up the individual's
scale of choices. But at the same time it is not innocent; by its very nature
it selects, combines, and excludes, creating its own mythic figurations to
serve its conscious and unconscious purposes. Carter draws attention to
this, beginning his most recent anthology, Poems of Affinity with a
quote from Heidegger quoting Holderlin "language, the most innocent
of all occupations, is the most dangerous of all possessions. "[2] In one of
the poems in the same anthology he warns:

As when, as out, and as when as
in, I walk decidingly about
disappear. Watch my language. (PA. p. 75)

Similarly Carter expresses in "Proem" the problematic relationship
and dissociation between the speaker/poet and the words/poem and in
turn the poem's relationship to reality. The 'rule breaking' device in the
poem/proem contrast underscores this and shows poetic language to be
endlessly moving from one level of meaning to another as soon as it is
established:
Proem
Not, in the saying of you, are you
said. Baffled and like a root
stopped by a stone you turn back questioning
the tree you feed. But what the leaves hear
is not what the roots ask. [3]

The art of Carter, and also the art of Wilson Harris as I have dis-
cussed in another essay, embraces the idea that language is a dialogue
between two polarities-desire and time, self and history. Implicit in the
dialogical nature of language is the possibility of transformation through
dialogue with itself and others. In the poem "In a certain time" this
dialogue is portrayed by Martin Carter as the hoot of an owl defying the
eye of a toad, an animal that is an instrument of black magic and, there-
fore, spiritual death:

In a certain time I have lingered.
But as an owl hoots
to startle the vile eye of a toad
and initiate its own defiance of dark:
I also speak. (PA. p. 27)

In this context impoverishment of speech comes to signify a breach
of faith in one's experience. Carter establishes a link between man's con-
struction of self, his perception of world, and language:








So now/ how come/ the.treason of thespirit? -
So now/ how come/ the bafflement of speech?
How Come? (PS. p. 94)

An intimate link is suggested here between language and historical
memory. Impoverishment of speech is an expression of a sensibility
plunderd by the negativity of historical legacy. In Carter's "Our Time" a
muttering at the bottom of trenches expresses man's incapacity to come
into harmony with 'our time'. Our perception of world and identity
depends on the struggle between time and being which is paradoxically
expressed in the following lines:

The more the men of our time we are
the more our time is. But always we
have been somewhere else. Muttering
our mouths like holes in the mud
at the bottom of trenches (PA. p. 15)

The language of the poet in his affinity with the human spirit is a
negative/affirmative dialectic to subvert the jaws of time by a loan of its
tongue. In its negation of time, language becomes an affirmation of life:

In
this world time is a snare
and I am, masticated
by its jaws. All I could have
and have done was to borrow
its tongue. With that loan
I have gained a mastery
of the language of our negative yes. (PA. p. 31)

Hence the object of the poetic quest is to uncover the potential for
being. I say potential because it is a desire in language which is in
process. This is attested to by the use the conditional in the title of the
poem "If it were given":

If it were given to me
I would have had a serious conversation
with the fertile dial of the clock of the sun.
But then, I admit, I would have had to change
the language of the dead

I would have had to haunt the cemetery where the living
believe they put away the varnished coffins
which mock them into making








wreaths for themselves and graveyards for their passions
and victories that mean nothing to them
though they win the trophy of life:
that cupped hand of anguish
open for love (but scattering pain
like seeds of padi) in the murdering drought. (PS. p. 90)

The death/sun opposition intrinsically links the nature of language
with the nature of consciousness and reveals the poetic quest to be a
quest for integration and wholeness whose objective is victory over time.
The poet is thus potentially a healer for the individual who becomes
locked in his journey towards death through experience of loss and de-
feat. The sun clock is a counter clock to the time of historical duration or
conventional time which leads to death. The operative verbs are
"change" and "haunt" making the poet's dialogue a counter dialogue
subverting the buried past in an attempt to restore man to his original
potentiality. The fertile dial of the clock of the sun, like the Heraclitean
flux or the Indian mandala, here becomes a symbol of the wholeness of
the inner self which can recreate the fragmented individual or commu-
nity identity. Carter's is not a poetry of mystical participation, for the ego
is not set adrift, but oscillates in its dialogue between polarities-ertile
dial, sun clock, life, victory, love versus language of the dead, cemetery,
coffins, graveyard, nothing, pain, drought. This tension, often imbued
with anguish and torment, is the propelling force behind man's potential
to think, feel, and grow. It is the paradox of man's existence that death,
which negates life, thus mocking the individual, also gives significance
to the act of creation, making life a trophy and victory for man.
"If it were given" in theme and structure can serve as a model for
understanding the whole span of Carter's work from the '50's to the
'80's. While there is an evolution in Carter's poetic form, there is also a
continuity in his underlying concern to explore the potential of poetic
discourse to challenge or subvert the compelling pressure of time or the
time. This is true whether the oppressor is portrayed as an external
agent as in "This Is The Dark Time My Love":
Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass?
It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader
watching you sleep and aiming at your dream. (PS. p. 42)

or as our own demeaned sensibilities as in "Our Time":
Is it only just a misfortune
to be as we are; bad luck
carefully chosen? (PA. p. 15)

I am not suggesting that there is a clear cut division in Carter's work






or in reality between external agent of oppression and demeaned sensi-
bility. Poems may refer to specific political events, the condition of Car-
ibbean man, or universal man. Oppressors may be removed, new ones
may emerge, and history may continue to plunder our sensibility; but
the main concern remains man's capacity to tap a source for the renewal
of experience.
In his poem "They Say I Am", Carter indicates the source of poems
to be in man's cosmogonic yearning; the process of creating true poems
means death to the intrusive individual ego:
Poems are written either for the dying
or the unborn, no matter what we say.
That does not mean his audience lies remote
inside a womb or some cold bed of agony.
It only means that we who want true poems
must all be born again, and die to do so. (PS. p.61)

4. Conclusion.
Carter is often referred to as a "poet of revolution". He is that in the
broadest sense. In his conception of the wholeness of the human person,
Carter's art does not involve a commitment to an unchanging world but
explores man's identity as a continuous coming-into-being in the whirl-
pool between self-destruction and self-creation. In his concern with the
paradoxes of language and the imagination, he conceives of poetic lan-
guage as a catalyst capable of raising man's awareness of his place in the
universe and his courage to overcome the contradictions of his time.


NOTES
1. Shiva Nalpapul, A Hot Country, (London: Abacus, 1984), p. 1. Hence-
forth referred to a HC.
2. Martin Carter, Poems of Affinity 1978-80, (Georgetown: Release Pub-
lications, 1980), p. xiii. Carter refers to this quotation as being from
Heidegger on Holderlin. In effect it is Holderlin's own words quoted
by Heidegger in his essay on Holderlin "Holderlin and the Essence of
Poetry". Furthermore, it is two quotes from Holderlin combined into
one. The first "language the most innocent of all occupations', is an
extract from a letter to his mother of January 1799; the second that
language "is the most dangerous of all possessions" is a quote from a
study of 1800. See "Holderlin y la esencia de la poesia" in Martin
Heidegger Arte y Poesfa (Mexico: Fondo de cultural economic, 1958.)
p. 126, p. 128, p. 129. Poems of Affinity is henceforth referred to as
PA.
3. Marter Carter, Poems of Succession, (London and Port of Spain: New
Beacon Books, 1977), P. 9. Henceforth referred to as PS.






WILSON HARRIS


Extract from an interview with Rovin Deodat
shortly after being awarded the 1987 Guyana Prize for Fiction
on December 8th 1987

(This is part of a longer interview given by Wilson Harris interpreting
various readings which he gave at the same time.)


Rovin Deodat -We are very happy to have you with us and to be able
to discuss your idea of the novel and your concept of the use of literature
in places like Guyana at their particular stage of development. One of
the concepts we have been hearing from you is this idea of "marginal-
ity". Wilson, you did mention this even at the Guyana Prize presenta-
tion. Could we ask you now to give us another look at what you see as
"marginal" and the "marginal society"?

Wilson Harris -Marginality is something one can pursue at many lev-
els. But I want to seize on something that people would relate to imme-
diately. Let us take a figure like the porkknocker.
The porkknocker is a figure I encountered in the interior of this
country. I don't know if porkknockers still move around in the interior,
they used to do when I was a young man. In those days porkknockers
could mine on the creeks, they could mine on the banks of a river, whereas
now they would need machinery to go deeper inside. There may still be
a few floating porkknockers around.
One of the things which interested me about the old time porkknock-
ers was that they would sometimes have names such as "Caesar Augus-
tus", or "Byzantine Emperor", or "the Pope".
I think this came out of their isolation, the profound necessity to
create a fiction. But it is curious that they should adorn themselves with
the apparatus of major figures of the past and of the present. I don't
think that they understood what they were doing but for me it was like a
kind of signal coming out of the unconscious of the society.
So, first of all, we see these figures playing these tremendous roles
without necessarily understanding the implications of what they were
doing, and virtually to no audience because they were living in the inte-
rior with perhaps only Dne or two companions. The next thing is that
these porkknockers were living on "the edge" and they lived on a shoe-
string.
That is what the word pork-knocking implies. You take the barrel
with the salted pork and turn it over and you knock out the last scraps of
meat because things are bad. Things are hard and you have to go on
digging in the creeks but you have to have food, you must scrape all the






time. You may have caught some fish in the river, you may get some
wild meat, but it is always scraping.
In the midst of this one could have the most peculiar and strange
conversations with these porkknockers in which one sensed a gnawing
within. Something was eating away at them. Without fully realising it
they were asking questions about why they were here? Why were they
doing something like this? And, was it gold they were looking for, or
was it something else? There was an element of hallucination, because it
can be terrifying to live alone in the Bush. You hear all sorts of whispers
and sounds in the Bush. Sometimes the rain is falling far away and just
that light drizzle from afar infuses the atmosphere of the Bush with a
misty smoke and a misty sound as if fire were running through the
leaves. You would hear strange sounds in the forests. I have known
men who were unable to remain in the forest even for a single day.
There is the case of a man who was left behind in camp when the party
went out deep into the forest. Suddenly we heard a terrible drumming.
This man had taken up a bucket, climbed a tree and was beating fiercely
on the bucket to bring us back. The isolation had gotten to him.
So you have this figure of the porkknocker, and it dawned on me
even in those younger days-I could not intellectualise it then, but it was
a deep intuition I felt-that this marginal figure was in myself, part of
the everlasting stranger in myself. The everlasting stranger in oneself is
always a figure out there who has to address one from a position of ex-
tremity.
Not only those one sympathises with, but even the people one does
not sympathise with! They are all marginal figures, because one could
be in their skins at a certain extremity. The point is that when one begins
to look at all these complications, suddenly one realises that one has the
chance of revising the premises of the great voyagers- Magellan who
circumnavigated the globe, the Portuguese navigators who came into the
Caribbean. (There were also porkknockers of African descent, Portu-
guese descent and others). These voyagers, therefore, suddenly seemed
to me to become a kind of strange porkknocker.
Remember, these voyagers would be becalmed at sea, their provi-
sions would decline, they would be at "the edge", they would look for a
shrimp in the sea or a fish or something to survive. And suddenly it
occurred to me that these great museum figures in Europe, these voyag-
ers who had circumnavigated the globe had another value. I began to
ask myself what was the value residing in these voyagers? I couldn't
answer it by going to the museum and reading the chronology there-I
would get a good historical chronicle but that didn't satisfy me because
in those histories these voyagers appeared to be simple technicians-as a
man drives a car a man could sail a ship-but is that all that the voyagers
were? Then it dawned on me that the concept of the marginal figure, like
the porkknocker, could infuse Magellan and others with a new density,







with new roots. The ocean was part of the forest of the mind, just as the
forest was part of the ocean of the mind. And you could suddenly sense
that these great voyagers would acquire new roots and new density-
that is the subversive strategy of The Infinite Rehearsal, in that the voy-
ager can no longer sit comfortably on the premises of history. These
premises have to be revised because the voyager has been out away from
his roots, his roots in which nature had elements in it which could bring
disease and malaise. But Nature also has a therapeutic thread running
through it, a visionary and therapeutic thread that becomes more illumi-
nating and luminous when one realises the very critical position one
finds one self in. Then one has to relate to that thread, as a thread which
charges one's civilisation with meaning. Otherwise you will simply suc-
cumb to the disease, to the malaise, to the deformation. That could easily
happen if people are pushed into a marginal situation where they seem
irrelevant to the civilisation.
People do become irrelevant and the fodder for authoritarian re-
gimes which may harness them to do this job or that job or which may
imprison them or treat them as doomed creatures. But the civilisation is
impoverished when it does that.
On the other hand, in a more positive sense, you begin to imbue the
great voyagers with a new density and new roots. One interrogates the
building blocks of a civilisation. Those voyages were immensely impor-
tant. It does seem to me if we are to understand their value we may
paradoxically do this from an extreme or marginal position.

Rovin Deodat -Wilson, I think one can take this one step further, but
before I do that let me ask you something that has been bothering me. I
think I now understand this concept of marginality and as you said
maybe here we have the building blocks of a new civilisation, maybe
another movement in the history of mankind. But how conscious must
the people who are involved in this new movement be of their own roles
as marginal people for that to succeed? You were saying for example that
the porkknockers were unconsciously so, the voyagers were unconsciously
so. Is there an imperative in history which would push them towards
something new or must they themselves recognize their role before this
newness can begin?

Wilson Harris -Well, that is where the community is challenged. If it
brings together the diseased parts and says that is the whole of society,
as many of the intellectuals are doing, then there is no hope. But if the
society realises what is happening then it may become extremely impor-
tant as we move into the 21st Century.
These societies could become a storehouse of creative conscience. For
example, in Carnival you may remember the man who had a donkey-
cart called "Orion Chariot". In my boyhood I used to see buses running








on the East Coast of Demerara with all these names-names which had
to do with Constellations, with Emperors and others, but why should a
man call his donkey-cart "Orion Chariot"?
We discovered not long before that, in Carnival, that something hap-
pened to a man as he was looking into a creek with a torchlight. He
shone his torch into the creek and illumined the eyes of the crocodile
which was below the water. At nights if you shine your torch into the
creek the eyes of the crocodile glow like stars, like coal. Not in the day,
only at night.
That is how we knew when crocodiles were lurking in the creeks. I
used that image to suggest that the denizens of the inferno were pulling
their weaponry, their cannon, along. The eyes of the crocodile also may
relate to a constellation within the folk imagination.
Therefore, the constellation has roots in the eyes of the crocodile and
it appears that this is a wounded apparition in the novel because earlier
the young boy who was playing on the beach was playing "crab-nebula"
and he had suffered a wound.
Once again vulnerable humanity, wounded humanity, within the
masks of Carnival, becomes imaginatively capable of grasping what is
happening to it, that it not only transfers its wounded selfhood into the
heavens, but in doing so it suddenly becomes aware that all the creatures
around it are vulnerable, even the terrifying crocodile is vulnerable be-
cause once you put that light on its eyes then you could aim a gun there
if you wanted to kill the creature.
But the point I wish to make is that these societies are plagued with
violence. You can see it right through, from Haiti through the West
Indies, into this area and further in South America. How are we going to
repair that violence unless we have a very deep-seated concept of self-
judgement? Self-judgement comes partly from the excavating of biases.
It also comes from finding new density to formidable themes-the
great Orion Constellation-you know Orion has the sword, but if you
look closely at Orion you will se one wrist is severed. Orion has suf-
fered a wound and therefore Orion relates to inner as much as outer
space, to a wounded yet implicitly transfigured humanity in the margins
of space.
I return to what I said before, History is not pure. You would think
that the burden of such enquiry would fall upon Europe. After all,
Europe has the equipment, and the institutions. But it is not falling on
Europe because Europe is prosperous. And prosperity shackles people.
Understandably it makes them less inclined to take risks. I know this is a
complex irony, an irony rooted in materialism. Prosperity should liber-
ate. Except when it becomes an absolute kind of materialism. In other
words freedom of ideological choice is becoming inhibited. But we who
live here (in the marginal societies) are so challenged that we must be
involved in this kind of enquiry. It is an unfair burden. But that is the








burden which history has placed on this community. Either this commu-
nity will become nihilistic, it will group together all its diseased parts
and say the whole society is diseased, or it will start to read these differ-
ent levels I bring in my novels. It seems to me that the fiction I write is
deeply rooted in the pysche of the marginal man and woman. Paradoxi-
cally such fiction possesses universality for that reason.
It does not possess universality because of some sophisticated com-
edy of manners narrative which you can compare to Jane Austen's works,
where people reflect on refinements of behaviour-who is good and who
is bad; and who is the hero. I do not, however, dispute that this type of
fiction has its value and importance.
But many black writers, who do not like to admit it, write comedy of
manners. Their fiction is protest, protest all the time. But when you
protest against something and that is all you do, you are conditioned by
the thing you protest against. You have to find a different way of charg-
ing the thing you protest against with a different density and different
roots. Then you begin to create questions which cause the premises on
which that thing stands to yield a capacity for revision.

Rovin Deodat -What seems to be coming out here is that, if you take a
writer like V.S. Naipaul, there you have someone with a very nihilistic
view of the Caribbean, and lately of the entire world. It seems to me that
you are at one end and someone like Naipaul is at the very opposite end.
Naipaul seems to provide a very good demonstration of your thesis of
bringing together the diseased parts and labelling it the whole-hence
reflecting a diseased world, a diseased Guyana and the Caribbean.

Wilson Harris -I have to leave that kind of comment to you.

Rovin Deodat -Is this the first time, from your point of view, that a
civilisation has had to look at the question of marginality as we have to,
or has this happened when Europe was unsettled before it moved into its
current prosperity, or the Romans or Greeks?

Wilson Harris -The Roman and Greek worlds were overturned by mar-
ginal figures-the early Christians, who were they?-at the very fringes
of the civilised world. But they were to raise questions that were to
stagger the civilised world. Those question .vere not raised by great phi-
losophers. They were not raised by the men who were at the centre of
the court. They were raised by marginal figures.
Marginality has not been properly explored. Marginality means that
you relate to a civilisation at a level where the civilisation has to question
itself and revise its premises, and that brings about an element of pro-
found self-judgement.
The violence we experience in this part of the world is not simply








violence which comes out of the Imperial world. We are continuously
blaming the Imperial world-this is not to say that the Imperial world
has not left legacies here which we have to deal with-but at a certain
level we have the authority, not the authoritarianism, the authority to
understand that our freedom is an immensely precious and valuable
asset and that freedom speaks eloquently to the world, because then you
are saying that the human person cannot be discarded, the human per-
son is not irrelevant. This is something we have to understand ourselves.
So we have to look at these forms which we have tended to accept with-
out appreciating the fact they need to be profoundly revised in the way I
am suggesting.

Rovin Deodat -In this exploration you have used memory and the
Jungian theory of the collective unconscious. How does that work for
you?

Wilson Harris -Why I tend to think that the Jungian theory of the un-
conscious does work is that over the years I have proven it for myself. I
revised my work ... but I can't go into it in detail. Let me just say that
behind this book Carnival, 172 pages, lies about 700 800 pages of draft.
As one revises, one discovers clues in the work which seem to be
planted there by someone else. I call them intuitive clues. So they come
out of the unconscious and you revise through those. Now as you revise
through those clues, you are throwing light backwards and forwards.
Very often you have to discard areas of your manuscript which seem
precious and nice. They have to go because of a kind of inner command.
Then the momentum comes. You might write 300 pages before the key
turns in the lock. Then these clues begin to come together. And a mo-
mentum is born which drives the work, in which the work seems to
"write" itself.

Rovin Deodat -I am glad you said that because I always thought that
you deliberately set out to write short novels. Most of your books are no
more than 200 pages, but behind that as you have said is an enormous
amount of work.

Wilson Harris -That is true. If I had retained all the original draft of
Carnival it would have been a much longer novel but a betrayal of the
work.









The drawing on the facing page, done in pen and ink by Stanley Greaves in the
1960's, was made in response to this poem of Wordsworth McAndrew:


LEGEND OF THE CARRION CROW
They call you Carrion Crow
scorn to eat your flesh
spit when they see you administering the last rites
call you Cathartes, the Clean-up,
yet if they only knew
the secret of your strange religion.
Once you were the silver bird of the heavens
once you flew as high and as free
as only a bird can. The sky was yours
for you were king of the air
but here
was the secret of your discontent:
it was not enough to just live and die,
not knowing. You kept asking, whence came 1?
whither go I, and why? The sky
must hold the answer, you thought,
and sought long and desperately
to glimpse what lay beyond it.
Relentlessly you fought
pitted bone and tendon
against the blue barrier that mocked you, locked you off
from the secret world behind its curvature.
But you were more determined than it knew
and could fly higher.
So you perspired at your quest
until, one inspired day, you flew
so hard and so fast against the blue
closing your wings at the last
minute for penetration
that at last you had a look at the other side.
Nobody knows what you saw
when you passed through
but you burned in that sacred blue fire
and returned, black as coals, dumb,
numb from the experience
to become this mendicant preacher
minister to those souls who die without sacrament
trading blessings for food
a saved soul for a full belly.
And now when I see you
crowding a carcass for the unction
or nailed against the sky like a crucifix
with the two spots of tarnished silver
beneath your wings where you'd closed them
I long to have you say a De Profundis for me,
when I die, and I wonder:
Was yours a punishment or a purification?

























I2)J51


siww .40AMF








Derek Walcott, The Arkansas Testament,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 112 pages.

Review by Anthony Kellman


Webster's New World Dictionary describes a testimony as "any
affirmation or declaration". The Old and New Testaments in the Bible
are considered affirmative covenants between god and man established
through the mediation of prophets. A will is also a testament, a declara-
tive "last will and testament". This preamble of definitions is not merely
the ramblings of an undisciplined reviewer, but is motivated by issues
raised in The Arkansas Testament (Derek Walcott's latest book of po-
etry), and is an attempt to find an adequate context for the discussion of
the poems.
Divided into two parts-"Here" and Elsewhere"-the poems con-
tain subjective/objective declarations concerning the poet's place in his
homeland, the Caribbean, and other northern places where he often so-
journs. Walcott's two testaments are both Old and New, underlining the
book's structural parallel with the Bible. "Here" can be seen as an Old
Testament-the poet's origins and past life in the Caribbean; while "Else-
where"-a New Testament-articulates his current experiences in the
United States where he works.
What links the two geographically disparate parts of the book is
the poet's sense of personal invisibility, and his disappointment, even at
times despair, at the human condition. Walcott's is a continuing quest to
integrate two selves fashioned by his African and European ancestries.
Because he is neither and always "Here" and "Elsewhere", Walcott, time
and time again, finds himself an outsider, an Everyman figure, "schizo-
phrenic, wrenched by two styles" ("Codicil", The Castaway, 1965).- -
From his sense of historical alienation in The Castaway and The
Star Apple Kingdom (1979); through The Fortunate Traveller (1981),
who is fortunate only in the sense that he is in a position to escape places
when they become unbearable, but who is hounded by guilt complexes;
through his penultimate collection Midsummer (1984) where in
"Gaugin" he concedes his regret that "I left [The Caribbean] too late",
Walcott in The Arkansas Testament still seems to be wrestling with his
Janus double-sided vision and uses this schizophrirenicality of Carib-
bean Man to testify to the failures of regional Independences to sustain
artists there. In a bid to find his place/the poet's place in a world of
arrogance, pride, upside-down-values and racism, Walcott presents a
personal Testament which is universal in its implications, and which
challenges the reader to be more open in terms of relationships, racial
and otherwise.
As recently characteristic in the openings of his books, Walcott








returns to the Caribbean in the poem "The Lighthouse", to his island
home St. Lucia where "Stars pierce their identical spots/over Castries..."
Nothing, apparently, has changed. The domino-slamming men in the
rum shops share the same ribald jokes, while "Unaging moonlight falls/
on the graves". The tightly-structured metre of this long poem suggests
the tenseness and apprehension the poet feels on returning home. The
imagery of the poem also reflects his psychological precariousness. The
full moon is described as "A coin tossed once overhead,/that stuck there,
not heads or tails".
The personas in this poem, very reminiscent of V.S. Naipaul's
hopeless characters, are the dispossessed, men who have become victims
of historical legacies of attrition and post-Independence victimisation.
There are drunks; an actor "lost in the post office! Stripped/A superflu-
ous character written out of script"; children running down crooked
streets, some falling, most taking "the straight/road from their galvani-
sed hell".
In "The Three Musicians", a parody of the tale of the Biblical wise
men, three down-and-out musicians go house to house on Christmas day
serenading neighbours for food and drink. These men who "eat in
silence...belt out two straights,/ then start singing like shite..." are pitied
by the master of the house who "feels/that this heart will burst" at the
sight of these three "kings".
Another character, the persona in "A Letter From The Old Guard"
who has served with Lord Alexander in the Sudan, is reduced to an
arthritic night watchman. It is Remembrance Day, and the elderly man
reflects proudly on his days in the colonial army. Today, he has very
little to show for his heroic exploits and attributes his fate to the failures
of the new Independences. He states with some bitterness: "Then we get
Independence all of a sudden/and something went. We can't run any-
thing/... we black people".
The dots of stars that mottle the sky in "The Lighthouse", suggest-
ing ellipsis or incompleteness, is the point where the poet resumes his ex-
ploration of his island/history/self with each return. The fact that Wal-
cott consistently makes this effort at coming to terms with his heritage is
a hope in itself.
Not only does Walcott have a stubborn love for his homeland, but
he is extremely courageous in his quest for stability and wholeness con-
sidering that his responses to the region are often tinged-sometimes
laced-with terror and dread. In "Cul De Sac Valley", he notes that "the
forest runs/sleeping, its eyes shut", and that "Pigeon Island/pins the sea
in its claws". This disturbing imagery underlines the poet's fear of Car-
ibbean leaders bounding into the twenty-first century through the
dark- the blind leading the blind (?)-and is articulated, I think, out of a
sense of responsibility and concern for his homeland.
In "Gros Islet", the poet's bitterness (or perhaps it is more disap-








pointment) reaches new intensity and outspokeness. Here, "There is no
wine..., no cheese, the almonds are green,/ the grapes bitter, the lan-
guage is that of slaves". And in "White Magic", white myths are praised
for their authenticity, whereas the local ones are denounced as being
unoriginal, based on ignorance. Walcott writes:
...the deer-footed, hobbling hunter, Papa Bois,
he's just Pan's clone, one more translated satyr

Our myths are ignorance, theirs is literature.

