Poetry
Over Guiana, Clouds
A. J. Seymour · 1944
Synopsis
The long poem that gives the pamphlet its title flies over Guiana and crosses its history, section by section: the Dutch forts of the seventeenth century, slavery and the plantations, then the life of the country in the forties.
Context
The pamphlet appeared in 1944, a year before the first issue of Kyk-Over-Al. The Guyanese press makes it a milestone: the Guyana Chronicle speaks of a breakthrough verse whose open, almost cinematic form marked other poets, and Caribbean Beat holds it to be the founding text of Guyanese poetry. Published before Walcott, Brathwaite and Martin Carter, Seymour counts among the fathers of West Indian poetry. The poem is included in his Collected Poems 1937-1989, published in New York in 2000.
Who it is for
For reading the beginnings of a properly Guyanese poetry, from the pen of the man who created the country's great literary review.
Prizes and reception
Al Creighton sees in it a turning point in the country's poetry, while judging Seymour's cultural work more decisive than his verse.
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