The last poem in Part 1 of the book, "The Light of the World",
highlights Walcott's guilt feelings for having "left" the Caribbean. He
says: "I had abandoned them,...left them to sing Marley's songs of sad-
ness...". Yet, he loves his people's warm neighbourliness, and feels as
though he "might suddenly start sobbing on the public transport" in
which he is travelling. He thinks that he has abandoned them and also
that they have abandoned him. He feels that he should have given them
something more tangible, but all that he can give them is "This thing I
have called "The Light of the World". Earlier in the poem, he refers to a
female muse as the Light of the World, so that it seems as though Wal-
cott is implying that what he will give his people (and perhaps this is the
best possible gift that he can truly give) is his poems, his art.
There are some beautiful poems in Part 2 of this collection as well.
This section's title poem "Elsewhere" takes a look at the effects of war. It
is really a parody of a pastoral. Children waddle in streams, there are
nearby old men, women squatting by a river, and "a stick (stirring) up a
twinkling of butterflies". Above this scene, in contrast, "flies circle their
fathers". "Salsa" is a satirical comment on the New York-izing and
Miami-izing of San Juan; "The Young Wife", an elegy written to a man
whose wife has died of cancer; "For Adrian", a fresh poem about an old
subject-departures. All these poems are tightly structured, using
Walcott's innovative ballad metre.
While there are these fine poems in this part of the book, the sec-
tion, overall, is not as assured as Part 1. Too often, it seems as though
Walcott has not fully assimilated the nuances of the northern cultures
which he writes about. Although always skillfully crafted, several of the
poems here are half-glimpsed cliched sketches. In this section, one gets a
sense of travelogue writing, mere reportage, particularly in the disap-
pointing title poem, The Arkansas Testament.
This thirteen-page poem describes the poet's sojourn in Arkansas, a
racially segregated state. He feels himself "homesick/for islands with
fringed shores", and although very acute in his observations of the
physical surroundings of the place, he lacks an authoritative tone.
The main point of this long poem, though, and one which makes
the link between the two sections, is that "I was still nothing". The poet






is exiled both "Here" and "Elsewhere". In the Caribbean, he is alienated
as an artist; in Arkansas, because he is a black man. Once, in a cafeteria
"I looked for my own area", he writes. "The muttering black decanter/
had all I needed; it could sigh for /Sherman's smoking march to At-
lanta/or the march to Montgomery". The sunshine in Arkansas is cold.
Fearing rejection, the poet asks: "Will I be a citizen/or an afterthought of
the state?"
It is the fear of regional rejection which drove Caribbean writers to
the Metropolis in the 1950s and 60s, and which is still driving New
Generation writers to the U.S.A. and Canada-those who can leave. It is
this sense of rejection at home which is at the heart of Derek Walcott's
disappointment in the Caribbean. When Bruce King in his introduction
to World Literature in English (Chelsea Associates, New York, 1987)-a
new anthology of Third World poetry and fiction featuring such West
Indian writers as Edward Brathwaite, Andrew Salkey, Tom Clarke and
this writer-says that unlike Walcott, New Generation writers in the
Caribbean no longer have to self-publish, I wonder which Caribbean Mr.
King is talking about. Scores of younger writers-certainly in St. Lucia,
St. Kitts, Grenada, St. Vincent, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago-are
still forced to publish their own chapbooks because of the lack of outlets.
Have things in this area really changed so drastically since Walcott's
day? In a sense, The Arkansas Testament suggests that things have
gotten worse.
The hope in The Arkansas Testament is that while the wandering
poet may be nothing, by that very nothingness he has the potential to
contain and be everything. The book is also a testament to the need of
people whether Caribbean or North American-to be less parochial and
provincial in their outlooks on life. As Walcott states in "Tomorrow,
Tomorrow":

To have loved one horizon is insularity;
it blindfolds vision, it narrows experience.







A Shapely Fire. Changing the Literary Landscape.
Edited by Cyril Dabydeen. Oakville, Cedar Press, 1987.

A Review by Alim Hosein


The increased migration of people for various reasons this past cen-
tury has had a number of implications, not the least of which, to the
student of Literature, are the implications for the Literature that such
people produce in their new countries. In some countries, for example
the United States of America, the existing Literature has been considera-
bly added to by people who are migrants or whose parents were mi-
grants. But sizeable proportions of such Literatures have received dis-
tinction as Literatures in their own right. Hence, we have such additions
to the Literary dictionary as "Black American" and "Jewish American"
Literatures. But some people still ask the question: "Why isn't 'Black
American' Literature simply called 'Black' Literature, or why isn't Jew-
ish American' Literature referred to as 'Jewish' Literature, or why aren't
both simply called 'American' Literature? The question, perhaps has
some force. The tendency to create such hybrid names may be abused
by persons who are partial to labels. Such labels, too, may mean nothing
even to the writer who is so described. On the other hand, they may be
valid descriptions of new currents in Literature.
A recently-published collection of short stories, a play and poems
provides fuel for such consideration. Entitled A Shapely Fire. Chang-
ing the Literary Landscape, this collection not only pulls together some
writing done by West Indians living and writing in Canada, but it also
proposes that such writing constitutes a new category in Literature: Car-
ibbean Canadian Literature. The editor, Guyanese Cyril Dabydeen, sub-
mits that a Caribbean Canadian Literature is in evolution in a quiet man-
ner ("in the closet") but he also points to the fact that a growing number
of Caribbean emigre writers are appearing in regular journals and maga-
zines.
The subtitle, Changing the Literary Landscape, makes such a strong
claim that it must be the essential thing to consider. The only definition
of this Literature that Dabydeen offers is that it is a "significant manifes-
tation" of a "vitality f ose and poetry by Caribbean writers who have
made their home in a .. continually shaping and being shaped by
the spirit of place". Morev r, in his Introduction, he suggests a clear
distinction between Caribba Literature or even Caribbean writing in
exile, and Caribbean Canadian Literature when he relates the essential
effect of the Literature heroposes to the strengthening of Canadian
nationhood:
In this context, a real shaping is constantly taking place;
the collective Canadian spirit is enhanced and enriched







by the varied cultural streams and in the fusion of old
and new traditions towards a vital celebration of the
oneness of the evolving Canadian consciousness.

Indeed, there are pieces in this collection which elaborate instances
of intersection of Caribbean and Canadian values, or in which the Carib-
bean mind brings together Caribbean and Canadian images as it muses
in the Canadian context. Daniel Caudeiron's "Day Shift/Night Shift":

At Queen and Spadina
the traffic thunders on, squeezing left
for road repairs, Babylon and Babel converge,
near misses, kissing fenders aqui se habla espanol.
fala Portugues,
Chinese varieties, Jamaican groceries ...

and "Caribana"

Toronto moving
Southbound
Colours
bodies ...

Karl Gordon's "Strangers at a Glance"

But tomorrow
It will be spring
And tomorrow
Life begins anew
In its hopeful struggle
To find the promised warmth
This strange new clime.

and Dabydeen's

Across the ocean, Atlantic's swell
And billow. I taste cod
In Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad
and Demerara-more trade. In Newfoundland
Later, I lie drunkenly-

... all explore the dialectics of context, the areas of possibility for authen-
ticity through the connection of Caribbean spirit and Canadian land-
scape.
The stories continue the theme. Together, they map the various







ways in which the West Indian responds to the nuances of his new
physical and spiritual context. Thus, sometimes we see him caught be-
tween Canada and the Caribbean (like Sylvie is, in Dabydeen's "Ain't
Got no Cash"); as a total outsider without hope of achieving accommo-
dation (like Marie-Ann in Gerard Etienne's "Deaf Woman") or as a po-
tent, if quiet, catalyst (like the Jamaican in Austin Clarke's "Give it a
Shot")
But while these examples signal some of the new directions which
West Indian writers are taking, whether this constitutes even the begin-
ning of a new branch in Literature is still questionable. Is this a new
Literature or is it part of the natural development of Caribbean Litera-
ture? The inclusion of the play, Roderick Walcott's "Cul de Sac", some of
the stories: Samuel Selvon's "Zeppy's Machine", Madeline
Coopsammy's "The Tick Tick Bicycle", Neil Bissoondath's "Insecurity"
and some of the poems such as Lilian Allen's "Belly Woman's Lament"
and "Marriage", Dionne Brand's "P.P.S. Grenada" to name a few, which
are all retrievals and evaluations bearing on Caribbean life, does not help
the case either. Dabydeen includes these as examples of what he calls
the "there" aspect of Caribbean Canadian Literature, the experience of

the immediacy of beginnings in what has been called the
there, the place where one came from, seen in terms of the
palpable residues of the spirit manifested in powerful feel-
ings, often of nostalgia, or seeking an enduring identity ...

But this is not very useful. It is difficult to see how such pieces may be
called Canadian in any sense. Much literature about the Caribbean has
been written outside the Caribbean-for example, in Britain-without
claims being made for, for example, a "Caribbean British" Literature.
Does the fact that a story or play or poem was written by a West Indian
living in Canada create a new Literature? Does the location in which a
story was written override the importance of the location about which it
is vitally concerned? Or should the claim for such a Literature be based
on the preposition that an exceptional imaginative process is happening,
resulting in the creation of a unique Literature? In relation to the par-
ticular type of Literature being proposed in this collection, should the
reader not expect it to be perceivably different from both Canadian
Literature and Caribbean Literature even though it may be powerfully
informed by both these traditions?
Yet, A Shapely Fire, including Guyanese, Trinidadian, Barbadian, St.
Lucian, Haitian and Jamaican writers, does justify itself by giving notice
of the many not-so-well-known Caribbean writers working in Canada,
and by showing that these writers handle their material with self-assur-
ance and skill.





CONTRIBUTORS


CYRIL DABYDEEN Guyanese and Canadian poet and short story
writer; Poet Laureate of Ottawa, 1984-86; book of poems Island Lovelier
Than A Vision was published by the Peepal Tree Press in 1986; his work
has appeared in over 100 publications.
MCDONALD DASH Guyanese journalist and editor for many years;
playwright and producer; now lives in New York.
ROVIN DEODAT- Guyanese journalist and commentator.
VIBART IAN DUNCAN- Guyanese performance poet and story teller.
GLORIA ESCOFFERY Distinguished Jamaican painter; outstanding art
critic for Jamaica Journal; poet.
CECIL GRAY Noted Trinidadian writer, editor, and lecturer; now lives
in Canada.
STANLEY GREAVES Outstanding Guyanese painter; poet; for many
years lectured on art at the University of Guyana; now lives in Barbados.
WILSON HARRIS Guyanese by birth; among the most original thinkers
and novelists in modern literature; his numerous novels include The
Guyana Quartet and The Eye of the Scarecrow; his novel Carnival won
the 1987 Guyana Prize for Fiction; his latest is The Infinite Rehearsal.
ALIM HOSEIN Guyanese art and literature critic; lecturer in the Depart-
ment of English, University of Guyana.
ANTHONY KELLMAN Barbados poet and short story writer; his collec-
tion of poems include: The Black Madonna and Other Poems (1975), In
Depths of Burning Light (1982), The Broken Sun (1984); at present
studying at Louisiana State University.
MARK McWATT Guyanese poet; senior lecturer in the English Depart-
ment U.W.I., Cave Hill; editor of Journal of West Indian Literature; first
book of poems INTERIORS recently published by Dangaroo Press.
SISTER MARY NOEL MENEZES, R.S.M. Distinguished historian; au-
thor of many books particularly on the Amerindians and Portuguese in
Guyana; Professor of History, University of Guyana.
RAS MICHAEL Guyanese performance poet and storyteller; collections
of his work include Black Chant and Church and State; editor of new
magazine Survival.
ROOPLALL MONAR Guyanese poet, short story writer and novelist,
Peepal Tree press has published a collection of short stories, Backdam
People, and a volume of poems, Koker; two further collections of stories,
High House and Radio and Estate People, and a novel, Jhanjat, are due
to be published in 1989.
RUPERT ROOPNARAINE Guyanese critic and poet; lecturer in English,
University of Guyana.
STEPHANOS STEPHANIDES Native of Cyprus; 1978-1985, Senior Lec-
turer in English in the University of Guyana; currently works in Wash-
ington; recently completed a translation from Portuguese to English of
the nineteenth century work British Guiana by Adelino Neves e Mello.






ISSN
1012-5094


- I- 1-11111 LI




Full Text

PAGE 1

KYKOVIR AL 39 DECEMBER, 1988

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FRIENDS OF ICYK-OVER-AL A great many individuals and organisations have contributed to the succell of ICyk-Over--Al since it was relaunched in December, 1984. We owe a very special debt of to the following for their support of issue No. 39. Their vigorous assistance so readily offered in strengthening an important part of Guyana's cultural tradition deserves the thanks of the whole community. '/: Associated Industries Limited Bank of Nova Scotia Banks Dl.H. Bauxite Industry Development Company Brass Aluminium and Cast Iron Foundry C. Czamikow Inc. (New York) CX Newbridge (Guyana) T. Geddes Grant Guyana Fertilizer Guyana Liquor Corporation' Guyana National Cooperative Bank Guyana National Trading Corporation Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation Guyana Stores Umited Guyana Sugar Corporation Guyana and Trinidad Mutual Fire Insurance Hand-in-Hand Mutual Fire Insurance Laparkan (Agent for Canon Copiers and Fax Machines) National Bank of Industry and Commerce Republic Bank Shell Antilles and Guianas Sir Shri
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KYK 39 -Edited by A.J. Seymour and Ian McDonald AaoII the Editon' Desk Poetry Caribbean Basin Children Lady Northrote AuntyPanty Ftaygroun FoRent Looking at the River Folklore Incident past Midnight, Bucksands Scholar Lost and Found Three Drawings by Stanley Greaves Fiction Extract fromlheNovel "Massala Maraj" Nancy Pilgrimage The Story of Amalivaca Article. Reflections on the Art of Stanley Greaves Music in Portuguese Life in British Guiana Language and Identity in the Poetry of Martin Carter Extract from an Interview with Wilson Harris Reviews "The Arkansas Testament" Vibart Ian Duncan Vibart Ian Duncan McDonald Dash Cyril Dabydeen Ian McDonald Ian McDonald Gloria Escoffery Rooplall Monar RasMichael A.J. Seymour 2 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 19 20 21 22 25,40,89 26 36 41 Rupert Roopnaraitle 47 Sr. M. Noel Menezes 65 Stephanos Stephanides 76 Rovin Deodat 82 by Derek Walcott Anthony Kellman 90 N A Shapely Fire. Changing the Literary Landscape" Ed. Cyril Dabyd:een A1im Hosein 94

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ACROSS TIlE ED ITOR'S DESK Demerara P ublishers The last two issues o f Kyk, Nos 37 and 38 and this i ssue No. 39, were designed and typeset b y De merara Publishers Limited This involvement with that new Company marks a significant stage in the life of the magazine . In recen t years there has been a sad decline in book-publishing in Guyana. At the same time lack o f fo reign exchange has cut the suppl y of imported books to a trickle Th e resulting readers' drought has coincided with the coming of Televis ion. Guyana is well on its way to becoming a nation where the young wi ll have no taste for books. The impact on liter a cy and educational standards is apparent and the situation is worsening. Those concerned must do what t hey can. A few have fonned Deme rara Publishers as a non-profit found ati o n. The Company was fonned a t the end of 1987 to undertake ''Desk top Publishing in Guyana. It is dedicated to producing and publishing maga zines and books (reprints and origi nal work) in Guyana which will be useful in education and which w ill make a contribution to the history, culture, and literature of the coun try. In twelve months progress has been made, considerably assisted by a grant of Can$50,OOO from t he Canadian Government. Demerara Publishers has helped in the reprinting o f P e ter Ruhomon's classic Centenary History of East Indians in British Guiana, has assisted in producing the last 3 i ssues of Kyk-Over-Al, and has played a part in the publication of half a-dozen other publications Majo r projec ts n o w include the publication of Martin Carter's Selected Poems and A.J.Seymour's Collected Poems, the produc tion of a History of the Chi n ese in Guyana producing a new magazine for creative talen t i n the oral t ra d ition to be called Survival and a magazine for children, and publishin g a v o l u me of Sir Sridath Ramphal's speeches Indeed, the danger already i s tha t the submission of valuable material will overwhelm practica lity. i s piea Sed to be part of this vigorous effort to renew the availability o f good books a n d magazines in Guyana The Saving of Boo k s It isn t only in Guyana that book reading is in danger. George St einer, an outstanding American intellectual, and Joseph Brodsk y, winne r of the 1987 Nobel Prize for lite r a ture, have both made speeches recently warning of the death of boo k s .1n many cultures, Steiner points out, the reading of books is neither natural n o r na tive. A lot of the old impulse to write books came from a thirst for immor ta lity which is now felt to be "not only elitist but simply embarrassin g". Joseph Brodsky agrees, saying that holding a book in one s hand i s a litt l e like fondling an urn already rustling with someone's ashes. Books, Steiner says, n eed t he sort of pri v ate space and silence which i s 2

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hardly available any longer. Some 85%-of American adolescents "can no longer take in a printed page if their act of reading does not have an accompanying background of e lectronic noise". Steiner fears that people may revert to listening to words while looking merely at pictures. "The book today," he says, "is antiquarian, as luxurious an instrument as was the illuminated manuscript after Gutenberg". Joseph Brodsky feels that books have simply become too many. Read ing them takes too much time. The answer, he suggests, is to abandon prose and concentrate on poetry which not only teaches "the value of each word" but, above all, "develops in prose that appetite for metapysics that distin guishes a work of art from mere belles lettres". What the modem reader should do, if his confidence in books is flagging, is to read all the available works of major poetry in his own language in the last century. Within a few months the reader's literary taste will be "in great shape". The cure George Steiner offers for the reading sickness is much the same He tells the story of Erasmus, who, "walking home on a foul night, glimpsed a tiny fragment of print in the mire. He bent down, seized it and lifted it to a flickering light with a cry of thankful joy Here was a miracle:";" Steiner hopes that a return of "that sense of the miraculous in the fact of a demandin g text" -the virtue, above all, of poetry-may, in the end, be the saving of books. The Sandberry Press in Jamaica We are extremely pleased to note the establishment of the Sandberry Press in Jamaica. This new press has announced the first three titles in its Caribbean Poetry Series : 1. LOGGERHEAD by Gloria Escoffery. 2. A TALE FROM THE RAIN FOREST by Edward Baugh. 3. JOURNEY POEM by Pamela Mordecai. Orders for these books can be sent to DeBrosse, Redman, Black & Co., 8 College Close, Kingston 7, Jamaica, West Indies. We have received a copy of Gloria Escoffery's Loggerhead Gloria Escoffery is primarily a painter. However, a number of her poems have been published in such anthologies as the two Caribbean Voices volumes, Breaklight, more recently; The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse and Caribbean Poetry Now. She currently contributes a regular and outstand ingly perceptive art column to the Jamaica Journal. Loggerhead is a lovely collection of her very painterly poems-excellently produced by The Sandberry Press. The book is a splendid advertisement for this new and very welcome addition to the Caribbean's publishing arsenal which needs all the augmenting it can possibly get. Readers of Kyk and lovers of poetry will, we sincerely hope, buy Sandberry publications as soon as they appear. 3

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Imagination and Poetry We have been reading an excellent new b iography of Alexander Pope by Maynard Mack. In the Preface to his magnificent translation of Homer's Iliad Pope writes that imagination, or "invention" lies at the heart of poetry and i s the distinctive attribute of genius in all fields. Homer is universally allow'd to have had the greatest Inven tion of any Writer whatever . Nor is i t a Wonder if he has ever been acknowledge d the greatest of Poets, who most excell'd in That which is the very Foundation of Poetry. It is the Invention that in diffeen t degrees distinguishes all great Genius's : The utmost Stretch of Human Study, Learning, and Industry, which masters every thing besides, can never attain to this. It fur nishes Art with all her Materials, and without it Judgmentitself can at best but steal wisely: For Art is only like a prudent Steward that li ves on managing the Riches of Nature. What ever Praises may be given to Works of Judgment, there is not even a single Beauty in them to which the Invention must not contribute '1 Shake Hands With You In My Heart" Harry Chambers, editor and director of the publishers Peterloo Poets in England (celebrating the publication of its 100th poetry title on November 29th 1988), has sent us an article, "Poetry Matters", in which he discusses the triumphs and tribulations of a publisher of poetry. In a concluding passage he sets out what he seeks in poetry : What I am looking for in poetry is "heart-rending sense" the phrase was coined by Robert Graves-or the "shiver down the spine described by A.E.Housman in The Fame and Nature of Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1933) These come from an originality of vision and a freshness of language brought to bear upon the most important areas of common human expe rience I feel that poetry should make us think more deeply about our lives and our relationships and that it should often, in Philip Larkin's memorable words, nudge us from comfort" I have a preference for poetry that is in touch with the language of the age. I expect a good poem to move me. like A.E. Housman and Philip Larkin, I feel tha t poetry is a matter more of the emotions than the intellect. I have no enthusiasm for too much cleverness or obscurity, uriless it is of the kind that Philip Larkin (RJUlio Times, 16th August 1973) called '1uminous and wonder-generating obscurity". I am not keen on the poetry equi valent of abstract painting, and I must confess to a liking for poems that are peopled. I think good poems can be complex, operate on many levels, without being difficult. 4

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Leslie Stephen once wrote something like: "The poet's task is to move our hearts by revealing his own, and not to display his learning, or mimic the fine notes of his predecessors ... Such a magnificent moUo-<)ne that Hardy copied out into his notebooks and that Larkin was fond of quoting-is also good enough for me. Good poetry should be accessible to all who can read and have feelings. It should provoke the response of the Old Domestic Servant who found some of William Barnes's poems in a pile of books that she was dusting and wrote to him in 1869: 'Sir, I shook hands with you in my heart, and I laughed and cried by turns'. That, we believe, is well said. Offerings This is an interesting publication which helps to meet the growing need for home-based Guyanese writers in aU disciplines to develop forums to express their views and expose their work. There have been two issues of Offerings to date-the first published in April, 1987, and the second in November, 1987 The purpose of the magazine is crystallised in the second issue as follows: The aspiration is to reflect the plural and multi-cultural con cerns of the Guyanese society. However, there will be issues that will feature academic and literary works specific to an ethnic or other grouping such as women, professionals, etc. Others, like the present one, will be more general in focus. As suggested by the title, it is the intention of OFFERINGS to provide Guyana with popular literature and simultaneously offer writers a responsible vehicle for expression. Among other items, the second issue of Offerings contains poems by the promising Sasenarine Persaud among others, fiction by Rosetta Khalideen, an extract from the unpublished novel 'DEAR DEA lH', also by Sasenarine Persaud, and articles by Frank Long on Indigenous Technology, Kampta Karran on Planning, Iris Sukdeo on Hindu Customs, and Roy Brummell on Folk Lore. One point to make is that in future greater care should be taken in binding this magazine. The first two copies of the magazine that we obtained had some pages bound out of sequence and some are completely missing. Offerings was founded, and is edited and published, by Kampta Karran. Enquiries and contributions should be addressed to: Kampta Karran, Offerings Publication, Belle Vue Pilot Scheme, West Bank Demer ara, Guyana. 5

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The Cause of Fiction With his kind permission we reproduce one of Wayne Brown's brilliant contributions to the Trinidad Express. This article, which appeared on March 23, 1988, rang a number ofbeUs. Its relevance and appropriateness to writing and writers throughout the West Indies (and further) does not fade. THE CAUSE OF FlCflON I want to write beautifully, create beautifully, not outside but in this thing in which I am born, in this place where, in the midst of ugly towns, cities, Fords, moving pictures, I have always lived, must always live. I do not want even those old monks at Chartres, building their Cathedrals, to be at bottom any purer than myself. (Sherwood Anderson) One of the small but recurring heartbreaks of writing this column is this. Regularly over the past five years (has it really been so long?) young writers have brought their manuscripts to my door for discussion; and to me has fallen the wearying task of initiating them into some of the facts of life, and watching their gaze cloud over, as I talk, with all the depressing D's: doubt, dismay, disappointment, distrust, dislike. Few, so far as I know, have ever left without at least harbouring the suspicion that I was "trying to make them feel small." (Well, I was). None, so far as I know, has ever acquiesced in feeling small enough to actually learn anything-beginning with the notion of service. Indeed, one recent pilgrim left my house, telling me that he found my line-by-line patience with his excitable prose "funny", since he was-he informed me tensely-Ita better writer than you." Well, that's fine. The surprising thing is not that so much of the work is hopelessly bad, or just plain illiterate; because it isn't. That at least would leave one free to toss at them the famous Naipaullian quip (''This is absolutely terrible! Promise me you'll never write anything again. But listen, you have beautiful handwriting! Have you ever thought of applying for a job as a law clerk?"). But it isn't like that at all. By now I would lay claim to being something of an authority on the unpublished, and unpublishable, manuscripts of young Trinidad; they constitute among them a kind of eerie, invisible sub-culture in this loud country; and I hope you'll believe me: there is more "potential,"more "promise" for fiction writing in this country than any population of a million-plus souls has any right to expect. And yet, at the end of the day, it just isn't happening. Thinking about this evoked for me the image of a yacht race that took place in the Gulf recently. The wind was blowing strongly, but it stopped, as if blocked by a wall, 100 metres or so from the next mark on the course. The first boat to sail incontinently through that wall was immediately becalmed, and sat there, sails disconsolately flapping, with nothing to do 6

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and nowhere to go; and the follow ing bo a ts, r ecognising this, turned away to stay on the wind side ofthe wa ll. In this way the stragglers caught up, and soon there were 25 boats sailing up and down a long the perimeter of an inv i s ib le semicircle at whose cen tr e lay the prized mark none dared a pproach-not with the becalmed bo a t s itti n g there, sails flapping, like a scarecrow warning : Come no further. So n ear and yet so far, you might say ; and that is the heartbreak of young fiction writers in Trinidad Why is this? I don't know. I could trot out a doze n a cade mic explanations, but the truth is, I don't know. But I know there is always som e c o rruption: some ambition which is either ludicrously wide of reality, or oth e rwise well intended and sad. Chief among the first is a kind of f iction within the fiction : the young author's fantasy that the manuscript scalding his hands is destined to be "a bestseller". Standing between bestsellerdom, and all that implies (money fame, money, reading tours, money, movie rights money!) is only the small hurdle of finding a publisher. A bestseller! Who do these kids think they a re, and what country do they think they're living in? Do they really believe that because they can put on designer jeans and strut around in malls and "pubs", they are part of that world that deals in "bestsellers," that all t he y need is to find a publisher? Can t hey, by no means talentless, o nly young, really be so ignorant of the p rivilege of our poverty here, as to n ot know what fate awaits them? And what will they do wqen they find out-s top writing, become a lawyer or a doc t or, sell something? But you cannot argue with this type; cannot begin to introduce the notion of service, or service to what. (One character told me insultingly in conclusion that he hadn't really come for my opinion-<>nly to find out if I would help him find a publisher for hi s manuscript which, he was sure would be "a bestseller") One shou l d be inured by now to this kind of thing, to play-play writers living in a pla y -pla y af the mind country. But it s w earying, nonetheless: the same old ico nogr aphy of betrayal of the gift, year by year. There is another kind of betr ayal one that is subtler ;and Sadder. A young woman came to me t he oth e r day with a manuscript of stories she'd written. I read them; and, not for the first time, was surprised and pleased to see the fiction writer's gi ft d is played on the page. Her stories were inexperienced and amateurish; the y s howed every sign of having been written by someone writing in iso l ati on-someone who has had no contact with o lder and better writers then herself. But her prose was literate, even musical; her imaginative grasp was, m ost times, sound; and she had shouldered, most of the time, with uncommon cha r a cter, the double burden of responsibility to her society (which means to sa y to the suffering and the poor), and to the muse of fiction, the balanced apprehens ion of felt life 7

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Apart from her inexperience, her only fault was an intermittent preachiness. From time to time, betraying the inviolability of felt life, she stepped from the shadows where every fiction writer belongs to lecture her audience directly. But when I pointed this out to her, she haulked. It was true, she said; too true, too true. But then, she concluded sadly, maybe she shouldn' t write fiction. She felt too strongly about certain issues to have the patience to integrate and subsume them to the arctic imperatives of fiction. Maybe she should write discursive prose instead. Her sincerity was obvious, and it was difficult to tell her that her attitude, too, was a betrayal. I know she will read this, and I hope she will listen to me; listen to me! Do you think that your views matter, any more than the President's, or the gardener's? Do you think that an eye and an ear and a heart like yours were placed on earth to discuss the Panday-Robinson nonsense, or women's lib, or the state of the roads in Maracas Valley? What about your characters, those people you made, and their right to live, with the grave vivacity of everyman and everywoman? When you talk about being impatient, don't you mean you mean, sometimes, lazy and vain? How will you, a woman of character, shot through the head with the gift-how will you serve, not man, but God? What can I tell you. I remember once, when I was a kid ... I used to take my poems, hot from the typewriter, and zoom down to Derek Walcott's in Petit Valley. One time, I remember, I grew impatient with his criticisms, and said something like, "Ah, well, what the hell; I just write for fun;" and then was surprised (and secretly, cravenly pleased) when he flew into a rage, and weeks later was still inveighing in print against young writers who "did writing for fun". So I suppose it's my turn now. But I'm older than he was, and frailer, and weary to the bone of watching the Muse kicked around, by gifted young writers in this country, for reasons staunch or puerile. So here's what Here are a few quotes. I happen to agree with them. An author should be more than content if he finds he has made a difference to a handful of people, or given innocent pleasure to a smaU company. (A.C. Benson). It is bad to go out and lookat things if you wish to write about them. You must let them look at you. (Henry Ward Beecher). All authentic writing comes from an individual; but Il fiMI judgement of it will depend, not on how much individuality it contains, but how much of common humanity. (John Peale Bishop). Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living. (Gustave Flaubert). Add to these the quote at the head of this column, and the following (from myselO: "You will never write a bestseller Now,then. If you're content with all the above, you can get in touch,and we'll look at your hopeful moist and shining words together If any of the 8

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above dismays you and makes you want to frown, if you're even subliminally resistant to any of them, do us both a favour. Go join a civil rights movement or a political party. Go get somebody else to help you find a pubHsher for your bestseller. Stay away from this columnist. Leave this columnist alone. AJSat15 11m MeDon,JlIl writes: "Among other things, I would like this issue of Kyk-over-Al to be considered as a small but feverently expressed symbolic gift for AJS who celebntes his 75th birthday on January 12th, 1989. I had hoped to produce a book of his Collected Poems for the occasion but the considerable work involved could not be completed in time. It will be done during 1989. In delving for the poems AJS has written over nearly 60 years more than 100 unpublished poems by him have beendiscovered. It is a treasure trove to be sorted and edited and made available for the benefit of all those interested in the literary history of the Caribbean. To me AJS isa poet first and foremost, but his overall contribution to the cultural tradition of Guyana and the Caribbean is truly astonishing. I do not think the younger writers and academics grasp it fully. The AJS bibliography compiled by the National Library in 1974 was already 100 pages long and since then must easily have doubled in length. This amazing man's work contains poems, historical publications, reviews, essays, addresses, entries in antholOgies, forewords, lectures, talks, pamphlets, memoirs, sermons, eulogies, magazine work, and books in such profusion that one would be excused for thinking this was the record of a school, not one man alone. He has been honoured, yet he can never be honoured enough. Kyk is his brain-child and the child of his heart. Let this issue stand as a small token of the love and admiration countless people around the Caribbean and the world feel for him on his 75th birthday." 9

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I CECIL GRAY CARIBBEAN BASIN Islands described as emerald border this sea where once before piracy was law. This basin that the present predators slit with their fins like periscopes once saw swift rape of gaping children just as green with innocence. Their awe they gave as welcome, but when the reek of blood brought cognisance of guns to make them glutton's prey their staves and darts in answer fought the wind like straw. Yet innocence persists like upturned keels of boats that will not sink: hearts no less ripe for pickings and invasions open up to messages of iron on the waves; tides bear the doctrine of the sharpened claw in fresh assaults upon benevolence and television's magic dupes them with its reels of EI Dorado marked with stars and stripes. It is the age-old decoy for the poor: the ship of bounty sailing in to shore before the after-life which comes to strike uneven distributions from the score. Meanwhile they learn to emulate the shark cruising with avarice at their open door and tum away from socialistic crap. You can't eat ideology, he said, and with one swipe wiped Christ off the map. 10

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CECIL GRAY ClflLDREN Was it for them I drove that clanking street car down the years from its terminal of promise clattering round bends and corners with the structure creaking and the bell clanging danger, scraping along worn rails bucking at stops to pick up passengers? There were so many times it jerked me so sharply jumping off was the only salvation, but faith was on red. Was it for them I held the course and paid no attention, thinking I was the rail on which their wheels were running, or did tram lines define the only kind of courage that I knew? Bitter coins paid the fare, what made myth so sweet to swallow? Myth was the power that kept the wheels turning. I spun it well, but I did not know. All that I knew was I could not leave them. I could not manoeuvre the skid. 11

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MARK MCWAIT LADY NORTHCOTE And she must have looked like a governor's lady when they flung champagne at her long time ago; all polished wood and brass and delicate white for the tropics. But when I first saw her at the stelling at Kumaka -a raw teenager out for kicks she seemed excitingly abused, had taken her licks from years of men and sea with her pride and style intact just sufficiently drained that she could notice the attentions of a mere boy like me. When the storm hit four hours from Waini Point she danced as in a fit, nostalgic for her frolic of the past when she sparkled with polished brass and with the wit of those who journeyed for the fun of it. she plunged and reared, taking the breaking wave upon her breast -flat and hard now, and dun, but comforting, none the less, especially to a traveller like me, still young enough to think that strong women are the best. Then, in the grey light before dawn she slipped quietly into harbour, breathless, mysterious, a little naughty -like all the "perfect ladies" of my adolescent dreams. 12

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MARK MCWA1T AUNTYPANfY The male cousins of the compound roaming with my brother's air gun, and tired of holed lizards and guavas and frail, sad bundles of feathers, came upon the single, stark flap of white upon the line: "Look! Aunty panty!", someone said My brother aimed, fired; the garment flipped as in a sudden whip of wind, and snapped back-a frayed hole in the crotch. "Right in the pussy", my cousin Eric, laughing, said. We all took turns until the thing began to shred on the line, and thoughts of consequences suddenly came to mind. "Wha' dey going say?" -"Aw, is only Aunty". As the thing fell to earth at last "Only Aunty". "Aunty" was all we ever called that tall, drooping relative of my father-who had returned from some far dty of snow and trains because she was sick-" a sickness of the brain", my mother had explained. "What she damn-well need is a man", We'd heard my father say above the women's protests, and I 've often thought since that it was this last "'truth" -repeated and respected among us boysthat pulled the trigger on that day. 13

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I, as the group's hoarder of secrets, hid the evidence, but we were never found out: poor Aunty went to hospital and died soon after. Years later, rummaging for something amidst old scout scarves and discarded socks and ties, I came upon the yellowed shreds; II Aunty panty", my mind said, remembering. But I prayed for the living, not the dead. 14 ... -_ ...... ... ----_ ., .

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VIBART IAN DUNCAN P LA YGROUN C ome tek a walk inside de playgrou n i n meh mind c ome tek a walk in dis playground of ano the r kind w alk c ross da board deh c ome tek a wal k in dis gutter I e we se parate de shit from de grass de mud from d e nonsense dem people upstairs talkin tek a walk in rubb ish bin I e we set up we self wid some tinnin cup an some mango seed .-.'---_ ... -.... .. .,-.. .. I e we spill up some gutt er water Ie we get som e wrin gworm a nd some latta t ek a walk in dis playgroun leh we chase a f owl, pelt a d o g c ome Ie w e pla y some hid e a n seek between de bushes inside de latrine come tek a walk ins id e de p l aygroun in meh mind come tek a walk insi d e dis playgroun of another kind 15

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VIBART IAN DUNCAN FORENT There is a roach crawling around in my mind. There is a rat Gnawing away at my inside. There is a mosquito trying to get blood out of stone. There is a snake waiting in the bathroom to poison me with a bite. There is the shaky step that will not be repaired. There is the broken windowpane that will not be replaced. There is the dust for breakfast, lunch, dinner. There is the stink of this nightmare. There is where I live. And there is the landlord coming to collect the rent. 16

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MACDONALD DASH LOOKING AT THE RIVER Brown and passive is the river Save for gentle lap of water at greenheart piles at wharves February sun scorches Sandbanked and rusted wrecks in the middle distance memorials to the treachery of tide and turning Terracotta tanker glides upstream Stack smoking in silent stillness grey to meet blue sky Disappear around the tum of mangroves Thursday is silent river day as Orinoc's daughter whispers secrets sinister Fisherboat hurries out slowly to Atlantic beds; its human propellor singleted, sunburnt River runs silently to sea Under February noonday sun on Thursday I gaze on this scurvy stream wonder about its secrets that have eddied over centuries from headwaters far down in the verdant west River comes past Wappu and Akyma The Bell, Spring Garden, Agricola down to once staid Demerary's capital Men of war, muskets, scarlet coats bloody scarves and corsairs Dead dogs and little children all have been in and under 17

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Canvas and cocorite and wallaba all coming down down stone and bauxite coming down beggars and whores to and from the upcities and holdings Catching a queriman Passing by Borsalen and her sisters swimming tigers in dead of night by Mabura Silent secretive stream and scurvy lifeline and Iifetaker sister to the Essequib' and monstrous too in her secrets Silent stream and still in February noonday No one can conquer you But you are nature's swollen stream of tears 18

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CYRIL DABYDEEN FOLKLORE This i s my legacy: sugar, sun and topsoil. A molasses time surrounding since man's evolution From sugar-cane--and recoiling. Hear the agony of twenty million from Africa, Plantation's frenzy. Whiplash, more sun and rain; Fevered rhythms in the longing to be free. The edifices rise higher in London; Europe's walls have ears. Further whiplashBones rattling in wayward galleys; Upon Atlantic's waters, foam of blood. Wilberforce, Canning, Caxton. The English Parliament Lurching forward. Indentured, I listen on; I am sucrose too, In the furrowed fields, breathing in the smell, Half-cowering, this hour of sun-Land overtpmed, ground seething, My hands still on deck, backs welted, Groin sweating, this meeting face-to-face With you, as we are together grounded! 19

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IAN MCDONALD INODENT PAST MIDNIGHT, BUCKSANDS The house silent, lampless All close to me sleeping: Deep in the night, ,lone I go down to the edge of river. It is a black night, velvet, no moon, Only the stars spread like panned gold In the middle of the vast darkness of the river A batteau passes, paddle-chuckle just heard And a song comes across the pitchy water, One man singing, not loud, a clear voice: "Holy is the wide river, Song of glory! Holy is the forest tree, Hear the glory! Holy is morning star, Song of glory! Holy is the forest tree, Hear the glory!" The batteau goes down river slowly, Slowly the song of the man fades in the darkness. I think of the huge river flowing to the sea And the sea curled vast around the earth. I think of the river coming from the great mountains Where it begins in small streams full o f gold. I look up at the black sky strewn with t he incredible stars And the bright net they cast on the water too. At my back the immense forest presses Heavy with the weight of a continent of trees Like a dream that came suddenly The song drifts to silence on the immense river: The towering forest falls down towards me: No one wakes and I know myself alone. I want to talk, fill up time with noise, Speak with friends how we live everyday. Something breaks in me, shakes me utterly: To light the lamps, to regain the ordinary, I utter oaths and sing and shout and pray, Cavort beneath the stars, anything to flee The measureless absurdity of the glory of the world. 20

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IAN MCDONALD SCHOLAR The forest clears, socket of silence In the huge green shout of trees: Weather-greyed chapel, box-small, closed, Dogs snarl and snap on long ropes Round scarlet-blossomed trees. My voice ripping the noon-
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GLORIA ESCOFFERY LOST AND FOUND For Barbara Dream people, places and things. 1 Dark page of hair bobbing in the wind, A boy of fourteen or so walks downwind Studying the ground his eyes do not see. He does not know I exist. He strides through the dark pages of my mind, his long brown hands craftily pocketed. 2 In a field where packages of rice are doled out at the turnstile along with the tickets there are too many people; some receive no picnic packets. I hand mine over to a stranger who seems lost without a handout; and return to the sweet solitude of my studio. 3 Now they are hastily assembling new mechanical contrivances So the minibuses can hold more baskets and people; everyone is looking for something deposited somewhere. Will the topheavy buses hurtle off the road at the usual illfated bend in themountains? It is too late to choose not to take one's seat for the journey. In this maze of darkened streets I have mislaid my car again, forgotten where I parked it, forgotten the licence number. 4 Have you seen my straying Lynx Escort sand coloured and discreet? 22

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Wrong lane, wrong colour, wrong side of street for the hourI fear the Manhattan cops have towed it away never to be seen again. Driving the car for which I'm searching I'm frantic for directions: What is the name of this street? Does it lead to the exit where I dropped off my driver? Young man discreet with his wild girls nameless as a pack of clubs with their trefoiled bars. Oneway streets with no signs, turnings with no signs or sighs, signals more confusing than the twinkling eyes of the plain ... in the ascent to the top of this wold named Stony Hill; where one could choose to roll off the edge. No more persons to question or be questioned by as to where and wherefore 23

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The drawing on the facing page, done in pen and ink by Stanley Greaves in the 1960's, was made in response to this poem of C.E.!. Ramcharitar-lAlla: THE WEEDING GANG I know the girls are coming, For I hear the gentle humming Of choruses they're singing on their way; I hear their saucepans jingling, And their cutlasses a-tingling, Which as their music instruments they play They fill the silence after, With their peals of merry laughter Which float upon the pinion of the air; And also ease their walking With some idle silly talking, With Kheesaz and boojhowals very queer. Then once again their singing They resume, until the ringing Of their voices mingles with the whistling breeze; I love to see their faces With their smiles and subtle graces, And I love to hear their charming melodies. 24

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Extract from the novel MASSALA MARAJ by ROOPLALL MONAR Maraj crawled out the old iron-framed bed silently and rushed into the kitchen, built in front the logie. His heart thumped as though he had suffered a nervous spasm. He picked up an enamel cup from the shelf and filled it with water, drawn from a clay goblet. He drank the water in quick gulps, sat on a low wooden bench, belched and uttered: "Think me stoopid? Me is a brahmin. Backdam work is not proper fo me caste. Me have to get one transfer morning time ... have to tell overseer Brown ... Maraj paced the kitchen now as though he had envisioned a triumph. The big Sugar Factory brass bell had announced One. Factory grinding cane like mad, Maraj told himself. It was dark outside. Crick ets and beetles whirred and hummed outside the long barrack range, divided into twelve barrack rooms called logies. The wind blew in gusts. Maraj knew whenever much rain fell the Nigger Yard was quick to be inundated. Malaria and dysentry created havoc. The place turned gloomy. Death followed. Maraj hoped it didn't rain much. Maraj felt suffocated. The logie with its dark musty kitchen threat ened to strangle him. An eternal enemy ever since his wife and himself moved in ten years ago. "Damn bloody matchstick house," Maraj would curse, scratching his head as if looking for a solution ... to escape this cramped living. "Is like you in coffin. No place to stretch you hand," Maraj would say at times, watching at his wife accusingly. His wife, an orthodox brahmin woman, would smack her tongue perplexedly, and hustle into the bedroom. She knew Maraj would slap her if only she answered. But her mouth was strong, the words vibrating in the logie. Can't allow this man to push he finger in me eye, she would say whenever Maraj was out, then burst into a Hindi bhajan. Marajhad a terrible temper. In such moments Maraj's temper would flare like a lighted dry bush in a cow pasture. He would curse the Estate, his brahmin caste, and wished he had never been born in this blood sucking Sugar Plantation where the driver and overseer "think you is some mule. Kicking you like football about the place," clenching his fist, and felt like cuffing the logie-walls, buff-buff, as though gripped by a fever. The fever that made him feel divided. "One foot here. One foot in India," as the elders said. He paced the kitchen a few more times, then sat on the low 26

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wooden bench, braced to the wall, dividing the kitchen from the dining room, and began thinking. He wanted a perfect excuse to give overseer Brown. An excuse that would warrant him a transfer from the Chop-an Plant Gang to another Gang until he worked out another excuse. Another transfer until his goal, his true calling in life had been realised. Eh eh, is what the use living when you can't find you true self? "ls been a long time now since me wukkin in this Estate. Every day me turning like packsawal mango. All juice from me body draining out. If me don't make a move this time, me going to come like dry bamboo. Empty inside. And me is a brahmin. High caste Hindu. Me na suppose to work in canefield. Is why me never take up the pundit work? Is Ramdass pundit cause it. He alone want be pundit in this Estate. Bad mi nded brahmin bitch They should put two cent-piece on he eye top when he drop dead. Is tikkay Ramdass pundit throw blight at me? All bra h min in this Estate cunning like spider. Heh! You could never trust them shadow self." Maraj churned over this self-monologue which had increased in dimension thoughout the years. It was like another person speaking inside him. A person whom he was unable to quell, specially when he was alone, sitting between the front door of the logie in the evenings, self-absorbed. Impassive. Soon after, he would burst out with a Hindi bhajan, sweet like sugar, people said. During some nights while lying in bed, pretending to sleep, he felt this person wanted to come out, out of him like a chicken wriggling out of an egg. Take form \ike a man, and do the things he was unabled to do: cut-ass Ishmael driver and Nauth driver. Twitch overseer Brown balls. Break Ramdass pundit neck, then ascenq the Sugar Factory and laugh. Me is the boss now. Me is the big Manager ... heh heh heh, feeling like the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman, flying over the whiteman's compound, a lighted torch in his hand. Heh heh heh ... Maraj shook his head twice as if to dismiss the person speaking inside him, aware now that dogs barked in the Nigger Yard, perhaps glimpsing the Moon in the western sky. Dawn was on its way. He had to work out an excuse quickly, join his fat snoring wife in bed, and wake up early. Excuse in his head. Use me brahmin sense. He scratched his head, ruffling his sparse hair, caved-in his brain, struggling, seeing himself a weary traveller trudging up a mountain, ideas rebounded in his head like canepunts clanging against each other. Crickets and beetles whirred, buzzed among beezie-beezie, and blacksage bush outside the logie. Maraj felt they were buzzing inside the musty kitchen. He wanted to scream, shooing away mosquitoes which surrounded him in a circle droning an incessant chorus. He wanted to crush the kiss-me-ass mosquitoes, feeling triumphant. But the killing sound, mosquitoes crushed on his bare skin, would awaken his wife. 27

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"Like you get jumbie in you head man," his wife would say when she saw him in the kitchen at this hour in the morning. "Is why you na see pundit? It every two three night this asura jumbie coming in you head ... Blasty woman can't understand cent from big jill, Maraj would tell himself whenever such an encounter had taken place. He couldn't sleep while the other person in him kept on talking. Sitting alone in the kitchen, drinking cupfuls of water, scratching his head, he would slowly, patiently quell the voice in him, putting the person to sleep. His wife, Marajin, believed an asura, a Hindu evil spirit, haunted especially when Maraj woke-up during midnights, complaining of terrible nightmares, sweating, eyes glazed. Stoopid woman! Don't know head from bullfoot, Maraj would say to himself. If me no break me back in canefield to get money, is how she going to eat? Is me badluck to get brahmin wife. And is shame and disgrace fo brahmin wife work in canefield. Chu chu chu... stoopid woman. She ain't know is me god does talk in me? Maraj became alert. A fat mosquito droned around his head. He wanted to trap it. Crushed it. The dank musty smell emanating in the kitchen invaded his nostrils. He wanted to vomit. The mosquito kept threatening, buzzing, bent on the kill. Like you get jumbie in you head man The words echoed in his head. He relaxed himself and shooed the mosquito, using his hands. The excuse, the plan kept developing in his brain. Yes! Yes! He smiled by himself. The excuse assumed a form. A body. Maraj's twin brother. Good, he uttered silently, then jumped as if stung by a marabunta. He cursed. He picked up the cup, refilled it with water from the goblet and drank it as though he had not drank water for days. He belched quietly, and felt a crawling sensation in his stomach. He hoped he wouldn't have to visit the latrine at this time in the morning. He knew of the many jumbies, evil spirits of dead people, which prowled the Nigger Yard at this time in the morning. He knew that many of the evil spirits were looking to extract revenge. He knew that sometimes the innocent paid for the guilty. But me never push me finger in nobody eye, who dead and gone, Maraj consoled himself as though exonerating himself from self-guilt. Maraj constricted his bowel, the excuse forming into a person quite like his own twin brother. He shooed away a mosquito, loitering by his ears, and said quietly: ''Me get overseer Brown in me hand. Me get the bitch," doing a little dancing. He crawled into bed quietly, covering from head to his feet with a f10ursack sheet. Mosquitoes droned. Me get overseer Brown in me hand, he repeated in his mind until sleep dawned in him. Ouch ouch! ''Like this back want kill me," he told Marajin in the 28

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dew-mist morning, watching at her like a sly mongoose. She wrestled with the iron cooking pot, and canaree, in the smoke filled kitchen. She had finished cooked the rice and the boulanger curry. It had not dawned fully as yet, but sugar workers had already awak ened. Their musty, dingy kitchen buzzed with activities. By the time it was daybreak most walked out their logies: cutlasses, shovels, forks, hung across their shoulders, bags with working clothes and lunch saucepans slung on them. Maraj flitted about in the logie, the excuse taking a shape. Ouch ouch! he moaned, eyes darkened, watching the logie-walls which housed cockroaches and ants. He had already changed to go to Order-line. As he ate roti and curry, sitting on the low wooden bench, his wife packed his bag, a daily morning ritual enacted for years. How he hated it. But me time going to come, he reminded himself, aware of the other person inside him. Is one-one dirt does build dam. Ouch! he moaned again, seeing overseer Brown in his mind. Damn bully! Feel he own the Estate. Own the people. Me going to show he who is sense man. Smart fly. Me is a smart brahmin. Maraj didn't want to alarm his wife by saying: ''Me going to ask overseer Brown fo one transer." She would rile, then sulk into a corner, cursing her fate to be born a woman. Her previous karma ought to be blamed, she would tell her self, vowing to extract the answer from Lord Shiva when she did her puja the coming Sunday morning. Is damn lazy he lazy, she would tell herself, impotent to voice her views in such a precarious matter where their future was concerned. Maraj had a presentiment of his wife acting in this way. Deem him a lazy man. Chut! Is me have to bring in the money. Not she, Maraj told himself, eating quickly. He decided to kep his mouth close. He clowned behind the facade, moaning frequently. She threw him a sharp look. It stung him like a followme insect o Gaad Shree Bhagawan! like this woman know the inside of me mind, Maraj told himself. He washed his hands quickly, gargled through the kitchen window, belched, then hustled to pickup his working bag and cutlass. "See you Marajin," Maraj said sweetly as he passed through the logie front door. He trotted to the main walking path dampened with morning dew, feeling released. Uke the woman know me up to some trick, he asked himself, unsettled. Brahmin woman proper smart. But me is a smarter brahmin, he reminded himself, imbued with pride. Think backra man more sensible than me? Is now me eye open to the real thing. Is me and overseer Brown now ... He walked quickly, concentrating on the backbone that would make the self-induced backache look serious, critical in the presence of overseer Brown. 29

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Something in that man mind, Marajin's instinct told her as she dusted the kitchen flooring with a coconut branch broom. He up to something but Shree Bhagawan going to tell me. True! Soon after, she would tend the vegetable garden, cultivated behind the logie, examining each plant, their roots, to ensure that nobody's fowls, or a rat, had dug up the root during the previous night. Neighbouring fowls usually created havoc to the plants. She had seen herself on many occasions, pin ning one of the fowl on the ground with her feet, slicing out the fowl's claws with a cutlass until it bled, uttering "damn badmass" in Hindi. Something in that man mind, Marajin told herself again, per turbed, heading in the small, stuffed-up bedroom to make-up the bed. By now the morning looked pale, colourless, the wind blowing slightly cold. Overnight drizzle had dampened the Nigger Yard. Dusty dams dotted with muddy lumps. Morning dew had still clouded above. Mist like smokestalks settled on cork tres, and on logie roofs. Maraj experienced a slight chill as he clambered up the creaking wooden steps, wedged-on to the High Bridge, which acted as a gateway that led into the Nigger Yard: It was an old bridge something like an antique, stin sturdy, bearing the weight and frustrations of countless footsteps, that had daily treaded on it throughout ,he years, echoing with footprints of cringing, indentured immigrants. It spanned a blackwater stream ... the water always cold, iridescent, tempting to little boys. Moss was perpetually seem in both comers of the stream. Silverbait fish and shrimp teemed in the water. The stream began from the deputy Manager's yard in the east, and snaked into the canefields, joined by other smaller streams, running in different direc tions passing through mango-walks, coconut fields, bramble fields, and further down into more canefields, and the Lamaha Canal. It was a favourite stream to sugar workers, the water being used for religious purposes. It was called blackwater-trench by them. Maraj joined by a batch of sugar workers as he descended the Bridge, and landed in the redbrick road. It was dampened. The big, old wooden Hospital was on the opposite side of the road. An aroma of disinfectant, tablets, iodine, and putrid cotton wads emanated from it. Maraj felt the smell in his nostrils. He coughed. The Hospital looked frightning. Maraj avoided becoming a patient in that HOSpital. That going to drive me to me grave, he reminded himself anytime he was plagued with either fever, chest cold, acute bellyache, or head ache. He preferred consulting Miriam, the African woman, whose herbal remedies always arrested his ailment. The workers discusssed the inhuman treatment meted out to them from the hands of Ishmael and Nauth drivers. The low wages being paid for years now. '1s only a proper cut-rass on Ishmael and Nauth could stop this blasted eye-pass." ''We should do what them Non Pareil people do," a canecutter 30

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named Seeram talked, eyes reddened. '1s how long we able tolerate this kiss-me-ass bullyism?" Maraj agreed wholeheartedly, willing his backbone-structure to respond to his emotion. Have to get this transfer, he reminded himself. ChoJHln-Plant going to swinge me like ripe mango in hot weather. Backdam work ain't fit fo me brahmin caste. Me is a high nation Hindu, and is time me use me sense now. Maraj chuckled, conveying the impression that he was laughing at a joke, just cracked by one of the cane cutters The joke concerned Nauth driver. Two weeks ago on the Tuesday night, Nauth nearly killed himself with fright, running towards his logie, cursing on the way. Nauth driver nurtured a deep belief that Baizee's ghost-the spirit of Baizee's dead body, wanted revenge on him. He lived in constant fear. While being a shovel man in Nauth driver's gang, Nauth used to make it hard on Baizee due to Baizee's rebellious temperament. Baizee felt the shovelmen were being robbed of their true value as shovelmen. There was always an outburst, heated arguments between Nauth and Baizee. "Sixty cent a day can't pay,"Baizee would shout, stamping his feet on the ground, tone harsh, eyes furious. One hot midday in the canefields during an argument, Baizee told Nauth: "H me dead before you, me going to haunt you, and you family til coffin catch them." Nauth shivered. Felt a chillyness in his spine. He knew such a threat could be dangerous. Notebook and pencil trembled in his hands. Should Baizee ponder on those words constantly, and say it aloud, during the time his death was drawing near, the words could assume a spectral form, bent on creating havoc to the living victim. Nauth believed such things happened. It occured to others. Ghost coming back to extract revenge ... A year ago, after issuing the threat to Nauth, Baizee died due to the ravages of T.B. Since then Nauth was not the same. He imagined seeing Baizee's ghost several times The mule-boys knew of Nauth's fear. They exploited on i t whenever the opportunity arose. On this Tuesday night it was dark and gloomy, tinged with a silence that was frightening. Nauth was returning from overseer Stanley's bungalow, found in the Compound. He was walking on the redbrick road, heading towards the High Bridge. A grove of big, flowing fig trees with the Hospital further in, lined one side of the Blackwa ter-trench ran alongside the other side of the road. Across the trench a few cakeshops and the Masjid were seen. Further in, rows of barrack ranges ran alongside each other. Every object in and around the road was capped with a darkness, compounded with a lurking silence likened to a deadly, alert snake in 31

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crouching canetrash. Nauth shivered as he walked, cautious, peering his eyes among the still'd pregnant trees Crickets and beetles whirred, hummed. It broke the monotony of the silence. In such moments Nauth always recalled Baizee's words: '1f me dead before you, me going to haunt you, and you family til coffin catch them. .. This man Baizee like a pest in me soul, Nauth told himself. He never fathomed that the night, yet early would have changed into this eerie, frightening state ... ''like a damn jumbie behind you shadow." He kept on walking, uttering a mantra from the Hindu Puranas. Why this man Baizee don't go and rest in peace, Nauth told himself, walking quickly, still peering his eyes Dinki and three mule-boys held conversation under the big cork tree, growing by the edge of Blackwater-trench in the Nigger Yard sec tion. Two hours before, as evening was turning into night, Dinki and the mule-boy had seen Nauth as he crossed the High Bridge, landed in the redbrick road, and headed east. They suspected that Nauth was on one of his nightly visits to overseer Stanley. "See the dog? He going to take news to overseer," one of the mule boys had said, spitting in the trench. "People like them is leech." ''Hold on. Rain don't fall at one man door," Dinki talk. ''He own rope going to strangle he. Remember madman Rusty? How he slice-off Sambo driver cock, and put it in Sambo mouth like sweetie?" ''Ha boy! Man don't see, but Gad seeing. How long you believe he going to get sugar in he mouth?" the second mule-boy talked, and spit ted as if the spittle was a thorn in his flesh. He eyes blazed with hurt and revenge. Dinki and the mule-boys eyed at Nauth until Nauth turned into the smooth, redbrick road, lined 'with sweet-smelling flowers, growing on both sides. The road led into the fenced-in Compound, filled with electric lights, beautiful bungalows, well-kept lawns. A Compound inac cessible to Dinki and the mule-boys, except on business A world where God-blessd people lived, Dinki and the mule-boys always said. Nauth disappeared in there. Dinki and the mule-boys resumed their conversation: mules, man agers, struggle of the Indian people in India, wedding-houses, weeding gang, women ... They were about to go to their respective logies when they spotted a man, coming out from the Compound. They recalled Nauth. Dinld mounted the High Bridge. He peered at the walking figure. ''Is Nauth self," Dinki said, and vacated the Bridge quickly. They knew of Nauth's fear. Baizee's ghost. It was still rumoured to be around. Elders claimed seeing it, prowling the Nigger Yard in quiet moonlight nights during the early morning hours. 32

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MJIaizee jumbie want something," elders would say, hardly ventur ing outside until four o'clock in the morning "when aU jumbie gone and Ik!ep." Dinld and the mule-boys, also, believed Baizee's ghost wanted Nauth, after hearing of Baizee's threat to Nauth while Baizee was alive. "Ahwe play Baizee jumbie pon Nauth," Dinki said, smacking his tongue as though he had eaten a delicious mango. "You damn right. Let he shit cut," one of the mule-boys said, mischief abound in his eyes, memory opened to past encounters which took place during moonllight nights in the Nigger Yard-people playing ghost at people. "You hide under the bridge," Dinki said, anxious, watching at Nauth. The mule-boys scamperd under the Bridge, uttering quietly: "Good if he rass could fall down and dead." DinId was slim-built and darkskin in his late teens. He took out his shirt and fitted it around his head His shirt was whitish in colour. Across his head it looked like a loose orhni. People in the Nigger Yard sometimes described a ghost, looking the way DinId's head looked now. Dinki hid behind the big cork tree stem, waiting on Nauth to cross the High Bridge, and entered the Nigger Yard. Dinki's body from his neck downward hardly showed. He was dark. The night was dark. He looked like a terrified ghost with a white-white head, the kind of ghost eldel'S told their children about, seen mostly in the canefields during moonlight nights. ''White-head jumbie!" elders pronounced, fright showing in their eyes. The children huddled in a corner, eyes tight-shut, kerosene lamps flickered like candleflies ... logies eerie and silent. Dinki waited, caught in suspense, heart thumping, eyes flitting at Nauth, laughing inwardly. Nauth avoided looking at the Hospital. It drove more fear into him. He quickened his steps, and clambered up the High Bridge. The mule-boys heard Nauth's footsteps. They crouched, subdued, enduring black ants which stung their skin, mosquitoes which menaced their faces. They were anxious, hearts palpitating. Dinki felt the same way. As he looked around no one was spotted in the vicinity. Good! Dinki told himself, aware now that Nauth was coming down the steps, entering the Nigger Yard. He squeezed his nose, and emerged from behind the tree stem, tip toeing in the manner a ghost was seen walking. ''Nauth driver is you me want." Dinki's tone sounded nasal. The words slow and drawling. He walked up to Nauth. Nauth was taken by surprise. He halted, felt his feet heavy. His heart pounded, perspiration gathered on his foehead. Fireflies flickered about him. 33

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Dinld tip-toed slowly towards him. '1s you me want Miller Nauth." Dinld's shirt flapped now like a flag after being slackened from his head. NO Gaad! this is Baizee jumbie self-eelf." Nauth acreamed, devi ated from DinId's approach, and ran screaming 01\ top his voice, acce1er ating more speed on the dry mud dam, running alongside the Blackwa ter Trench. His instinct led him to his logie. Half the sugar workers were out their logies when Nauth landed in his logie, and feU down frothing. Next morning Nauth's neighbours reported they heard Nauth tell ing his wife that he planned to enlist Ramdass pundit in his plan. Him self, and Ramdass pundit would visit the burial ground one dark night and pin-down Baizee's grave. Tie Baizee's jumbie in the bloody coffin, spiking the grave-top with seven nails, and bury a bunch of garlic leaves in the grave. '1s only that going to cool Baizee jumbie forever. Pin he ass in the grave until he bone rotten," Nauth told his wife Beti after he regained his senses. It was around ten o'clock the very night. The neighbourhood heard everything. Nobody know Dinki and the mule-boys had staged this act. They never divulged it. They knew the consequence of such a disclosure. Nauth driver would take them up to the Head Manager. But it was news the next morning. Baizee jumbie scared the shit out of Nauth. "Next time he going to break Nauth neck ... "Baizee jumbie should break Nauth neck the same night," one of the cane-cutters talked, tone heavy with contempt. ''You damn right," Maraj said, begining to display a slight stoop in his walk. Me action to overseer Brown must be clear like daylight, Maraj said to himself, keeping abreast with the canecutters. Maraj and the canecutters walked past the Hospital mortuary, the Head Manager's white painted bungalow, and the lawn tennis court. On the other side of the redbrick road, across a blackwater stream, were crumpled little cottages which housed the African sugar workers. Fur ther ahead was the Pay Office, the Foundry, and the Engine House. Further inland, behind the Storeroom was the big sprawling Sugar Fac tory, and the Workshop. Maraj and the canecutters crossed over a wooden bridge, the mule stable seen opposite, and swung into a broad, grassy muddam. About twenty five yards ahead sugar workers clustered in different groups around their respective drivers and overseers. This was Order-Line. Here the sugar workers were given orders for the day. After, they would head into the canefields, walking in batches. The morning mist was dying away like ice in water. The sun peeped between thick, puffy clouds. Mule-boys' voices echoed in the 34

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stable. The daybrick factory chimney kept belching out thick, blackish smoke which sailed away in a western direction. Maraj and the four canecutters joined the big gang of canecutters. Marars backbone responded to his self-induced emotion. He felt burn ing pain in the back. Have to get this transfer he told himself, watching at Ishmael driver and overseer Brown. Is me and overseer Brown ... me know he is a smart fly ... 35

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Nancy 'Tory! Nancy 'Tory! Nancy 'Tory! NANCY PILGRIMAGE by RAS MICHAEL Nancy story ain't got bad word. Nancy story is what come out of Nancy mouth. Wha' Nancy see with Nancy eye. Nancy! You been dey? Well Nancy been all about. Even when Georgetown was a small small town and people use to send to the ice factory for ice and only Putagee girls use to work in them store in Water Street, Nancy use to spin he web wherever he see they going have story. That is how Nancy get to know about Hector. He went home that night in Hector pants fold. The same night that Hector did brace he self 'gainst Beth behind Beth front door, running he hands allover she. "0h God Beth. I got to see you again. I going pick you up tomorr ... nah, nah not tomorrow ......... Oh God Beth but I got to see you again." Right then Nancy climb down a web and crawl up Hector pants fold, entered the new model Datsun and when Hector foot mash the accelerator to drive out the Ghetto, Nancy been dey with he. 'Well I would of never believe it,' Nancy say to heself when he investigated Hector's house next morning. All these years of Nancy life, Nancy never live ina house like this yet. But Nancy smart, Nancy investigate every drawer and cupboard and corner from the minute he dropped out Hector' 8 pants fold that foreday morning. Living with Hector was like living in a different world to how life was in the ghetto in the room with Beth and the children. At first Nancy was astonished by the amount of rooms the house had and the amount of beds. Everybody had a room with bed in the ghetto but these beds ... Nancy just up and climb all over and feel the softness. Nancy tour the whole place but take up residence inside the toolshed under the 'downs tree' since it remind he more of ghetto life inside there where you had odds and ends. He spin a web over where some 'downs' fall through a hole in the side of the wall and start rottening. They had some fat fly down there. Is not that Nancy didn't appreicate the comforts of Hector's house, Nancy use to spend hours in front of the T.V. each day and Nancy had a web right under the telephone table where he use to listen in on quite a few calls. Is not inside the house Nancy use to be whole day? NANCY! (The reader got to shout ... ) 'TORY! Right! Is not that Nancy didn't appreciate the comforts of Hector's house but he did notice in the kitchen that Hector had a maid, two cob-web brooms, two tins Baygon plus a tin of Shelltox in the up-stairs bath room 36

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where Hector wife use to bathe. Hector does bathe in the downstairs bathroom. However, Nancy make 'Heights' and set up heself right where he was dining. Hector's kitchen he left to Hector, Hector's family and Hector's maid. Hector's family oonsisted of Hector' s wife who Nancy got to know quite well on distant terms, she had her own bedroom. Hector's teenaged daughter (Nancy couldn't take she at all but he used to check she out for kicks), she had her own roon. Hector's son had his own room too. He was cool with Nancy. Nancy had a web in there too. And Hector. Hector was forty-seven and an important man. Hector's runnings was confidential. Being an important man Hector sometimes use to get a telephone call from the Minister's Secretary and Hector use to got to go and talk at meetings with the Minister and with oommittees and the Bank Manager, sometimes for hours, then the newspaper would publish that Hector going away on a 'Government Mission'. At that time a lot of people to phone Hector and some use to come and see Hector at the house and talk to he quiet quiet in the study. Nancy would overhear them 'nough time whilst he up on some shelf running through a volume of Selected Poems which was a favourite of his or "Capitalism and Slavery" by Eric Williams which was equally delighting to him. Nancy would sometimes overhear them and on a few occasions Nancy had noticed people giving Hector some small squarish packages before going to their cars and driving away. Hector use to go away for a week or two weeks but Nancy didn't go as he did pick up reasoning in the ghetto about foreign travel 'bout how Bob Marley did pass out there and that Bunny Waiter don't travel by plane. Nancy was a original 'Wailers' fan. As a matter of fact was some of these same reasonings from the ghetto and Nancy experience as a ghetto spider that save Nancy life 'nough time in he fight for survival. NANCYI Reader shouts ....... 'TORY! Nancy and the maid had a constant battle for survival. Nancy and Hector wife had a oonstant battle for survival. Even Hector and Hector's daughter used to test Nancy skill. Everyday Nancy had to rebuild or repair a web. Only Hector son didn't use to 'dig nothing'. The only web that Nancy never had to worry about was the one in the T.V. room. Hector house had a special fancy room with lacquered walls, trophies, fancy furniture and plenty Ivy plants running up the walls. Nancy build a house between the ivy and the wall and he call that he tropical residence. From up there Nancy use to watch the twenty-one inch T V. and any other thing that taking place inside the room. Like when Hector gone away and the children out, Nancy use to enjoy the sex films with Hector wife and she special friends. Hector daughter use to have she own runnings in the T.V. room too, but that use to be when she was alone by she self. Sometimes she use to do it in she bedroom in front the mirror 37

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or when she lay down in the soft single bed. These things use to amaze Nancy cause they was different to what use to take place in the ghetto. Hecto r son was normal. He use to smoke marijuana like everybody else. It happen sudden. Everything in Guyana does happen sudden. Since January everybody does be looking out for the May-June rain and yet when it fall it does fall sudden. It come as a sudden shock to Nancy. No not a shock, Nancy don't feel that, but like a surprise. Was only the night before Nancy was watching late night T.V. with the whole family. Some friends did even drop in and up in he web Nancy did hear when Hector did say quite vehemently "They should jail that bitch!" Well Nancy look down to see if was because the Minister was rubbing up Hector wife leg in the dark that make Hector say that but was the T.V. Hector did talk to as they was broadcasting Col Northe testimony and showing Reagan face pon the screen. During the rest of the night everything went alright. They was drinking and smoking and eating and the Minister who did drop in with a few friends was joking with Hector and slapping Hector's back whilst Hector wife was pouring the Minister a fresh drink and fulling up the Minister plate with com-beef and chow-mein Everybody was happy until next morning. Well it was Nancy who first read it in the Sunday Papers. Nancy had another web in the letter box from which he use to read the daily papers whenever the daily papers come early. Nancy saw it on page 3. "Hector Under Government Enquiry". It had a photograph of Hector and the story though brief was that the Government wasn't too happy 'bout how Hector use to conduct the Government business. They even say that they was taking a careful look at Hector's salary and Hector bank account. Nancy burst out a laugh, if they was looking for Hector runnings they would have to look for it in the other house that Hector did buy and not even Hector wife did know 'bout that. Hector did make the carpenter build a special hiding place and Hector did hide a whole set a square purple paper there. Nancy did get to know that these was money from since he days in the ghetto cause it was quite popular and people called it inflationary. However, was the smaller gray-coloured foreign ones that Hector did like most. Well, whole day the telephone ringing. Nobody didn't come to the house but the Minister and all phone and he tell Hector wife not to come by the office or check he out right now as he was busy. The Minister and all was in the news-papers On page four the papers did read that the Minister was to turn a Senior Minister and that the Government was sending he to Africa on a mission. Is not that these events that was playing out was anything big toNancy. Nancy born and grow in the ghetto. Nancy know 'bout runnings. When Papa did snatch the payroll by the Bank of Guyana, Nancy been right pon the comer gutter plaiting one another hair; same time Papa burst the comer, clear the gutter, the payroll sail through the air; it land on sister Benji step; Papa clear the six foot pailing-Nancy been to the party in the ghetto that night. 38

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These things was no big things to Nancy. Hector worries was small potatoes to Nancy. As a matter of fact Hector didn't have no worries compared to Beth neither. Beth had three young children, she self and the house rent. Hector had he own house, he salary, he runnings plus he had he family. But Hector had problems. He certainly had problems because Nancy did see he wrinkle up he forehead when he had to take off some of the small grey money from off a pack in the new house he wife didn't know 'bout. A few days later it come over the news that the enquiry against Hector get dropped, and Hector resign the job. He did even go to the embassy and talk to some body there to get a visa. That is how Hector begin travelling. He didn't become a trader. He was just a traveller. Nobody never see he carry anything or bring anything. Ask Nancy? NANCY! Reader shouts ....... '1ORY! Nancy notice the small packs in the hiding place in the new house growing fast. How Hector got them Nancy couldn't say. Nancy heself never went overseas with Hector. He had recently read that scientist had IJl8de a fly and fishermen use them on hooks to catch fish. Nancy say not me. He never went. Hector put on more weight now. He voice get more gruff too. Nancy got a new web too, right under the passenger front seat of Hector's brand new Is anybody' s guess as to how long that residence going remain. The Mercedes got a mini vacuum cleaner. Hector wife and the Senior Minister is even better friends now. The two of them start go up to the new housetogetller after Hector give her the key. He building another one. Beth? Well Beth is another story. NANCYI Shout '1ORY nuh. 39

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THESTORYOFAMAUVACA by A.J. SEYMOUR Dear Ann &: Joan &: Margaret, Your faces were full of a wide-eyed and shining wonder when I told you the beginning of the story months ago, and I think it was that wonder that made me imagine how an old blind poet John Milton who Uved some three hundred years ago might have begun it. To match that wonder in your eyes, he might have said: No one can tell from what far land he came Amalivaca, or by what intent Or whether accident. It is the same Sometimes, chance or design, when Heaven is bent Upon her purposes for mortal men And shapes them as blind instruments of ill Or good just as the pattern warrants them. So whether it was chance or his own will Avalivaca came. It was a very long time ago, because all the stories seem to agree that Amalivaca came to the land of the Caribs at the time of the Flood. I suppose you know that there is some story of waters covering all the earth to be found in the early history of nearly all nations, and it is fitting that Amalivaca should come in his ark or canoe while the waters were returning from off the earth; because the very name of our country, Guyana, is an Amerindian word meaning "the land of waters" and his story is mixed with our history that depends on too much or too little water on the land. I would say that he came in the afternoon. You could have seen no land anywhere at the time of the flood-it was all sea and then gradually the level of the waters fell and the mountains of Guyana began to show their heads. Our friend the poet would probably write: The circling sun had not yet swung his wheel, Leaned still his light out of the eastward sky, The day the fabled spate came to an end And the mantling flood contracted from the earth. First King Roraima brought his forehead clear Towering behind with seaward-looking eyes, 41

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And his broad shoulders emerging from a waste Of seething steel-faced like a shield Which slowly sank! Then Kulcenaam And next Wei assipu they caught the sun And Ayanganna, so splendid in its pride And many a mountain more, whose name to tell Would make a hoarse deep music and would beg The storm for thunder. And while these islands stood On ocean-hooded, resurrecting land Amalivaca came. I can imagine the great canoe coming steadily and powerfully across the sinking waters from the direction of Trinidad. Perhaps Amalivaca wore a towering headdress but I want you to have the sense of his power as he drove the canoe along. By this time the waters had not dropped sufficiently to discover the channels of the rivers and he had passed over the length of what is the Essequibo, before he came to one of these rock islands we have named as mountains. And he stopped there and did a peculiar thing. He had on his finger a ring with a stone in it that is harder than rock and to mark his first sight of land again, he took the stone-we would call it a diamond nowadays--and scratched upon the rock. Anyone of us would have cut our names perhaps but Amalivaca carved out upon the rock a symbol of the sun which makes things grow upon the earth and of girls dancing to show their pleasure at the fertility of the world. Men call the place Amalivaca stayed The Tramen Cliff above Imbaimadai And there he carved upon the mountain rock Strange figures of maids dancing in the sun Shining above them. And from time to time Amalivaca would stop his canoe and carve these figures and strange emblems upon the rocks. They are still to be seen to this day and men call them ''Timehri'' but the message he wrote is not always clear and writers are still trying to say what Amalivaca meant. But Amalivaca was not only an artist and he did not spend all his time writing poetry on the rocks, because that is what he made, a spedal kind of permanent poetry. He wanted to apply his thought to his people. 42

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I hope you will not ask me to tell you where the other Amerindians came from, after the Flood, because the records are not clear on that point. There are different stories, one that four Caribs climbed to the top of a kornoo palm and these the Flood did not reach. And yet another says that Louquo, the God of the Heavens, or Makonaima, the Great Spirit, took pieces of cassava and threw them backwards over his shoulders and a marvellous thing happened. Those pieces of cassava, he threw over his right shoulder changed shape and sprang up as men, and those he threw over the left shoulder became women-perhaps because that is nearer to the heart. Anyway, the Carib story goes on to say that the world was peopled again and lived in their villages and Amalivaca came among them. He did many things to help his people. For instance, when the dry land was to be seen, it was found to be very rough, so Amalivaca made the sides of many hills smooth and also the land at the bottom of the hills. And Amalivaca said "What's the good of having a community here and a community there and keeping separate. You must not stay apart. You must visit one another and learn what the other tribe is doing. The best way is always to have a path leading from your village to the river, because the river is your road and for centuries and centu ries the rivers will be the only roads in this land. So make your clearing by the banks and the rivers will bear you one to another. You have no future as a people unless you come together and I shall teach you a new word, federate. You would grow apart and think you lived in separate worlds instead of separate rivers, unless you had communication and shared your good one with the other ." One day Amalivaca went out to the edge of the shelters that the tribe used as huts and he saw men planting and asked them what it was they were doing. They told him they were planting arrow wood, to make arrows to protect themselves when another tribe came. Amalivaca was angry. ''How many nights have I not spent talking to you and your wives out in the light of the stars and telling you of Makonaima who made the stars that they should live like sisters in the sky and men that they should live like brothers on the earth. Don't you see that you are encouraging yourselves to war and to fighting by planting this wood. Plant more cassava, you would be planting food to eat, not aJTOW wood. Arrows will never protect you from the way you feel in your hearts whether or not you win the war with another tribe. You must learn to protect yourself inside, from your own self, not from the outside, with arrows. Your real enemy is inside of you, not without." He warned them too about keeping themselves in close touch with Malconaima, the Great Spirit A people without religion would always disintegrate, he said, they no longer became willing to make the sacri fices that were necessary for a people to become great and to endure. Because it was only when a tribe or a community cared for him the 43

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individual, that a man gained a sense of purpose and faith in belonging to his tribe. Amalivaca-what did he look like? I would say that he was not tall, but broad in the shoulders, like that other figure in stories who resembles him, that old Greek, bald-headed and talkative sailor we know as Ulysses. He was very strong and had great powers of endurance. He could go for days on a small meal of cassava and meat or fish. But I would be sure that he had remarkable, penetrating eyes, the kind of eyes that would be looking at your mind and how it worked through the windows of your own eyes and then, suddenly, you would know that he was not seeing you anymore, because he was thinking deeply on what he saw there. I told you this story of Amalivaca once before when we were sitting around the dining table but later I found myself wondering whether I shouldn't write the story all down and give it to you as a Christmas present. You see, other girls and boys may want to read it too and there is one reason why this story of Amalivaca belongs to all the children in Guyana and to children living in other places too. The men who study these matters and who have written great heavy, books with gold lettering on them, tell us that the name Amalivaca is found sprinkled all over the Caribbean sea, an area of some thousands of square miles. It keeps cropping up in the legends of the Caribs that a mother tells her children while the sun is going down to put them to sleep, and now and then she would add, "Now dear, go to sleep and Amalivaca will watch over you." So perhaps Amalivaca did exist long, long ago and we're taking scraps of stories that the Caribs have left, perhaps some in Antigua and some in Belize and knitting the fragments together. This is just another piece of unrecorded history that the Amerindians have given to us here in Guyana. It has come down by word of mouth and been mingled with 50 many children's dreams. While Amalivaca was with the Caribs in Guyana he was asked to help with the tides As a result of the great flood the rhythmic action of the tides had been affected and there was only the current of the river flowing down to the sea. Amalivaca taught them how to make canoes, how to select certain trunks of trees and hollow them, mainly by fire, and then shape them into instruments of grace and power upon the water. Then certain men complained to him how difficult it was to paddle against the current of the river. Could he not make the current to flow up river on one side while it was flowing down on the other. They say that Amalivaca toiled mightily but for all his skill, he could not do what they asked. 1hen he remembered the sea and he caused the tide, so the story goes, to flow up the river many miles and as it does to this day. But the rivers said "Should the tide go higher, all will be covered again." 44

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So Amalivaca ceased from his labour. There is a picture I have in my mind of Amalivaca brooding upon I
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driven them out wandering from their original home in China, near the Russian borders, to this Caribbean sea. This part of the sayings of Amalivaca has come in for much alti cism from all as being the utterance of a visionary and some have called it worse, but it must be set down with the others in this story. Amalivaca also knew about music, it is claimed. To this day, there is a large hollow stone on the plains of Maita outside a cavern where he lived and the older Amerindians used to call it an instrument of music-the drum of Amalivaca. His brother Vochi has also left some tales of the wildwood wisdom of Amalivaca and the knowledge he had of stars to guide through the forest and across the sea and of herbs to help sick ones that he knew the magic of, in the forest ways. Finally, there is the legend of his growing wisdom in the Guyana region, for he knew all things, and how one day some Amerindians came to him in a strange approach and said that they wanted to worship him as one of their gods. This made Amalivaca very angry and then very sorrowful and he told them that they had not understood what he had told them. So he would have to go on to another place and teach the same things to the people there. So one evening at sunset the Amerindians in the villages nearby came to the edge of the river to bid him good bye. They knew they would see Amalivaca no more and their hearts were heavy as he climbed into the great canoe and began pulling powerfully away from the bank out to sea, out to where the sun was setting, down in the west. His headdress waved in rhythm as he bent forward and baclc at the paddle and the canoe steadily grew smaller. Then it seemed to them on the bank that the canoe was heading right into the sun and it became a mere black speck against the huge red gold disk of the sunset. Then, suddenly, the speck was gone and the gathering darkness thickened slowly over the empty heaving waste of waters. And that is why to this day Amerindians say that Amalivaca went back into the sun, from whence he had come. 46

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REFLECfIONS ON THE ART OF STANLEY GREAVES by RUPERT ROOPNARAThrn In retll art theory does not precede practice, but follows her. Everything is, at first, a matter of feeling. Wassily Kandinski I remember almost to the day when a painting of Stanley Greaves' first burned itself into my mind. It was a late afternoon in August 1960, over a quarter of a century ago, when I first encountered "Evolution", a painting in the collection of Dr. Frank Williams, a discerning and early supporter of young Guyanese artists. Unframed, it was affixed to the Northern wall of an airy, elegant drawing room in an old plantation house at Cove and John on the East Coast of Demerara. I recall having been told that it rep resented the painter's response to H.G. Wells' Outline His tory of the World. I may even have been told even then that it was a response to a particular page of that book. It could have been the big green eye, innocent of ex pression with its per fectly curved lashes, looking back at me from the head of the foetus in the exact centre of the picture. Or the single giant leaf, going dry and brown at the edges, surprisingly tattered considering the supple strength of its stem curling like the neck of a bird from out of the white lipa of smooth, round, EVOLUTION 47

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green seed. But it was not the eye of the foetus no r the leaf of the seed that I remembered, but the long curving column of human figures, in perfect perspective, tiny in the distance tall and looming on the crest of a rack in the left foreground. The column originated out of a hole in the side of a craggy mountain: slash of bright red deep in the dark. The fig ures are in simple yellow outline, without detail, except for the first two where there is detail enough to distinguish man and woman. And in the top left of the picture, three orbital rings each with an astral body in motion The largest of the rings loops around the sharp tip of the leaf. The rings are white, as is the outlined curve of the back of the foetus that is the segment of a fourth inter-locking ring. It is Greaves' meditation on a page of Wells. And it is very much the young painter's enthusiastic homage to Salvador Dati and Hieronymus Bosch. And over the years Dali has remained for Greaves the grand master of technique under whose hand everyday objects were trans fonned into luminous symbols. In the work of Bosch he was to make contact with the power of the sense of dread and to understand its regulation by the phantasmagoric image. In all the years of remembering Guyana away from Guyana, it was this painting, first seen on an August afternoon in the countryside, that would bring the old house and much of the essence of Guyana back into my mind. I was to see it aga i n twenty years later-it is still there, gracing the Northern wall of the old house-and I have come to realise that it had been, that afternoon, the first time that any painting at all had had such an effect and was to lodge such clear traces of itself in my mind. "Evolution" was painted in 1955, during the period of Greaves' appren ticeship and earliest investigations. Looking at it now, in the company and the context 01 his other works of that period, I am struck by the extent to which all these works, and indeed all the subsequent works in the full variety of their subjects, fonns and materials, can be seen to constitute a world, an imaginative universe with its own internal laws and rhythms, its own codes, its own distinctive aura. An imaginative universe renewing and enlarging itself in a restless dialogue with the real world of men and women and nature Every exchange recomplicates the disposition of the elements of the imaginary world The really important exchanges-and some are far more important than others-alter the very bases and parameters of the enquiry. On those occasions a kind of leap takes place, and a seminal work comes into the world. Taken all together, his sculpture, ceramics, carving and painting, from the early 1950's to the present time, are best understood as m0ments of one global project aspects of one imaginary world. In this sense, an artist's world is something more than the accumulated output of work. It is not in the first place a matter of quantity: a painter of a hundred paintings, by virtue of that impressive volume of production alone, has not necessarily created a world; whereas, in their complex of 48

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inter-relations, the 20 pieces of another may constitute just such a uni verse. Although, in the case of Greaves, it is worth noting that we also happen to be discussing a large volume of work produced consistently over more than thirty years. Greaves' work invites us to view it as a totalised unity within which variety and difference abound, but always inside the boundaries that circumscribe and enclose the world. With seemingly infinite scope for internal experimentation and refinement, its investigations unfold within a specific space of enquiry which may expand or contract, but which exists always in strict relation to a fixed centre. Open to external influences, whether formal and artistic (like the Mexican Jose Clemente Orozco) or psychological and philosophical (like CS. Jung), it draws these into its system to be absorbed or rejected as its laws allow. The Greaves world is a particular world with its own compulsive theoretical and technical preoccupations, its own atmos phere, its distinctive fauna and flora that are ruled over by its own black sun. It is systematic, this tight network of mobile elements at home and at play with all the other elements of the whole. It is a zone that is immediately recognisable on entry. His is the art of totalising impulses, powered by a narrow yet inexhaustible range of obsessions. The world of Greaves is marked by seriality and repetition, by reflexivity and self allusion, and by the restless pushing outwards of frontiers from a centre that is fixed and still "Askari", (" Ancestral Images No.4"), a 20" x 16" colour woodcut, is a reduction print, one of a series that Greaves executed in 1979-80 during a period of formal study at Howard University. A boy is sitting in the middle ground, slightly to the right of the print's centre Around his head enigmatic shapes hover and swirl, shapes of masks/faces/shields/spears/leaves. The shield-faces are heart-shaped and anticipate the explorations of the late 80's. There are six of them, grouped in three pairs. Another pair of faces looms in the left foreground. These, like the small boy's, are depicted in considerable detail, amounting even to expressiveness in the face closest to the specta tor, as it watches over the scene, protectively. It is the figure of the mother. The other face, her companion's is in sharp profile. Mother, companion and child are the only figures depicted in a naturalistic way: the head-tie of the mother is one such naturalistic detail. These three humans exist on the plane of reality. They are of this human world. The other three pairs that occupy the entire space above the boy's head are abstracted, sexless, and are not of this world. They are organised in as cending order, each pair larger than the one preceding. While the first two pairs are the same way up with the points downward, the final pair are head to toe: the second of the two, or the last of the six, is inverted and more like a leaf/spear. In a picture full of eyes, the boy's face is eyeless. Instead, two eyes are off to the left and right of his face, one brown, the other green. They are closed, with teardrops falling from the 49

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ASKARI ri ght one. The picture i s muted in tone and c o lour and it has a strange, other worldly aura. For this ancestral study Greaves has chosen yellow ochre, green and brown. Brown, the darkest a n d last to be applied, tinges eve rythirig :"":'The:-final brown assens th e relation of this colour with the yellow and green. As we shall see i t is entirely in keeping with the integration of Greaves' world that i t is the identical palette used three years earlier in the "Canecutters" of 1977. The mysterious power of II As1cari" is partly cccounted. for techni cally by the tension between activ ity and passivity, business and repose ex perience and innocence, that is the informing principle that structures th e print. It is a picture about receptivity about receiving and absorbin g from the forces of knowledge the energy and guidance human beings need if they are not to flounder i n the confusion of the world. The p i ctu re dramatises the externalisation of the desires of the self and the journ eying inward of the self's experi ence. The figures, some of which a ppear stem and menacing, that hover around the head of the small boy are the ancestors, the truth-bearing 50

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PREACHER (Detail) spirits through which we connect with all we have been, all that we are and all we can become. The mother figure draws her power and authority from them, graphically expressed in the sweeping lines that connect her to them. It is a small boy who is receiv ing the ancestors, not a grown man. The young boy, innocent, open, usually at the foot of an elder, is a recurring figure in the early paint ings. "Askari" expresses and celebrates the guardian aspect of the ancestral spirits. It is a study on the theme of guardianship. These wraiths are one with the forest, arising out of it and ready to melt back into it in the twinkling of an eye. They are at home. Where the ancestors dwell, all is hannony and immanence. Theirs is that epic place that was before the fissure of self and world. This idea of a complete fusion with the environment of life, the dissolving of lines of separation, is central to many of Greaves' most important paintings. It is dramatically expressed in the seminal "Canecutters" of 1977: the labour ers are themselves smudged with the ash of the burnt cane, subhuman stalks emptied of individual identity, indistinguishable from the burnt out cane they have produced and become. "'Fore-day morning' on 1 December (1905) found the Ruimveldt factory grinding. It began to consume coals, cane, and human labour from 4.00 AM .... Thus Walter Rodney, writing on the 1905 Riots and expressing in that play on "consume" a similar idea and understanding. It is not surprising to find the signs of so many of Greaves' estab lished themes and permanent interests inscribed in "Askari". We have not mentioned his deep and long-standing interest in African origins nor sought to explain the significance of the Askari's curious social location in the activities of penetration and conquest. Who were the Askaris? They were the African tribesmen who accompanied the white hunter on his safari, first guiding him to the quarry and then providing the ulti mate protection, even at the cost of their own lives. Should the white hunter come under attack, his Askari would if necessary place himself in the path of the charging animal. The Askari was the white hunter's hunter, his eyes and ears and right hand. He was in fact his guardian. Importantly, "Askari" is a reduction print, end result of a process of production uniquely well-suited to Greaves' interest in the ethics of pro duction. The printing of each successive colour means a reduction of the actual printing surface of the block. The first colour established will 51

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therefore establish the number of prints that can be made. Once com pleted, the edition cannot be repeated. Because the printing block is pro gressively emptied/consumed/destroyed in the process, the final prints are the only prints. It is, from within the very process of production and reproduction, the assertion of the authority of the original, of its "aura", in the age of mechanical and electronic reproduction. The print of "AsIcari" which is before me as I write is number 8 of the 10. It is easy to understand Greaves' attraction to the reduction print as a process of labour, with its delicate wood-carving and the sensual contact with tools and materials it requires. The streaks in some areas of the picture and the sharp, hard angularity of the edges are accounted for by the particular type of block that was used. Unlike the "Ancestral Images No.3", another reduction print of the time, which was made from a linoleum block, "Askari" was printed from a plywood block. The streaky effect and the hard, sharp edges (even of the circles and curves) were imposed by the grain of the plywood. He would have been drawn also to the restricted colour possibilities that brought the exacting monochromatic ideal closer. It would have been no less a question of rigour and limits. Most importantly, with its built-in immunity to commodification (mass-production), the reduction print "Askari" raises the question of artistic morality and takes a stand. In the terms of political economy, the reduction print confronts the ex change-value of the commodity with the use-value of art. It does this by setting limits to its own reproducibility. Reduction prints like" Askari" invite consideration of the antagonism between the abstract labour that produces commodities for the market and the concrete labour that pr0-duces art for human fulfilment. From the standpoint of classical political economy, "productive" and "unproductive" labour, respectively. Greaves' versatility is for me a source of constant wonder. Academi cally trained in sculpture, he has given free play to his curiosity and delight in adjacent and not so adjacent disciplines: steel welded figures ('"'Ancestral Figures", ''The Cage is the Bird", both of 1980); wood carv ings ("Little Man", 1970, "Orissa", 1976); ceramics, pottery, prints, mixed-media objects ("Amatuk Waterfall", 1967-mahogany, aluminum and formica; "Flayed Culture God (Xipe Toltec}", 1970-mahogany, can vas, wool and wire; "Diamond Box", 1970-mahogany, glass, plaster and paint; ''Timehri'' and "Dancing Figures", 1974-wood, painted tin, and wire; and so on). In the mixed-media pieces, he is drawn to the idea of tension produced by the interaction of the different materials. It is, in the realm of material, a proposition about the unity of opposites. We will see how, at certain key moments of his investigations, the resolution of some sculptural problems will demand that particular equilibrium of forces exerted among different materials when they are brought into relation one to the other. We can do little more at this stage than take note of Greaves' range 52

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of s ldlls and his mastery of many modes and processes. For the pur poses of this paper, I will confine my remai ning observations to the paintings. I have used the word "investiga tion on more than one occasion to indicate the intellectua l curios ity, that sense of theoretical restless ness that is at the heart o f Greaves' project. Note the tenacity with which he sets out, in the paintings of the 1950's of which "Preacher" and "Beg gar and Urchin are typical to resolve certain problems which begin, or at any rate w hich propose themselves initially, as problems of technique. I have in mind here the problem of the outlining of the figures. In a practical sense, this is the challenge Greaves sets himself in these early paintings In one of the few commentaries on Greaves' work, Basil Hinds, that diligen t servant of art, called these paintings the "People of the Pavement" seri es PREACHER In painting after pain t ing, n o tw ithstanding the undoubted variation o f scene ac tion and charac te rs, nor the diff e rences of strength and tone and emphasis the esse ntial and original problem of the outlining of the figures is pursued with w hat w e have come to recognise as Greaves' un usual per sist ence. Thi s probl e m will eventually resolve itself in two ways o r better in two forms: into considerations of the edge, as in "Canecutter s", ''Bla c k Beetle (1977), "Channaman" (1978). And, sec ondly, into propositions about the inter-connectedness of people with the space they inhabit, about the dissolving of the lines of separation and difference tha t stand in the way of oneness and community. So what 53

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began a s a matter of technique has revealed itself a matter of vision. In the best sense, Greaves is a painter of ideas. Not a thesis painter. Be cause the intellectual investigations are rooted in the soil of fonn and technique and spring from it. And because nothing is forced. A brief and preliminary observation on his use of colour. It was not until his second period-through the sixties and early seventies, up to the decisive ''Mazaruni'' of 1976-that Greaves began to seriouslyengage the problems of colour. The early paintings, with their bold reds and greens and blacks, show little evidence of interest in the expressive use of colour. The main problem then, we recall, was the place where colours met, not the colours themselves. Since then, however, colour has played an increasingly important role in his work. He is today working with fewer and fewer colours. It is as though, for reasons of artistic scruple and rectitude, he is in rebellion against the lack of necessity, that t e rrible anarchy of possibilities which confronts the painter who is free to paint a human face green, yellow, acquamarine. There is even a witti cism along these lines in his "Channaman" of 1978, where the Indo G u yanese channaman's face and hands are bright blue, the colour of Lord Shiva's throat. Currently, in the ''Hearts and Diamonds" series, Greaves is experimenting further with the free ing of the colours, allow ing them to blend and flow, nudging them here and there, guiding them to mingle and separate as they will. These are no action paintings. More than technique is at stake. Greaves has expressed to me in conversation his ambition to make use strictly and only of th e colours of nature-the browns of mud, the greens of ferns, the perfectly modulated greys of a moth's wing. He believes that purely monochromatic paintings are his eventual destination. As in the case of the reduction print, the matter of colour raises ques tio ns that go far beyond technique, questions that go to the heart of the artist's relation to his art. The consideration of colour leads to the fundamental issue of the relation between artistic freedom I and aesthetic necessity. His current researches, being pursued with extraordinary single mindedness in the o ngoing ''Hearts and Diamonds" series, show that the informing intelligence is more restless than ever. The rhythm of enquiry is quickened by the urgency of the quest for repose. To date, March 1988, there have been nineteen paintings in the series. In 1986 he began to explore the themes of hearts and diamonds in sculptural forms. That year he executed 3 Hearts and Diamonds stoneware pieces-2 bowls and a pedestal dish. Also in 1986, the first of the two mixed-media pieces on the theme-a vase with wooden plugs. He continued the following year with several pieces in earthenware-4 dishes and 2 pairs I of lo ving cups. And then, the second mixed media piece---''Pyramid of the Heart" (wood, velvet, mirror glass and coral), proposing a summary and a resolution of problems that had arisen in the course of the sculptural investigations. He had called on the pyramid before, in 1980, at 54

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PYRAMID OF THE HEART Howard U n i vers i ty, the seaso n of "Askari": "Pyramid of Power" (glass and wood) d r a ws together wood and crystal to celebrate that glory of symmetry that the pyramid enshrin es. From the first of the "Tantric Landscapes" of 1985 to the "Mountain of Hearts and Diamonds" of 1987, these are the paintings of Greaves' maturity There can be no mistaking the mastery of technique, including now the c o ntrol over the paint. In work after work Greaves expresses his fascina tion" with what he identifies as an aesthetic as well as a mathe matical principle: "the principle of symmetry (which is) an aspect of harmony." (These quotations and those that !olluw are taken from the Catalogue Notes of the joint exhibition of work, HEARTS, DIAMONDS AND FLOWERS by Greaves and his wife, Alison Chapman-Andrews, held in March 1988 at the Barbados Museum in Bridgetown). Greaves sees these researches ext e nding to relat ed principles: "reflection, refraction, inversion, p rogress ion chance and inferences of infinity." The paintings search out the forms that express "man' s need for order and for transcendence." They are to be '1ooked into", not only '1ooked at." For all that, these are s trange and troubling pictures. The symmetries of Hearts and Diamonds may be grids of order brought down on chaOs. Yet the chaos overspills the templa tes of order Nor can all their joy of design conceal the spirit's desolation at their heart. In ''Mountain of Hearts and Diamonds", high over the radiant mountain side the black sun that held dominion over the landscapes of yesteryear is today's black heart. 55

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HEARTSIWlfiTE DIAMONDS What is the source of this dread that haunts canvas after canvas in this extraordinary series of paintings? Take the painting named "Yellow Hearts/Whit e Diamonds". It was painted in March 1985. It is a seminal painting. Intricate patterns of blue lines of an even thickness stand out boldly from a background of colours used in different tonalities and hues, mov ing from deep orange to yellow and orange red, and from white to neu tral shades of orange. It does not take us long to realise that this is no innocent background. It is nothing less than the depiction, entirely through the use of colour, of the vertiginous space of chaos and contin gency. Whereas the blue of the grid is stable, as befits the primary instru ment of order, the orange ranges vertically along the black and white tonal axis, and horizontally along the hues axis from yellow through red to red purple. This is readily seen as soon as we refer to the Newtonian colour wheel. This mobili ty of the secondary orange along the vertical (from patches of white to neutral shades) and the horizontal (from yellow to orange red) is in marked contrast to the fixed and primary blue. Orange 56

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/ WHl"tE / RED / orar? green is taken through a range of hues and tonalities: in its movement along the hues axis to red purple, it stops at a point where red is a kind of burden of the past and purple a promise of the future. Most significantly of all, orange in its true spectrum aspect is absent from the painting. Orange is implied in the tension between yellow and red. It is the occluded middle between yellow and red. It is an orange of the mind. We are in the midst of a methodical exploration Even as this background of mo bile orange signifies the zone of contingency it does so by means of systematic method, raging against disorder within its very articulation. 'The grid of blue is brought down on to the pulsing orange. It is not a true spectrum blue. It is a blue whose intensity is held in check by the patches of neutral shades surrounding some of its sections. It has also been lightened by the admixture of yellow We will return to the dynamics of this blue/yellow discord. At the level of pure form, the blue lines are both straight and curved, now meeting at acute angles now describing segments of incomplete circles and ovals. The entire structu r e rests on the point of a triangle enclosing two smaller triangles with which it shares a base. A parabola, a perfect semi-circle, meets the apex of the large triangle exactly at its midpoint. This point is also the mid-point of the slightly curved segment of the parabola which is the base of another triangle. From the apex of this smaller triangle, two triangles fold outwards to form a diamond. Four hearts, right side up, are blocked in various tones of yellow Each is outlined or partly outlined in a fine white line that runs along the centre of sections of the blue lines and curves, forcing these sections out further from the canvas. This has the effect of introducing an additional dimen sion to the blue plane. One heart, blocked in white and upturned, fills the apex of the first large triangle at the bottom, balancing the large yellow heart at the top. Three small diamonds are blocked in white and 57

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again are variously outlined in white lines running through the blue. At the centre of the pattern, structuring it, is a cross, its vertical running from top to bottom and dividing the pain ting exactly in half; its horizon tal, interrupted at the intersecting right angl e t o accommodate the central diamond, runs straight across the canvas fro m left to right. The bottom of the picture is a straight line of colours meetin g the white of the canva s. The other three sides are unfinished, smudges of colour untidy o n the white. The painting, which is four feet high and three feet wide, is a maze through which the eye hunts for pattern and the mind for mean ing. The eye comes to rest in relief on the perfect semi -c i rc le crowning the perfect triangle at the base. "Form a l one," Kandinsky has written, "even thou g h totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of inner s u ggestion A triangle ( without the accessory consideration of i ts being acut e or obtuse-a ngled o r equila t eral) has a spiritual value of its own." As we have seen, the painting is framed on its four si des b y a border of the unpainted white of the canvas. And we have seen how arbitrarily the paint meets the canvas at three of the four sides, marking that "er0-sion of the contours" that has ha .unted the modem philosophic mind from Nietzsche to the existen t ialists. But this framing is important f o r another reason: it establishes the plane (the empty canvas) above and below which the two other planes of the pictu r e exist. The significance o f this assertion of the three planes of the pictur e becomes clear as soon as we see that the painting itself consists essentiall y of two planes separated by a volume of space. Of what do these planes c onsist? First, there is the blue plane, the plane o f the grid of order. At the top left and right of the picture, arcs of the blu e grid are haloed in white and white tinged with blue and purple. These haloes exist on the same plane as the blue arcs which they surround. So too do the white and Two ol. the yellow hearts and single white diamond are "complete" as forms of yellow and white. The other hearts and diamonds are intimations, ren d ered incomplete by the blue lines of the grid that mark them off and d ivide them. Then there is the orange plane, the plane of organised chaos. Both the yellow of the hearts and the white of the diamonds are among the colours mingling and spreading on this plane. It is as though the white and yellow have been drawn up through the volume of space that hangs between the planes, to be caught and held in the blue grid of the first plane A similar movement between the two p l anes occur s in sections o f this second plane, where the dark shades o f o range-pu rpl e are not allowed to ''bleed over" into the adjacent sectio ns. Instead, a discontinu ity: patches of light yellow orange, where the light y ellow orange is on the first plane. This movement across the space tha t separates the two planes is the essential dynamism of th e p ictu re. It is also the source of anxiety, the space of vertigo. Hence, th e reassurance of the borders of 58

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white of the original canvas. It is after all only paint on a canvas surface. We can anchor here. Another important relation between the two planes is that of conflict, expressed by the juxtaposition of discordant colours. Areas where the blue of the grid is adjacent to the red of the background establish one of the two major discords in the painting. The other is the blue/yellow discord, this time occurring at the level of the first plane. The yellows, like the blue, are reduced in intensity. Hence, they are less Ndisturbing". (Kandinsky: ''Yellow, if steadily gazed at in any geometri cal form, has a disturbing influence, and reveals in the colour an insis tent, aggressive character. The intensification of the yellow increases the painful shrillness of its note.") Of blue and yellow, the visionary Wassily Kandinsky has further written: Two great divisons of colour occur to the mind at the outset: into warm and cold, and into light and dllrk ... Generally speaking, warmth or cold in a colour means an approach respectively to yellow or to blue ... The movement is lin horizontal one, the warm colours approaching the spectator, the cold ones retreating from him .... Yellow and blue have another movement which affects the first antithesis-Gnd ex-and concentric movement. If two circles are drllWn and painted respectively yellow and blue, brief concent",tion will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the sptator. blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like II snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the sptator. In the case of the painting under discussion, the blue is not permitted to recede. It is held in check by its linearity. Large swathes of blue would have had a tendency to retreat, but lines of blue reduce the move ment away and into itself. The blue is held even as it strains to leave. This is a point of tension in the picture and resembles in its function the zones of strife where discordant colours meet. This tension is most dra matically expressed in the yellow hearts and white diamonds glowing on the plane of the grid. As we have seen, two of the hearts and one diamond are complete forms of hearts and diamonds. They bear no marks of the grid. The other three hearts and the other diamond are caught and held in the grid, as yet unfree to emerge as final forms. The movement of the yellow began in the depths of the lower plane and moved up through the illusionary space to the upper plane where it is partially held and partially free. FInally, of the pairs of complementary colours, blue and orange have for a particu1ar and transcendental resonance. Characteristi cally, nature is the point of departure: the colour harmony of this paint-59

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ing was supplied to Greaves by the colours of the macaw, with its bril liant blue back, its breast of brilliant golden orange and the neutrals (black and white) of its head. The yellow hearts and white diamonds are jewels come up from the deep. The painting suggests that victory over the fear of the abyss may lie in a kind of surrender to it. Within itself, the painting indicates the paths of future exploration: they begin precisely at the points of strife and discord. It is for this reason that I have called this painting seminal: it contains its own future. It would be instructive to trace the evolution of motifs that recur throughout the paintings: the potted plant, the cage, the bird, the foot, the leaf the simple things of this world which accumulate a radiant power from painting to painting. See how the leaf grows, now alone on a branch, now multiplying, now magically sprouting from a staff. In ''Magic Pepper Tree" (1976), leaves spread open like fans, trinities of leaves and branches, and are mysteriously unattached to their branches. Where leaf should meet branch, a hot space, a field of force. In "Big Bread" there are five plants whose stems and leaves are haloed with the same light that glows around the great plaited loaf from which they sprout. In different paintings (sometimes separated by years) each motif, each recurring element, is explored for shape and texture, for colour and pattern. The single bird flying under the great kite, its companion of the air, multiplies into the four graceful spurwings stepping daintily across the water lilies floating in a trench. Then a birdless cage full of the absence of bird. And in ''Blackbirds'' (1981) there are seven blackbirds sitting in a tree. The seven leaves are caught around the edge of the segment o f a circle. Seven leaves to equal seven blackbirds. Or is it seven trees, each with its resident blackbird? In any case, the many leaves in the top right of the picture can stand for aU the trees in which blackbirds might sit. It is a cold picture all greens and black: blackbirds under a black moon, forming patterns, establishing symmetries. Lines from a famous poem of Wallace Stevl:ns' come to mind: I was of three minds Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. Greaves' concerns in paintings like "Swamp Birds" (1978) and "Blackbirds" (1981) are no less about ways of seeing and imaginin g and knowing. Again Stevens: When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. 60

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This flight into the infinite comes immediately after the stanza that speaks of the blackbird s implication in what the poet knows: I know noble accents And lucid inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. The lines are from Wallace Stevens' 1917 poem: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. BEGGAR AND URCHIN It would also be useful to exa mine the pictorial representation of self-consciousness withi n the paintings, places where the picture reflects on its own processes. Certain of Greaves' paintings are self-reflexive in this sense. This can be seen in the early observer figures. In "Beggar and Urchin" (1958) he is standing off to the right, hands clasped behind his back, not of the scene, but its essential witness. In a later painting of the same period, "Beggars", he becomes in volved in the scene, an actor in the drama of the street. And see how at the very moment that he stops being a mere witness and joins in the activity of the world, another figure from within the group stares out of the picture directly at the viewer who in tum is drawn closer to the action. 61

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In the process, the viewer has changed places with the fonner wit ness to become the street's latest spectator. The self-reflexivity is there, in a surprisingly whimsical way for such a serious picture, in the little loaf lying quietly and out of sight under the baker's table where the big loaf is laid out, a perfect little replica of the grand original. ''Big Bread", with its religious allegory and private symbolism, was painted in 1971 out of Greaves' experience of his father's dead body laid out on the mortuary table. In its most abstract form, the representation of self-consciousness is there in the white L marking a right-angled intersection in ''J asper Hearts and Diamonds". The white L flaunts the sign's freedom to be a sign in and for itself. It asserts its right to signify nothing beyond itself. Such flashes of defiance from time to time light up the dread zone of perfect form where hearts and diamonds meet. I have said nothing about Greaves writing. He has written poems and important essays on the historical development of Guyanese art. He is currently at work on a History of the Guyanese Art Group, having completed the final draft of the History of the Working People's Art Class. I have not spoken of his keen interest in calligraphy and in the making of musical instruments. In this last area, he was a respectful student of the old master, Louis laRoche. Greaves' is an exceptional art, passionately committed to the truth of form that is at once the truth of vision. BEGGARS 62

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THE WEEDING GANG I end by venturing this: if all other records of modern Guyanese life were to disappear, a study of Greaves' paintings of compassion of the fifties and sixties wquld be enough to tell us how we lived, what yards and houses we inhabited, what tools our hands held, what musical instruments consoled us, what forms of commerce we engaged in, what hats and pants and dresses and shoes we wore, what leaves and birds and flowers lit up our lives. It is a splendid human achievement from an artist now at the height of his powers. And the abstract paintings? Kandinsky, finally: The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct is its appetll. In any composition the mate rW side may be more or less omitted in proportion as the forms used Ilre more or less material, and for them substituted pure abstractions, or largely dematerialized objects. The more an artist uses these abstracted forms, the deeper and more confidently will he ad vance into the kingdom of the ilbstract. And after him win follow the gazer at his pictures, who also will IuztJe gradUlllly acquired Il grttlter familiarity with the language of that kingdom. 63

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NOTES 1. Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Translated with an introduction by M.T.H. Sadler (Dover Publications, Inc., N.Y., 1977). Quotations are from this edition. They are all drawn from Part II, Chap ters V and VI: "The Psychological Working of Colour" and ''The Lan guage of Form and Colour." 2. In the order in which they arise in the discussion, these are the paint ings and objects of Stanley Greaves I have alluded to: Evolution ................................................ Hazel Williams Collection, Guyana Askari ................................. Aubrey Williams Collection, Washington, USA Preacher .............................................................. National Collection, Guyana Ancestral Images No.3 .......... Dorothy Taitt Foundation (OTF) Collection Canecutters ................................................................ OTF Collection, Guyana Ancestral Figures ............................ Howard University, Washington, USA The Cage is the Bird ......................................................... Howard University Little Man ................................. Andre Greaves Collection, New York, USA Orissa ........................................................................... Artist's Collection, DTF Amatuk Waterfall ..................................................................... OTF Collection Flayed Culture God (Xipe Tolted ......................................... OTF Collection Diamond Box ............................................................................ DTF Collection Timehri ........................................................................ Artist's Collection, DTF Beggar and Urchin ............................................ National Collection, Guyana Black Beetle ...................................... Wilson Harris Collection, London, UK Channaman ............................................................................... DTF Collection Mazaruni ............................................................ National Collection, Guyana Pyramid of the Hearl ........................................ Artist's Collection, Barbados Pyramid of Power ............................................................. Howard University Mountain of Hearts and Diamonds ...................................... DTF Collection Yellow Hearts/White Diamonds ........................................... DTF Collection Magic Pepper Tree ............................ Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba Big Bread ............................................................ National Collection, Guyana Blackbirds ............................................................................ Artist's Collection Swamp Birds ..................................................... National Collection, Guyana Beggar and Urchin ............................................ National Collection, Guyana Beggars ............................................................... National Collection, Guyana Jasper Hearts and Diamonds ................................................. DTF Collection The Weeding Gang .......................................... National Collection, Guyana 64

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MUSIC IN PORTUGUESE UFE IN BRITISH GUIANA by SR. M. NOEL MENEZES, RSM As one writer noted: "The Portuguese are a small nation with a vast history".U] This vast history embraced the most renowned achieve ments in navigation and it is not too far-fetched to observe that Portu guese navigators could be considered the astronauts of their day. One fruit of their discoveries was the wooded island of Madeira, 535 miles from Lisbon, discovered by Joao Zargo and Tristao Vaz in 1419. With Portugal in the fifteenth century enjoying internal peace and stability, a nation on the tip-toe of adventure, outward-looking and dy namic, Prince Henry the Navigator gave and Vaz full support in carrying out the povomento -the peopling of an uninhabited island,[2] which by 1500 became one of the most productive sugar producers in the world. Since the legendary history of Madeira began with a love story, an adventurous tragic drama, drama seemed to become an integral part of the life of the island. Every writer of Madeiran history portrays that fascinating story of Robert Machim and Anna d' Arfet who, after eloping from London and driven off their course to Normandy by a storm, landed on the wooded island where they eventually perished. The Eng lish connection was more firmly and historically establis hed by the Treaty of Windsor in 1386. There was more drama in the 17th century when Madeira almost became part of Britain's possessions in Catherine of Braganza's dowry on her marriage to Charles II. From then on special facilities were granted to English settlers on the island; by the end of the seventeenth century British factories, mostly wine, were established on the island. More exciting drama was played out in the early nineteenth century with the occupation of the island by British troops during the Napoleonic War as the island had gained much strategic importance. The repercussions of the constitutional struggles in Portugal, the de cline in the sugar trade with the consequent increasing poverty made emigration for the hard-pressed Madeiran peasant a necessity. In the 18305 and 1840s emigration to the Madeiran seemed the key to livelihood and possible prosperity. The movement of these people from their small island home across the ocean to many distant lands was the main drama of nineteenth century Madeira. The outward-looking nature of the Por tuguese had been nurtured by their history of maritime enterprise and high adventure into the unknown, a movement immortalized in the epic poem of Luis de Camoes, The Lusiads, published in 1572-a saga of Portuguese discovery, exploration, expansion and dissemination of cul ture. Yet in the 18305 the Madeirans, descendants of these adventurous 65

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explorers, were pushed more by necessity than by romance to seek the shores of far-<>ff British Guiana to work on the sugar plantations soon to lose their cheap, steady and continuous labour. Early reports of these Madeirans high-lighted their industry and their cheerfulness.[3} Too "imprudently laborious" they soon suffered from sickness and death through fevers, dysentery and diarrhoea.[4] As better and more sanitary accommodations and improved medical assistance were provided deaths decreased as one gets a more delightful picture of these emi grants; they dance and sing as the vessels dock in Georgetown and "on their arrival at the depOt of Plantation Poaderayen [Pouderoyen] they begin to tune their guitars, and a general dance follows .... "[5] The inherent love of music, which later became expressed in the establishment o f musical bands in the colony, was one of the characteristics of the Madei rans, unfortunately down-played and mostly ignored. Historical accounts of the Portuguese in British Guiana over-empha sized their economic prowess; they became labelled as the notorious rum shop, provisions shop and dry goods shop owners who carried on cut-throat competition which severely undermined the economic growth of other ethnic groups. Mannie, the ubiquitous shop-keeper, became a term of opprobium. It is hoped that this article will offset this long-held view and indicate that the Portuguese played their part in the development of aesthetic life in British Guiana, side by side with other Europeans and coloureds. FOLK CULTURE OF MADEIRA Bronkhurst noted that "The Portuguese, not only made British Gui ana, a SECOND HOME, but a SECOND MADEIRA. "[6] This was par ticularly noticable in the transmission of their culture, especially in the line of music and drama. As a Madeiran historian noted, ... music gives a certain polish to the most inferior stations in life" .[7] Most Madeiran peasants played a guitar of some sort, the machete or the rajd'o.[8} It was their custom to sing while labouring -on the sugar plantations and crush ing grapes in the vineyards, composing the words of the songs as they went along. Many of the songsoW-ere iiribued with a saudade-, a state-of longing, nostalgia for a person or place-an attribute which would be most noted i n the songs and music of the emigrants. In Madeira, "all the trappings of a fully developed high culture"[9] co-existed with a vibrant folk culture, expressed, above all, in folk literature (contos-tales) and in folk songs (ballads) together with folk music, involv ing folk instrument s and dances performed in bright coloured costumes This fol k culture of the Madeirans-an outpouring of song and dance --became an integral part of their religious celebration s their fesfas, in their adopted land, so much so that the English priests unused to 66

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that type of exuberance i n church, branded their faith as a "Madeiran type of Catholicism". [10] This love of music, in song and dance as well as their penchant for drama, did not remain confined to church celebra tions. Not long after the Portuguese had secured some economic stability they turned their atten tion to the arts. The desire to launch out in the fields of drama and music would have been stimulated by a social need to form closer links withi n their ranks, the need to play together, not only work together, a need that is always the more acute when people find themselves in an alien land with an alien culture. In 1854 they formed a group of Portuguese Amateurs and gave an Amateur Dramatic performance in aid of the Gir ls' Orphanage run by the Ursuline Sisters. press noted that this was the first effort of the Portuguese in this field.[11] It was by no means the first effort of the Madeiran Portuguese in the field of the aesthetic and fine arts. Since the eighteenth century acade mies of various types had been established in Madeira-the Academia Rtll das 5ciencias (1779), 50ciedade Funchalense dos Amigos das 5ciencias e Aries (1821) mirrored on that of the Acadmia Real 5ciencias de Lisboa. Nineteenth century cul tural life in Madeira became a microcosm of Portugal's. The Madeirans in British Guiana introduced their culture into a very Anglo-Saxon milieu. By the mid nineteen th century a number of Portu guese had made their fortune in the colony. Some of them returned to their island home to spend it; they lavishly distributed charity to beggars in Funchal and the villages, and donated large subscriptions for a feast or public entertainment both in the city and in their own parishes. They were termed by their Madeiran compatriots-''Demararistas''. The novel life of the Madeiran retornado il\trigued the famous dramatist/ writer Snr. Dr. Alvaro R odrigues de Azevedo. In 1859 he produced a drama, A Familia do Demerarista, loudly acclaimed in the Madeiran press which stated that the name of its scholarly author was sufficient recommendation for the work.[12] When the play was produced in Funchal in 1860 it was considered "um triumpho certo ao autor e ac tores".[13] It would be no exagger ation to state that the expansion of the Catho lic Church in British Guiana contributed to the growth and development of the cultural activities of the Portuguese community. At the same time the success of the cultural performances contributed very financially to the growth of the Catholic Church. It was already noted that the pro ceeds of the Portuguese Amateur Drama tic group were for the benefit of the Girls' Orphanage. The majority of performances was in aid of some charity or church. Joel Benjamin, quoting Holmes writing in (1831) and Schomburgk in 1840, indicates that though theatres had been in vogue in British Guiana in the early part of the nineteenth century they did not playa vibrant role in Guianese culturallife.[14] There seemed to be a 67

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tum in the tide in the late 1850s and in the 1860s, which saw the estab lishment of the Anthenaeum where a number of plays was performed, the Assembly Rooms and the Philarmonic Hall. Cultural societies, both musical and dramatic, mushroomed and the latter half of the nineteenth century was marked with a rash of plays, balls and concemts both sacred and secular. Side by side with other amateur and professional groups the Portuguese entered the cultural stream of music and drama in the Guianese society In 1869 the Georgetown Philarmonic Society secured the services of Dr. O. Becker as their conductor and encouraged him to open under their auspices a music school, the Demerary Musical Institute, similar t o the conservatories in Europe and America.[15] Before this Institute got under way, a Portuguese artiste, Miss Mary Christina De Vasconcellos, held a Grand Concert of Sacred Music in the Assembly Rooms, built in 1857, which became the scene of innumerable concerts, theatrical performances and balls until its demolition by a disastrous fire in 1945. The second sister, Mary Amalia De Vasconcellos was also a noted singer and featured on the programme of 8th March 1869 together with Dr. Becker. The items on the programme illustrate the classical type, mostly Ita lian works, of their selection, viz.: 1st PART 1. Introduction by the Band 2. Qual Giglio Candido, Solo from Mercadante (by Miss Mary Christina De Vasconcellos) 3. Loetantum Coch -Solo Offertorie (by Miss Mary Amalia De Vasconcellos) 4. Duo, Aute and Piano (Mr. Vieira and Dr. Becker) 5. Ego Sum panis, Duetto Battorglia (by the Two Sisters) 6. Finale of the 1st Part by the Band 2nd PART 1. Introduction by the Band 2. Cujus ani11Uln, Solo from Rossini (by M i ss M. C. De Vasconellos) 3. Quittolis, Solo Capocci (by Miss M. A. De Vasconcellos) 4. Duo, Aute and Piano (by Mr. Vieira and Dr. Becker) 5. Qui Sedet, Duetto Terziani (by the Two Sisters) 6. Finale of the 2nd Part by the Band 68

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GOD SAVE THE QUEEN Admission -4 shillings To commence at 8 [16] The concert was all De Vasconcellos; indeed Mary Christina De Vasconcellos was considered the leading artiste in British Guiana, the "prima donna" of her day. The Colonist, reporting on Dr. Becker's Second Grand Vocal and Instrumental Concert in the Assembly Rooms later in 1869 noted: Although it is not usual to name amateurs and criticise their performance, we feel bound to say that Miss Vasquite sustained her reputation as a singer in the piece ("Miserere" from Trovatore) which, too, was en cored .... [17] ESTABUSHMENT OF BANDS With Miss Vasconcellos blazing a musical trail in Grand Concerts the Portuguese decided to establish a musical band. Here again they were carrying on a Portuguese/Madeiran tradition. In Portugal band stands were as ubiquitous as churches. They arose primarily in the Passeio Publico where royalty rubbed shoulders with commoners and bourgeois on Sundays and the innumerable public holidays. Symphonic concerts, sacred concerts, charity concerts, performances by military bands were all heard in the shade of the garden where stood the band stand. Even after the Republican Revolution changed much of that life style the band stands remained in some cities and provincial towns. On holidays and festival days, rival bands, often perched on improvised stands, strove to outplay each other, frenziedly egged on by groups of supporters who, as often as not, ended up in physical combat, with the wielding of sticks and the eventual transportation to the local hospital for first aid treatment; and the interven tion of the Republican Guard to restore peace to its fes tivities. [18] Scenes around the stand were not always so turbulent for it was a famed setting for the arrangement of marriages and, as a Portuguese writer so aptly deduces: "Perhaps we wQuld not be here today if our grandparents had not fluttered an eye, had not exchanged an acquiescent smile, while up there on the band-stands the bands played on ... "[19] Madeira also had its Passeio Publico as well as its da 69

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where on Sundays and holidays the bands played, "the people listened, promenaded, talked, debated and flirted from afar."[20] Though every village did not have a band stand every village had its band of local musicians In this tradition "an influential body of Portuguese gentlemen" in British Gu i ana founded on 1st December 1876, a musica1 band to which they gave the name of the Primeiro de Dezembro in honour of the anniversary of the day on which Portugal threw off the Spanish yoke-1st December 1640 .[21] Its members were already members of a charitable association and it seemed that one of its aims was to develop a more "useful and beneficial organization "[22] They promptly sent off the Europe an order for a batch of musical instruments. This band grew and flou r ished, at one time having over 200 subscrib ing members and 30 bandsmen. It played at every known festivity in the colony. No church celebration was com plete without the sweet music discoursed by the Primeiro de Dezembro band. It played on the Sea-Wall, in the Botanic Gardens, the Promenade Gardens, the City Hall, the Assembly Rooms, the Philarmonic Hall, at weddings, galas, bazaars and balls; there was no excursion organized by the Portuguese without the attendance of the Band. One of its most renowned bandmasters, Senhor Joao Nobrega de Noronha, a former bandmaster of the ''Recreio dos Lavradores" band of Camara dos Lobos, a fishing village i n Madei ra, was a talented musician who played the flute, clarinet, violin and piano among other instruments. [23] The Band always observed their anniversaries in grand style On their eleventh anniversary postponed one month later they celebrated a t Belfield at the home of the well known Portuguese racing enthusiast, Mr. Luis Fernandes "After a sumptuous dejeuner," reported the Daily Chronicle, "and some lively airs were discoursed the band marching through Victoria Village at int ervals of about an hour ... gave the people the full benefit of their musical skill".[24] 1888 seemed a red-letter year for the band; they came under a new baton, that of Mr. John Miller of the Militia Band, and for the first time appeared in their new uniform. These uniforms were quit e arresting and made the news: The tunic and trou sers were made of blue-black cloth. A small red seam is on the outer side of each leg of the pants, and the tunic is braided after the style of the tu nics worn by the Police Inspectors. On the upper side of the collar band, which is of gold lace, there is a red seam, and the sleeves are also adorned with gold lace. They also wore a peakle ss cap of the same texture of cloth, the front being marked by a silver ornament plated in gold. [25] On Easter Mond ay the smartly band entertained a large 70

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:""-: -" crowd in the Botanic Gardens from 4 to 6 p.m. with the following programme of music: PART!. 1. Quick March .... "101" ......... STASNY 2 Polka.... '1
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Primeiro de Dezembro Band played a major role in all e vents. At a concert held on 15 July-the day of celebration-in the Promenade Gardens, the B.G. Militia Band joined their fellow badnsmen On this day all Portu guese businesses, even the rum shops, were closed, as the day was ear marked for festivities.[29) It was reported that the performances of the Primeiro de Dezembro Band attracted a large audience; on that day they must have excelled in their p l aying. This year also the Primeiro de Dezembro Band celebrated the twenty second anniversary and was joined by both the Estudiantina Band and the B. G. Militia in giving a moonlight concert in the Promenade Gar dens, At this concert the perfromance of the Estuidiantina Band was "deservedly applauded";[30) even more noticeable were their pictur esque costumes, typical of the Madeiran folk dress. In British Guiana moonlight concerts were a great favourtie among the people and these were held in the Promenade and Botainic Gardens and on the Sea Wall, the entrance fee being the princely sum of four cents For the String Band the new century brought a new look-the intro duction of young ladies who played the bandolins, violins and piano. They were considered the big feature of the vocal and instrumental con cert given in the Town Hall on 1 June 1900.[31) They received "unquali fied applause" by a large audience. It was especially noted that ''The Waltz music by the bandolins was perhaps the most popular item of the evening, the young bandolinistes being Mrs. M. L. Da Costa, Miss. E. Serrao, Miss. V. Teixeira, Miss. M. A. Teixeira, Miss G. Henriques, Miss. M. C. Serra, Miss. J. De Souza and Miss M. P. Gonsalves, piano.(32) A few days later the band, fresh from its success, was again in demand giving a patriotic concert in the Promenade Gardens, this time for the government commemorating the entry of Lord Roberts into Pretoria.(33) Through the first decade of the twentieth century the band played on. On 1st December 1901 the Primeiro de Dezembro Band celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary A letter to the press gave great praise to the ac complishments of this band, showing that over the years its playing powers had been generally recognized and appreciated. However, it seemed that in the last few years, absence from the colony, death and lack of both interest and funds had thinned out its ranks. In 1901 only sixteen playing members remained of whom Mr. V. X. de Silva, the President and Conductor of the Band, was one of the original members; Mr. A. Angelo de Nobrega, the Secretary and Treasurer, had joined in 1881. It was very much hoped that financial help would be forthcoming to purchase new instruments new uniforms, and new music. Above all the band, claimed to be "the oldest Portuguese institution in the colony," stood in need of new blood.(34) Although the band did not really return to its original complement it was still in action, especially delighting the crowds at moonlight concerts and on special occasions. One reads of their performances at a grand 72

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Moonlight Coronation Concert in August 1902 on the Sea Wall to honour the coronation of their Majesties, King Edward vn and Queen Alexandra at which they played a medley of popular English patriotic airs, including "Rule Britannia" and "The British Grenadiers" .[35J Although they honoured the British patriotic events they never forget their own and on such occasions the band would entertain the Portuguese Consul or Vice Consul at his home. One would have noted throughout the text the observations that the bands played to large audiences, while some reports espeically com mented on the fact that those large appreciative audiences were com posed mainly of the Portuguese community. However, it must not be concluded that only the Portuguese enjoyed those musical entertain ments. The moonlight concerts held in the Gardens and on the Sea Wall on special occasions or on public holidays were frequented by the Geor getown crowds, a mixed ethnic group. Comments of a crowd in a happy, holiday mood summed up the merits and de-merits of the Portu guese band as illustrated in this delightful dialogue overheard on the Sea Wall on a public holiday morning. The trams were running fully packed. The scene was described as "a disturbed ants nest but with all the ants in excellent humour". A donkey cart had brought the musical stands for the band and the men had arrived in ones and twos. Shortly after six o'clock the music began and the crowd gathered round to listen and to criticise. ''Dey is not like de Militia," said one. "Dey will neva reach de Mili tia." "Oh, dey do very well," said another. ''You t'ink is a easy job fo' play music, no7 Wha' instrument you can play at all7" 'liE can play de fool very well," suggested a third; and there was laughter at the expense of number 2. The bandsmen also came in for their share of bantering criticism. It was conjectured that the thin one had come widout Ie tea", while it was agreed that the bass had been made for his instrument.[37] Whether it was the classical music of the Primeiro de Dezembro Band or the popular music of the Estudiantina String Band; whether the music was played at the Town Hall, Philarmonic Hall, Assembly Rooms, Promenade or Botanic Gardens, or the Sea Wall the Portuguese bands were very much part of the musical scene in the colony and contributed in no small way to the social entertainment of a wide cross section of the population. 73

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NOTES 1. Sarah Bradford Portugal (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), p. 7. 2. Francis Rogers, Atlantic Islands of the Azores and the Madeiras (North Quincy, Massachusetts, The Christopher Publishing House, 1979), p. 49. 3 Governor James Carmichael Smyth to Earl of Aberdeen, 25 May 1835 N A.G 4 Monthly Returns of Portuguese Emigrants--enclosures in Governor Henry Light to Lord Stanley, No.55, 22 November 1841. 5. Mr. James Hackett to Gov. H. Light enc. in No.4, 5 July 1B41-Papers Relative to the West Indies. British Guiana, 1841-42. 6 Rev H V.P Bronkhurst, The Colony of British Guiana and Its Labouring Population (London, 1883), p.101. 7. William Combe, A History of Madeira. With a Series of Twenty Seven Coloured Engravings, illustrations of the Costumes, Manners and Occupations of the Inhabitants of That Island (London: R. Ack erman, 1821), p.77. 8. The machete resembles a small guitar, though it has but 4 strings all of catgut. The most difficult and classical music can be agreeably played on the machete. See Anthony Drexel Biddle The Land of the Wine, being an Account of the Madeira Island at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia and San Francisco: Drexel Biddle, 1901), IT, 62. The rajao consisting of five strings is a well-known musical instrument of the Madeirans. It was known as the local guitar in Madeira-"similar to the cavaquinho of the Minho-which was taken to Hawaii where it was adopted as the ukelele. See Ernesto Veiga de "Portuguese Folk Music Instruments", Atlantis, Vol. 7 No. 3 (May /June, 1987), 33. 9 Rogers, p.391. Over the years high culture penetrated folk culture in what Rogers called"a see-saw movement", p 392 10 B.G./15 Fr. Walker to Fr. Provincial, 6 November 1861, f 481. Jesuit Archives London. 11. C.O 116/16. The Colonist, 5 April 1854. 1 2 0 Direito, No.1 Quarta Feira,2 de Novembro 1859 Archivo de Re gional, Funchat _. . --.-.. 13 Ibid., No. 22, Sabbada, 7 de Abril 1860. No evidence has yet been fo und of this play being produced in nineteenth century Demerara. In May 1985, however, as part of the 150th Anniversary celebrations of the arrival of the Portuguese in British Guiana, the drama, translated by Sandra Grainger, Modem Languages Department, V .G., and produced by the V.G. Drama Group under John Rollins, Divisio n of Creative Arts, was. presented over Radio Demerara. .." ' 74

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14. Joel Benjamin, ''The Early Theatre in Guyana", Kyk-over-Al, No.37 (December, 198n, 30-31. 15. The Colonist, 5 February 1869. 16. Ibid., 2 March 1869. 17. Ibid., 28 July 1869. 18. Roby Amorim, "While the Band Played On", Atlantis, Vol. 6, No.2 (MaylJune, 1986), 17. 19. Ibid. 20. Luis de Sousa Melo and Susan E. Farrow, Impressions of Madeira in the Past (Funchal: Patio-English Bookshop, 1983), p.29. 21. The Watchman, 8 December 1876. N.A.G. 22. Ibid. 23. The Daily Chronicle, 25 January 1893. N.A.G. 24. Ibid., 31 January 1888. 25. Ibid., 4 April 1888. 26. Ibid., I April 1888. 27. Ibid., 14 September 1892. 28. Ibid., 9 October 1898. The bandmaster, A. Serr!o, was a composer in his own right, conducting five pieces of his own composition. The braggas were played quite admirably by small boys. 29. The Daily Chronicle, 16 July 1898. One writer signing himself 'Luso' expressed the hope that Portuguese employees in English business places would also be given a holiday. For said he: "I am almost certain that the English gentlemen will not deny this request knowing especially how England benefited in the discovery of the sea route to by this illustrious Portuguese sailor" 30. Ibid., 2 December 1898. 31. Ibid., 3 June 1900. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 12 June 1900. 34. The Argosy, 30 November 1901. 35. The Daily Chronicle, 17 August 1902. 36. Ibid., 14 March 1888; The Daily Argosy, 17 November 1908. 37. The Daily Argosy, 17 November 1901. 75

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IN THE POETRY OF MARTIN CARTER By STEPHANOS STEPHANIDES 1. Introduction The work of Martin Carter, foremost Guyanese poet and no doubt one of the most distinguished wri ters of the English speaking Caribbean to date, has been acclaimed both regionally and internationally by critics and scholars. However, for most readers of literature in the industrial countries of the north, the literature of the English-speaking Caribbean begins and ends with the Trinidadian V.5. Naipaul. It has now been agreed among many critics that a good part of Naipaul's distinction internationally, among equally meritorious Caribbean writers, is due to his negative evaluation of the Caribbean experience. His writing confirms prejudices of the industrial countries of the north regarding the south. Interestingly, his lesser talented brother Shiva, has gained a readership in North Amer ica and the United Kingdom but not in his native region. Paradoxically, his novel A Hot Country, in which Guyana serves as a model for the fictional country Cuyama, a paradigm of a failed post-colonial society, has never been mentioned to me in Guyana. Shiva Naipaul's novel does litle to evaluate the nation's experience through colonialism, slavery, in dentureship, and the post-colonial struggle for survival as an independ ent nation. Perhaps the difficulties and upheavals of transition from colonialism to independence have been felt more deeply and are more visible in Guyana than in the other English-speaking Caribbean nations making it easy prey for Shiva Naipaul's political satire. Martin Carter offers a radically different perspective on the Caribbean experience to the Naipaul brothers. The approach to language and identity separates Carter from the Naipauls. For the Naipauls, man's identity is defined by the negative verdict of his history. They seem ashamed of their Caribbean identity. In antithesis to this attitude Carter explores identity in the ceaseless tension between man's Desire and man's fate, which is repre sented by Time. For Carter, language is man's key of access to the Desire-Time polarity. In its artistic expression language can articulate man's quest for identity. Carter's work represents a quest for life within and without to reintegrate the individual in a divided social nexus and a fragmented historical experience. 2. Caribbean Identity Viewed in A Hot Country by Shiva Naipaul The novel opens with reference to a history lesson taught in Cuyamese SChools, which as in V.S. Naipaul's The Loss of EI Dorado, depicts Guyanese history as a disappointment from the arrival of the Europeans: 76

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It was told how Sir Walter Raleigh had come to this wilderness. But he had found nothing worth findingonly the overwhelming forest and tribes of miserable aboriginals; men barely progressed beyond the Stone Age; who painted their bodies; who lived off roots and small wild animals; who shot fish with poisoned arrows; who, occasionally, hunted each other's head. He came and went away to be beheaded in the Tower of Lon don.[t] Later a teacher describes the ethnic variety of Cuyamese. Rather than a sense of the potential of a varied cultural heritage, this causes a response of bewilderment among his students: So it was that all the people we call Cuyamese came, creating a blend of many peoples, many religions, many cultures. All different and still all Cuyamese. They looked at him and at each other and did not know what to think or how to respond. (He. p. 5) The conclusion of the novel defines the Cuyamese as having no self or soul and no creativity: But, down deep in their hearts, the mob did not want to create. Creation was not possible for them (He. p.184) A void. Darkness. Unspecified hunger. That was all they had-their darkness, their hunger They did not have a self, a soul, to call their own. (He. p 184) 3. Carter Carter is in antithesis to the above view not because he embraces a facile nationalism or sodal optimism in the face of the negative legacy of the colonial past and the uncertainty of no straightforward path into the future, but because for him language is a living thing. For the Naipauls language is a dead thing defining a static reality that has no possibility of change. For Carter, language is a means for transformation and an at tempt to rescue the human being from a language that institutionalizes its own fragmented subjectivity. Carter puts language under scrutiny as part of his moral and artistic concern to distinguish between a language which fosters the centering and growth of the human being in the community and the world, and a language which consolidates a world inimical to his fulfillment in con spiracy with time, 'the time', 'our time', the negative verdicts of history. 77

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Language is a valuable tool as it is able to open up the individual's scale of choices. But at the same time it is not innocent; by its very nature it selects, combines, and excludes, creating its own mythic figurations to serve its conscious and unconscious purposes. Ca r ter draws attention to this, beginning his most recent anthology, Poems of Affinity with a quote from Heidegger quoting Holderlin '1anguage, the most innocent of all occupations, is the most dangerous of all possessions. "[2] In one of the poems in the same anthology he warns: As when, as out, and as when as in, I walk decid i ngly about disappear. Watch my language. (P A. p. 75) Similarly Carter expresses in "Proem" the problematic relationship and dissociation between the speaker/poet and the words/poem and in tum the poem's relationship to reality. The 'rule breaking' device in the poem/proem contrast underscores this and shows poetic language to be endlessly moving from one level of meaning to another as soon as it is established: Proem Not, in the saying of you, are you said. Baffled and like a root stopped by a stone you tum back ques tioning the tree you feed. But what the leaves hear is not what the roots ask. [3] The art of Carter, and also the art of Wilson Harris as I have dis cussed in another essay, embraces the idea that l anguage is a dialogue between two polarities-desire and time, self and history. Implicit in the dialogical nature of lan guage is the possibility of transformation throuth dialogue with itself and others. In the poem I n a certain time" this dialogue is portrayed by Martin Carter as the hoot of an owl defying the eye of a toad, an animal that is an instrument of black magic and, there fore, spiritual death: In a certain time I have lingered But as an owl hoots to startle the vile eye of a toad and initiate its own defiance of dark: I also speak. (P A. p. 27) In this context impoverishment of speech comes to signify a breach of faith in one's experience. Carter establishes a link between man's con struction of self, his perception of world, and language: 78

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So new/-how comel the treason o.the.spirit? --So now/how co.me/ the bafflement of speech? How Come? (ps. p. 94) An intimate link is suggested here between language and historical memory. Impoverishment of speech is an expression of a sensibility plunderd by the negativity of historical legacy. In Carter's "Our Time" a muttering at the bottom of trenches expresses man's incapacity to come into harmony with 'our time'. Our perception of world and identity depends on the struggle between time and being which is paradoxically expressed in the following lines: The more the men of our time we are the more our time is. But always we have been somewhere else. Muttering our mouths like holes in the mud at the bottom of trenches (P A. p. 15) The language of the poet in his affinity with the human spirit is a negative/ affirmative dialectic to subvert the jaws of time by a loan of its t ongue. In its negation of time, language becomes an affirmation of life: In this world time is a snare and I all\ masticated by its jaws All I could have and have done was to borrow its tongue. With that loan I have gained a mastery of the language of our negative yes. (P A. p. 31) Hence the object of the poetic quest is to uncover the potential for being. I say potential because it is a desire in language which is in p rocess. This is attested to by the use the conditional in the title of the poem''If it were given": If it were given to me I would have had a serious conversation with the fertile dial of the clock of the sun. But then, I admit, I would have had to change the language of the dead I would have had to haunt the cemetery where the living believe they put away the varnished coffins whichmP4 them making 79

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wreaths for themselves and graveyards for their passions and victories that mean nothing to them though they win the trophy of life: that cupped hand of anguish open for love (but scattering pain like seeds of padO in the murdering drought. (PS. p. 90) The death/sun opposition intrinsically links the nature of language with the nature of consciousness and reveals the poetic quest to be a quest for integration and wholeness whose objective is victory over time. The poe t is thus potentially a healer for the individual who becomes locked in his journey towards death through experience of loss and de feat. The sun clock is a counter clock to the time of historical duration or conventional time which leads to death. The operative verbs are "change" and "haunt" makirtg the poet's dialogue a counter dialogue subverting the buried past in an attemmpt to restore man to his original potentiality. The fertile dial of the clock of the sun, like the Heraclitean flux or the Indian mandala, here becomes a symbol of the wholeness of the inne r self which can recreate the fragmented individual or commu nity identity. Carter's is not a poetry of mystical participation, for the ego is not set adrift, but oscillates in its dialogue between polarities-fertile dial, sun clock, life, victory, love versus language of the dead, cemetery, coffins, graveyard, nothing, pain, drought. This tension, often imbued with anguish and torment, is the propelling force behind man's potential to think, feel, and grow. It is the paradox of man's existence that death, which negates life, thus mocking the individual also gives significance to the act of creation, making life a trophy and victory for man. "If it were given" in theme and structure can serve as a model for understanding the whole span of Carter's work from the '50's to the 'BO's. While there is an evolution in Carter's poetic form, there is also a continuity in his underlying concern to explore the potential of poetic discourse to challenge or subvert the compelling pressure of time or the time. This is true whether the oppressor is portrayed as an external agent as in "This Is The Dark Time My Love": Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass? It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader watching you sleep and aiming at your dream. (PS. p. 42) or as our own demeaned sensibilities as in "Our Time": Is it only just a misfortune to be as we are; bad luck carefully chosen? (PA. p. 15) I am not suggesting that there is a clear cut division in Carter's work 80

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or in reality between external agent of oppression and demeaned sensi bility. Poems may refer to specific political events, the condition of Car ibbean man, or universal man. Oppressors may be removed, new ones may emerge, and history may continue to plunder our sensibility; but the main concern remains man's capacity to tap a source for the renewal of experience. In his poem ''They Say I Am", Carter indicates the source of poems to be in man's cosmogonic yearning; the process of creating true poems means death to the intrusive individual ego: Co Conclusion. Poems are written either for the dying or the unborn, no matter what we say. TIlat does not mean his audience lies remote inside a womb or some cold bed of agony. It only means that we who want true poems must all be born again, and die to do so. (PS. p.61) Carter is often referred to as a "poet of revolution". He is that in the broadest sense. In his conception of the wholeness of the human person, Carter's art does not involve a commitment to an unchanging world but explores man's identity as a continuous corning-into-being in the whirlpool between self-destruction and self-creation. In his concern with the paradoxes of language and the imagination, he conceives of poetic language as a catalyst capable of raising man's awareness of his place in thf universe and his courage to overcome the contradictions of his time. NOTES 1. Shiva Naipapul, A Hot Country, (London: Abacus, 1984), p. 1. Hence forth referred to a He. 2. Martin Carter, Poems of Affinity 1978-80, (Georgetown: Release lications, 1980), p. xiii. Carter refers to this quotation as being from Heidegger on Holderlin. In effect it is Holderlin's own words quoted by Heidegger in his essay on Holderlin "Holderlin and the Essence of Poetry". Furthermore, it is two quotes from Holderlin combined into one. The first '1anguage the most innocent of all occupations', is an extract from a letter to his mother of January 1799; the second that language "is the most dangerous of all possessions" is a quote from a study of 1800. See "Holderlin y la esenda de la poesia" in Martin Heidegger Me y Poesia (Mexico: Fondo de cultura economica, 1958.) p. 126, p. 128, p. 129. Poems of Affinity is henceforth referred to as PA. 3. Marter Carter, Poems of Succession, (London and Port of Spain: New Beacon Books, 1977), P. 9. Henceforth referred to as PS. 81

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WILSON HARRIS Extract from an interv iew with Rovin Deodat short l y after being awarded th e 1987 Guyana Prize for Fiction on December 8th 1987 (This is part of a longer int erview given by Wilson Harris interpreting various readings which he g a v e a t the same time.) Rovin Deodat We are ve ry happy to have you with us and to be abl e to discuss your idea of the n ove l and your concept of the use of literature in places li ke Guyana at th eir particular stage of development. One o f the concepts we have been he a ring from you is this idea of "marginal ity". Wilson, you did ment ion this even at the Guyana Prize presenta tion. Cou l d we ask you now to giv e us another look at what you see as "marginal" and the marginal society"? Wilson Harris -Marginality i s so mething one can pursue at many lev els. But 1 want to seize on so m e t hing that people would relate to imme diately. Let us take a figure like t h e porkknocker. The porkknocke r is a f igu re 1 encountered in the interior of this country. 1 don't know if por kkn ockers still move around in the interior they used to do when 1 was a young man. In those days porkknockers could mine on the creeks, they co uld mine on the banks of a river, whereas now they would need machinery to go deeper inside There may still be a few floating porkknockers aroun d. One of the things which i n t e res ted me about the old time porkknock ers was that they would so metimes have names such as "Caesar Augus tus", or ''Byzantine Empero r o r "the Pope". 1 think this came out o f thei r isolation, the profound necessity t o create a fiction. Butit is c urious adorn themselves wit h the apparatus of major figure s o f the past and or lhe present. I don't think that they understood what they were doing but for me it was like a kind of signal coming out o f the unco nscious of the society. So, first of all, we see these figures playing these tremendous role s without necessarily understanding t h e implications of what they were doing, and virtually to no audienc e because they were living in the inte rior with perhaps only _one or _ tWo compaJ}ipIl:S. The next thing is tha t these porkknockers were li ving o n "the edge" and they lived on a shoe. string. That is what the word pork -knocking implies. You take the barrel with the salted pork and tum i t o v e r and you knock out the l as t scraps of meat because things are bad. Things are hard and you have to go on digging in the creeks but you have to have food you must scrape all the 82

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time. You may have caught some fish in the river, you may get some wild meat, but it is always scraping. In the midst of this one could have the most peculiar and strange conversations with these porkknockers in which one sensed a gnawing within. Something was eating away at them. Without fully realising it they were asking questions about why they were here? Why were they doing something like this? And, was it gold they were looking for, or was it something else? There was an element of hallucination, because it can be terrifying to live alone in the Bush. You hear all sorts of whispers and sounds in the Bush. Sometimes the rain is falling far away and just that light drizzle from afar infuses the atmosphere of the Bush with a misty smoke and a misty sound as if fire were running through the leaves. You would hear strange sounds in the forests. I have known men who were unable to remain in the forest even for a single day. 1bere is the case of a man who was left behind in camp when the party went out deep into the forest. Suddenly we heard a terrible drumming. This man had taken up a bucket, climbed a tree and was beating fiercely on the bucket to bring us back. The isolation had gotten to him. So you have this figure of the porkknocker, and it dawned on me even in those younger days-I could not intellectualise it then, but it was a deep intuition I felt-that this marginal figure was in myself, part of the everlasting stranger in myself. The everlasting stranger in oneself is always a figure out there who has to address one from a position of ex tremity. Not only those one sympathises with, but even the people one does not sympathise They are all marginal figures, because one could be in their skins at a certain extremity. The point is that when one begins to look at all these complications, suddenly one realises that one has the chance of revising the premises of the great voyagers-Magellan who circumnavigated the globe, the Portuguese navigators who came into the Caribbean. (There were also porkknockers of African descent, Portu guese descent and others). These voyagers, therefore, suddenly seemed to me to become a kind of strange porkknocker. Remember, these voyagers would be becalmed at sea, their provi sions would decline, they would be at lithe edge", they would look for a shrimp in the sea or a fish or something to survive. And suddenly it occurred to me that these great museum figures in Europe, these voyagers who had circumnavigated the globe had another value. I began to ask myself what was the value residing in these voyagers? I could't answer it by going to the museum and reading the chronology there-I would get a good historical chronicle but that didn't satisfy me because in those histories these voyagers appeared to be simple technicians-as a man drives a car a man could sail a ship-but is that all that the voyagers were? Then it dawned on me that the concept of the marginal figure, like the porkknocker, could infuse Magellan and others with a new density, 83

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with new roots. The ocean was part of the forest of the mind, just as the forest was part of the ocean of the mind. And you could suddenly sense that these great voyagers would acquire new roots and new densitythat is the subversive strategy of The Infinite Rehearsal, in that the voy ager can no longer sit comfortably on the premises of history. These premises have to be revised because the voyager has been out away from his roots, his roots in which nature had elements in it which could bring disease and malaise. But Nature also has a therapeutic thread running through it, a visionary and therapeutic thread that becomes more illuminating and luminous when one realises the very critical position one finds one self in. Then one has to relate to that thread, as a thread which charges one's civilisation with meaning. Otherwise you will simply suc cumb to the disease, to the malaise, to the deformation. That could easily happen if people are pushed into a marginal situation where they seem irrelevant to the civilisation. People do become irrelevant and the fodder for authoritarian re gimes which may harness them to do this job or that job or which may imprison them or treat them as doomed creatures. But the civilisation is impoverished when it does that. On the other hand, in a more positive sense, you begin to imbue the great voyagers with a new density and new roots. One interrogates the building blocks of a civilisation. Those voyages were immensely impor tant. It does seem to me if we are to understand their value we may paradoxically do this from an extreme or marginal position. Rovin Deodat -Wilson, I think one can take this one step further, but before I do that let me ask you something that has been bothering me. I think I now understand this concept of marginality and as you said maybe here we have the building blocks of a new civilisation, maybe another movement in the history of mankind. But how conscious must the people who are involved in this new movement be of their own roles as marginal people for that to succeed? You were saying for example that the porkknockers were unconsciously so, the voyagers were unconsciously so. Is there an imperative in history which would push them towards something new or must they themselves recognise their role before this newness can begin? Wilson Harris -Well, that is where the community is challenged. If it brings together the diseased parts and says that is the whole of society, as many of the intellectuals are doing, then there is no hope. But if the society realises what is happening then it may become extremely impor tant as we move into the 21st Century. These societies could become a storehouse of creative conscience. For example, in Carnival you may remember the man who had a donkey cart called "Orion Chariot". In my boyhood I used to see buses running 84

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on the East Coast of Demerara with all these names-names which had to do with Constellations, with Emperors and others, but why should a man call his donkey-cart "Orion Chariot"? We discovered not long before that, in Carnival, that something happened to a man as he was looking into a creek with a torchlight. He shone his torch into the creek and illumined the eyes of the crocodile which was below the water At nights if you shine your torch into the creek the eyes of the crocodile glow like stars, like coal. Not in the day, only at night That is how we knew when crocodiles were lurking in the creeks. I used that image to suggest that the denizens of the inferno were pulling their weaponry, their cannon, along. The eyes of the crocodile also may relate to a constellation within the folk imagination Therefore, the constellation has roots in the eyes of the crocodile and it appears that this is a wounded apparition in the novel because earlier the young boy who was playing on the beach was playing "crab-nebula" and he had suffered a wound. Once again vulnerable humanity, wounded humanity, within the masks of Carnival, becomes imaginatively capable of grasping what is happening to it, that it not only transfers its wounded selfhood into the heavens, but in doing so it suddenly becomes aware that all the creatures around it are vulnerable, even the terrifying crocodile is vulnerable because once you put that light on its eyes then you could aim a gun there if you wanted to kill the creature But the point I wish to make is that these societies are plagued with violence. You can see it right through, from Haiti through the West Indies, into this area and further in South America. How are we going to repair that violence unless we have a very deep-seated concept of self judgement? Self-judgement comes partly from the excavating of biases. It also comes from finding new density to formidable themes-the great Orion Constellation-you know Orion has the sword, but if you look closely at Orion you will one wrist is severed. Orion has suf fered a wound and therefore Orion relates to inner as much as outer space, to a wounded yet implicitly transfigured humanity in the margins of space I return to what I said before, History is not pure. You would think that the burden of such enquiry would fall upon Europe After all, Europe has the equipment, and the institutions. But it i s not falling on Europe because Europe is prosperous. And prosperity shackles people. Understandably it makes them less inclined to take risks. I know this is a complex irony, an irony rooted in materialism. Prosperity should liber ate. Except when it becomes an absolute kind of materialism. In other words freedom of ideoligical choice is becoming inhibited. But we who live here (in the marginal societies) are so challenged that we must be involved in this kind of enquiry It is an unfair burden. But that is the 85

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burden w hich history has placed on this community. Either this commu nity will become nihilistic, it will group together all its diseased parts and say the whole society is diseased, or it will start to read these differ ent levels 1 bring in my novels. It seems to me that the fiction 1 write is deeply rooted in the pysche of the marginal man and woman. Paradoxi cally such fiction possesses universality for that reason. It does not possess universality because of some sophisticated com edy of manners narrative which you can compare to Jane Austen's works, where people reflect on refinements of behaviour-who is good and who is bad; and who is the hero. 1 do not, however, dispute that this type of fiction has its value and importance. But many black writers, who do not like to admit it, write comedy of manners. Their fiction is protest, protest all the time. But when you protest against something and that is all you do, you are conditioned by the thing you protest against. You have to find a different way of charg ing the thing you protest against with a different density and different roots. Then you begin to create questions which cause the premises on which that thing stands to yielQ a capacity for revision. Rovin Deodat -What seems to be coming out here is that, if you take a writer like V.S. Naipaul, there you have someone with a very nihilistic view of the Caribbean, and lately of the entire world. It seems to me that you are at one end and someone like Naipaul is at the very opposite end. Naipaul seems to provide a very good demonstration of your thesis of bringing together the diseased parts and labelling it the whole-hence reflecting a diseased world, a diseased Guyana and the Caribbean. Wilson Harris -I have to leave that kind of comment to you. Rovin Deodat -Is this the first time, from your point of view, that a civilisation has had to look at the question of marginality as we have to, or has this happened when Europe was unsettled before it moved into its current prosperity, or the Romans or Greeks? Wilson Harris -The Roman and Greek worlds were overturned by mar ginal figures-the early Christians, who were they?-at the very fringes of the civilised world. But they were to raise questions that were to stagger the civilised world. Those question ..vere not raised by great phi losophers. They were not raised by the men who were at the centre of the court. They were raised by marginal figures. Marginality has not been properly explored. Marginality means that you relate to a civilisation at a level where the civilisation has to question itself and revise its premises, and that brings about an element of pro found self-judgement. The violence we experience in this part of the world is not simply 86

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violence whic h comes out of the Imperial world. We are continuously blaming the Imperial world-this is not to say that the Imperial world has not left legacies here which we have to deal with-but at a certain level we have the authority, not the authoritarianism, the authority to understand that our freedom is an immensely precious and valuable asse t and that freedom speaks eloq uently to the world, because then you are saying that the human person cannot be discarded, the human per so n is not irrelevant. This is something we have to understand ourselves. So we have to look at these forms which we have tended to accept without appreciating the fact they need to be profoundly revised in the way I a m suggesting. R ovin Deodat -In this exploration you have used memory and the Ju ngian theory of the collective unconscious. How does that work for y ou? Wilson Hanis -Why I tend to think that the Jungian theory of the un co nscious does w ork is that over the years I have proven it for myself. I re vised my work ... but I can't go into it in detail. Let me just say that behind this book Carnival, 172 pages, lies about 700 800 pages of draft. As one revises, one discovers clues in the work which seem to be plan ted there by someone else. 1 call them intuitive clues. So they come out of the unconscious and you revise through those. Now as you revise through those clues, you are throwing light backwards and forwards. V ery often you have to discard areas of your manuscript which seem prec ious and nice. They have to go because of a kind of inner command. Th en the momentum comes. You might write 300 pages before the key turn s in the lock Then these clues begin to corne together. And a m0m entum is born which drives the work, in which the work seems to "write" itself. Rovin Deodat -I am glad you said that because 1 always thought that yo u deliberately set out to write short novels. Most of your books are no more than 200 pages, but behind that as you have said is an enormous a mount of work. W ilson Hanis That is true. If 1 had retained all the original draft of C arnival it would have been a much longer novel but a betrayal of the w ork. 87

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The drawing on the facing page, done in pen and ink by Stanley Greaves in the 1960's, was made in response to this poem of Wordsworth McAndrew: LEGEND OF THE CARRION CROW They call you Carrion Crow scorn to eat your flesh spit when they see you administering the last rites call you Cathartes, the Clean-up, yet if they only knew the secret of your strange religion. Once you were the silver bird of the heavens once you flew as high and as free as only a bird can. The sky was yours for you were king of the air but here was the secret of your discontent: it was not enough to just live and die, not knowing. You kept asking, whence came I? whither go I, and why? The sky must hold the answer, you thought, and sought long and desperately to glimpse what lay beyond it. Relentlessly you fought pitted bone and tendon against the blue barrier that mocked you, locked you off from the secret world behind its curvature. But you were more determined than it knew and could fly higher. So you perspired at your quest until, one inspired day, you flew so hard and so fast against the blue closing your wings at the last minute for penetration that at last you had a look at the other side. Nobody knows what you saw when you passed through but you burned in that sacred blue fire and returned, black as coals, dumb, numb from the experience to become this mendicant preacher minister to those souls who die without sacrament trading blessings for food a saved soul for a full belly And now when I see you crowding a carcass for the unction or nailed against the sky like a crucifix with the two spots of tarnished silver beneath your wings where you'd closed them I long to have you say a De Profundis for me, when I die, and I wonder: Was yours a punishment or a purification? 88

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Derek Walcott, The Arkansas Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 112 pages Review by Anthony Kellman Webster'S New World Dictionary describes a testimony as "any affinnation or declaration". The Old and New Testaments i n the Bible are considered affirmative covenants between god and man established through the mediation of prophets. A will is also a testament, a declara tive '1ast will and testament". This preamble of definitions is not merely the ramblings of an undisciplined reviewer, but is motivated by issues raised in The Arkansas Testament (Derek Walcott's latest book of p<>etry), and is an attempt to find an adequate context for the discussion of the poems. Divided into two parts-"Here" and Elsewh e re -the poems con tain subjective/objective declarations concerning the poet's place in his homeland, the Caribbean, and other northern places where he often s0journs. Walcott's two testaments are both Old and New, underlining the book's structural parallel with the Bible. "Here" can be seen as an Old Testament-the poet's origins and past life in the Caribbean; while ''Else where"-a New Testament-articulates his current experiences in the United States where he works. What links the two geographically disparate parts of the book is the poet's sense of personal inviSibility, and histiisappointment, even at times despair, at the human condition. Walcott's is a continuing quest to integrate two selves fashioned by his African and European ancestries Because he is neither and always "Here" and ''Elsewhere'', Walcott, time and time again, finds himself an outsider, an Everyman figure, "schizo phrenic, wrenChed by-two styles" ("Codicil", The Castaway, 1965) ,----From his sense of historical alienation in The Castaway and The Star Apple Kingdom (1979); through The Fortunate Traveller (1981) who is fortunate only in the sense that he is in a position to escape places when they become unbearable, but who is hounded by guilt complexes ; through his penultimate collection Midsummer (1984) where in "Gaugin" he concedes his regret that "1 left [The Caribbean] too late" Walcott in The Arkansas Testament still seems to be wrestling with his Janus double-sided vision and uSeS this schizophrenic reality ofCarib bean Man to testify to the failures of regional Ind e pendences to sustain artists there. In a bid to find his place/the poet s place in a world of arrogance, pride, upside-down-values and racism, Walcott presents a personal Testament which is universal in its implications, and which challenges the reader to be more open in terms of r elationships, racial and otherwise. As recently characteristic in the openings of his book s Wal cott 90

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returns to the Caribbean in the poem "The Lighthouse", to his island home St. Lucia where Stars pierce their identical spots/over Castries ... Nothing, apparently, has changed. The domino-slamming men in the rum shops share the same ribald jokes, while "Unaging moonlight falls/ on the graves". The tightly-structured metre of this long poem suggests the tenseness and apprehension the poet feels on returning home. The imagery of t h e poem also reflects his psychological precariousness. The full moon is d escribed as A coin tossed once overhead,! that stuck there, not heads o r t ails" The personas in this poem, very reminiscent of V.S. Naipaul's hopeless characters, are the dispo s sessed, men who have become victims of historica l l egacies of attrition and post-Independence victimisation. There are drunks; an actor '10st in the post office! Stripped/ A superfluous character written out of script"; children running down crooked streets, some falling, most taking "the straight/road from their galvanised hell". In "The Three Musicians", a parody of the tale of the Biblical wise men, three down-and-out musicians go house to house on Christmas day serenading neighbours for food and drink. These men who "eat in silence ... belt out two straights,/ then start singing like shite ... are pitied by the master of the house who "feels/that this heart will burst" at the sight of these three kings". Another character, the persona in "A Letter From The Old Guard" who has served with Lord Alexander in the Sudan, is reduced to an arthritic rught watchman. It is Remembrance Day, and the elderly man reflects proudl y on his days in the colonial army. Today, he has very little to show for his heroic exploits and attributes his fate to the failures of the new Independences He states with some bitterness: ''Then we get Independence all of a sudden/and something went. We can't run anything/ ... we black people". The dots of stars that mottle the sky in "The Lighthouse", suggesting ellipsis or incompleteness, is the point where the poet resumes his ex ploration of his island/history/self with each return. The fact that Wal cott consistently makes this effort at coming to terms with his heritage is a hope in itself. Not only does Walcott have a stubborn love for his homeland, but he is extremely courageous in his quest for stability and wholeness con sidering that his responses to the region are often tinged-sometimes laced-with terror and dread. In "CuI De Sac Valley", he notes that "the forest runs/sleeping, its eyes shut", and that "Pigeon Island/pins the sea in its claws". This disturbing imagery underlines the poet's fear of Car ibbean leaders bounding into the twenty-first century through the dark-the blind leading the blind (?}-and is articulated, I think, out of a sense of responsibility and concern for his homeland. In "Gros Islet" the poet's bitterness (or perhaps it is more disap-91

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pointment) reaches new intensity and outspokeness. Here, ''There is no wine ... no cheese, the almonds are green,/ the grapes bitter, the lan guage is that of slaves". And in ''White Magic", white myths are praised for their authenticity, whereas the local ones are denounced as being unoriginal, based on ignorance. Walcott writes: ... the deer footed, hobbling hunter, Papa Bois, he's just Pan's clone, one more translated satyr Our myths are ignorance, theirs is literature. The last poem in Part 1 of the book, ''The Ught of the World", highlights Walcott's guilt feelings for having ''left'' the Caribbean. He says: ''} had abandoned them, .. .left them to sing Marley's songs of sad ness ... ". Yet, he loves his people's warm neighbourliness, and feels as though he "might suddenly start sobbing on the public transport" in which he is travelling. He thinks that he has abandoned them and also that they have abandoned him. He feels that he should have given them something more tangible, but all that he can give them is ''This thing I have called ''The Ught of World". Earlier in the poem, he refers to a female muse as the Ught of the World, so that it seems as though Wal cott is implying that what he will give his people (and perhaps this is the best possible gift that he can truly give) is his poems, his art. There are some beautiful poems in Part 2 of this collection as well. This section's title poem ''Elsewhere'' takes a look at the effects of war. It is really a parody of a pastoral. Children waddle in streams, there are nearby old men, women squatting by a river, and "a stick (stirring) up a twinkling of butterflies". Above this scene, in contrast, "flies circle their fathers". "Salsa" is a satirical comment on the New York-izing and Miami-izing of San Juan; ''The Young Wife", an elegy written to a man whose wife has died of cancer; "For Adrian", a fresh poem about an old subject-departures. All these poems are tightly structured, using Walcott's innovative ballad metre. While there are these fine poems in this part of the book, the sec tion, overall, is not as assured as Part 1. Too often, it seems as though Walcott has not fully assimilated the nuances of the northern cultures which he writes about. Although always skillfully crafted, several of the poems here are half-glimpsed cliched sketches. In this section, one gets a sense of travelogue writing, mere reportage, particularly in the pointing title poem, The Arkansas Testament. This thirteen-page poem decribes the poet's sojourn in Arkansas, a racially segregated state He feels himself "homesick/for islands with fringed shores", and although very acute in his observations of the physical surroundings of the place, he lacks an authoritative tone. The main point of this long poem, though, and one which makes the link between the two sections, is that ''} was still nothing". The poet 92

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is exiled both "Here" and "Elsewhere". In the Caribbean, he is alienated as an artist; in Arkansas, because he is a black man. Once, in a cafeteria '1 looked for my own area", he writes. "The muttering black decanter/ had all I needed; it could sigh for /Sherman's smoking march to Atlanta/ or the march to Montgomery". The sunshine in Arkansas is cold. Fearing rejection, the poet asks: "Will I be a citizen/or an afterthought of the state?" It is the fear of regional rejection which drove Caribbean writers to the Metropolis in the 1950s and 60s, and which is still driving New Generation writers to the U.s.A. and Canada-those who can leave. It is this sense of rejection at home which is at the heart of Derek Walcott's disappointment in the Caribbean. When Bruce King in his introduction to World Literature in English (Chelsea Associates, New York, 1987}--a new anthology of Third World poetry and fiction featuring such West Indian writers as Edward Brathwaite, Andrew Salkey, Tom Clarke and this writer-says that unlike Walcott, New Generation writers in the Caribbean no longer have to self-publish, I wonder which Caribbean Mr. King is talking about. Scores of younger writers-<:ertainly in St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Grenada, St. Vincent, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago-are still forced to publish their own chapbooks because of the lack of outlets. Have things in this area really changed so drastically since Walcott's day? In a sense, The Arkansas Testament suggests that things have gotten worse. The hope in The Arkansas Testament is that while the wandering poet may be nothing, by that very nothingness he has the potential to contain and be everything. The book is also a testament to the need of people whether Caribbean or North American-to be less parochial and provincial in their outlooks on life. As Walcott states in "Tomorrow, Tomorrow": To have loved one horizon is insularity; it blindfolds vision, it narrows experience. 93

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. ......... -A Shapely Fire. Changin.g the Literary Landscape. Edited by Cyril Dabydeen. Oakville, Cedar Press, 1987. A Review by Alim Hosein The increased migration of people for various reasons this past cen tury has had a number of implications, not the least of which, to the student of Literature, are the implications for the Literature that such people produce in their new countries. In some countries, for example the United States of America, the existing Literature has been considera bly added to by people who are migrants or whose parents were mi grants. But sizeable proportions of such Literatures have rec::eived dilr tinction as Literatures in their own right. Hence, we have such additions to the Literary dictionary as "Black American" and "Jewish American" Literatures. But some people still ask the question: "Why isn't 'Black American' Literature simply called 'Black' Literature, or why isn't 'Jew ish American' Literature referred to as 'Jewish' Literature, or why aren't both simply called 'American' Literature? The question, perhaps has some force. The tendency to create such hybrid names may be abused by persons who are partial to labels. Such labels, too, may mean nothing even to the writer who is so described. On the other hand, they may be valid descriptions of new currents in Literature. A recently-published collection of short stories, a play and poems provides fuel for such consideration Entitled A Shapely Fire. Chang ing the Literary Landscape, this collection not only pulls together some writing done by West Indians living and writing in Canada, but it also proposes that such writing constitutes a new category in Literature: Car ibbean Canadian Literature. The editor, Guyanese Cyril Dabydeen, sub mits that a Caribbean Canadian Literature is in evolution in a quiet man ner ("in the closet") but he also points to the fact that a growing number of Caribbean emigre writers are appearing in regu l ar journals and maga zines. The subtitle, Changing the Literary Landscape, makes such a strong claim that it must be the essenti a l thing to consider. The only definition of this Literature that Dabydeen offers is that it is a "Significant manife!r tation" of a "vitality fn,ll se and poetry by Caribbean writers who have made their home in eaha. a .. continually shaping and being shaped by the spirit of place". Mor v r, in his Introduction, he suggests a clear distinction between Cariblx Literature or even Caribbean writing in exile, and Caribbean Canad an Literature when he relates the essential effect of the Literature he--proposes to the strengthening of Canadian I nationhood: In this context, a real shaping is constantly taking place; the collective Canadian spirit is enhanced and enriched 94

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by the varied cultural streams and in the fusion of old and new traditionS towards a vital celebration of the oneness of the evol ving Canadian consciousness. Indeed, there are pieces in this collection which elaborate instances of intersection of Caribbean and Canadian values, or in which the Caribbean mind brings together Caribbean and Canadian images as it muses in the Canadian context. Daniel Caudeiron's "Day Shift/Night Shift": At Queen and Spadina the traffic thunders on, squeezing left for road repairs, Babylon and Babel converge, near misses, kissing fenders aqui se habla espanoI. fala Portugues, Chinese varieties, Jamaican groceries ... and "Carihana" Toronto moving Southbound Colours bodies ... Karl Gordon's "Strangers at a Glance" But tomorrow It will be spring And tomorrow Life begins anew In its hopeful struggle To find the promised warmth This strange new clime. and Dabydeen's Across the ocean, Atlantic's swell And billow. 1 taste cod In Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Demerara-more trade. In Newfoundland Later, I lie drunkenly-... all explore the dialectics of context, the areas of possibility for authen ticity through the connection of Caribbean spirit and Canadian landscape. The stories continue the theme. Together, they map the various 95

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ways in which the West Indian responds to the nuances of his new physical and spiritual context. Thus, sometimes we see him caught be tween Canada and the Caribbean (like Sylvie is, in Dabydeen's "Ain't Got no Cash"); as a total outsider without hope of achieving accommo dation (like Marie-Ann in Gerard Etienne's ''Deaf Woman") or as a p0-tent, if quiet, catalyst (like the Jamaican in Austin Clarke's "Give it a Shot") But while these examples signal some of the new directions which West Indian writers are taking, whether this constitutes even the begin ning of a new branch in Literature is still questionable. Is this a new Literature or is it part of the natural development of Caribbean Litera ture? The inclusion of the play, Roderick Walcott's "Cul de Sac", some of the stories: Samuel Selvon's "Zeppy's Machine", Madeline Coopsammy's ''The Tick Tick Bicycle", Neil Bissoondath's '1nsecurity" and some of the poems such as Lilian Allen's "Belly Woman's Lament" and "Marriage", Dionne Brand's "P.P.S. Grenada" to name a few, which are all retrievals and evaluations bearing on Caribbean life, does not help the case either Dabydeen includes these as examples of what he calls the "there" aspect of Caribbean Canadian Literature, the experience of the immediacy of beginnings in what has been called the there, the place where one came from, seen in terms of the palpable residues of the spirit manifested in powerful feel ings, often of nostalgia, or seeking an enduring identity ... But this is not very useful. It is difficult to see how such pieces may be called Canadian in any sense. Much literature about the Caribbean has been written outside the Caribbean-for example, in Britain-without claims being made for, for example, a "Caribbean British" Literature. Does the fact that a story or play or poem was written by a West Indian living in Canada create a new Literature? Does the location in which a story was written override the importance of the location about which it is vitally concerned? Or should the claim for such a Literature be based on the preposition that an exceptional imaginative process is happening, resulting in the creation of a unique Literature? In relation to the par ticular type of Literature being proposed in this collection, should the reader not expect it to be perceivably different from both Canadian Literature and Caribbean Literature even though it may be powerfully informed by both these tradition 's? Yet, A Shapely Fire, including Guyanese, Trinidadian, Barbadian, St. Lucian, Haitian and Jamaican writers, does justify itself by giving notice of the many not-so-well-known Caribbean writers working in Canada, and by showing that these writers handle their material with self-assur ance and skill. 96

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CONTRIBUTORS CYRIL DABYDEEN -Guyanese and Canadian poet and sbort story writer; Poet Laureate of Ottawa, 1984-86; book of poems Island Lovelier Than A Vision was published by the Peepal Tree Press in 1986; his work has appeared in over 100 publications. MCDONALD DASH -Guyanese journalist and editor for many years; playwright and producer; now lives in New York. ROVIN DEODAT -Guyanese journalist and commentator. VIBART IAN DUNCAN -Guyanese performance poet and story teller. GLORIA ESCOFFERY -Distinguished Jamaican painter; outstanding art critic for Jamaica. Journal; poet. CECIL GRAY -Noted Trinidadian writer, editor, and lecturer; now lives in Canada. STANLEY GREAVES -Outstanding Guyanese painter; poet; for many years lectured on art at the University of Guyana; now lives in Barbados. WILSON HARRIS Guyanese by birth; among the most original thinkers and novelists in modem literature; his numerous novels include The Guyana Quartet and The Eye of the Scarecrow; his novel Carnivai won the 1987 Guyana Prize for Fiction; his latest is The Infinite Rehearsal. AUM HOSEIN -Guyanese art and literature critic; lecturer in the Depart ment of English, of Guyana. ANTHONY KELLMAN -Barbados poet and short story writer; his collec tion of poems include: The Black Madonna and Other Poems (1975), In Depths of Burning Light (1982), The Broken Sun (1984); at present studying at Louisiana State University. MARK McWATT -Guyanese poet; senior lecturer in the English Department U.W.I., Cave Hill; editor of Journal of West Indian Literature; first book of poems INTERIORS recently published by Dangaroo Press. SISTER MARY NOEL MENEZES, R.S.M. -Distinguished historian; au thor of many books particularly on the Amerindians and Portuguese in Guyana; Professor of History, University of Guyana. RAS MICHAEL -Guyanese performance poet and storyteller; collections of his work include Black Chant and Church and State; editor of new magazine Survival. ROOPLALL MONAR -Guyanese poet, short story writer and novelist, Peepal Tree press has published a collection of short stories, Backdam People, and a volume of poems, Koker; two further collections of stories, High House and Radio and Estate People, and a novel, Jhanjat, are due to be published in 1989. RUPERT ROOPNARAINE -Guyanese critic and poet; lecturer in English, University of Guyana. STEPHANOS STEPHANIDES -Native of Cyprus; 1978-1985, Senior Lecturer in English in the University of Guyana; currently works in Wash ington; recently completed a translation from Portuguese to English of the nineteenth century work British Guiana by Adelino Neves e Mello.

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