Guyana Prize winners bemoan lack of access to publishing
Publication is a major concern as there is no local printing press that a writer could readily approach, according to winners of the 2023 Guyana Prize for Literature.
This is the consensus of five-time winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature, Drama, Harold Bascom; winner of the 2023 poetry award Ruth Osman; and two-time winner of the Youth Category Short Story Samir Mohammed in interviews this past week. This sentiment was also expressed in earlier interviews with winner of the 2023 non-fiction award Dr Estherine Adams and winner of the 2023 fiction award author/journalist Michael Jordan.
With the exception of Osman, the others submitted their work in manuscript or book manuscript forms and are looking for publishers.
“Things aren’t good for creative writing in Guyana. Michael Jordan’s manuscript won the prize for fiction and nobody would say they would like to see it printed,” Bascom told Stabroek Weekend in an interview from his home in Georgia, USA.
Mohammed who won the 2023 short story award with “At the Bottom of the Sea” as well as the first prize in the short story category in 2022 said his writings are still unpublished.
Osman, a first-time winner, was more fortunate than the others. A publisher heard her reciting a poem in Trinidad and Tobago where she lives and offered to publish her work.
Meanwhile, Bascom declared that he believes the Guyana Prize has lost its lustre. “It is not a prestigious prize anymore. I feel it has been reduced to something like the Chronicle Christ-mas annual where they try to patronise everybody because the powersthat-be took it over to please the lazy local writers. Literature is not going to be taken seriously until the powers-that-be recognise it should be handled by an independent body. The University of Guyana should be given control of it. The Guyana Prize for Literature has faded into irrelevance as far as many literary-minded people are concerned,” he stated.
Going forward, he said, he will not take part in the literary competition again unless its management is no longer under the Ministry of Culture.
Samir Mohammed
Mohammed was not surprised that he won the short story award. “I was very happy. I felt it was my masterpiece. Not being conceited,” he said, “there aren’t many people my age who would have that kind of skill.”
Mohammed, 18, a physics associate degree graduate, and now a student of the bachelor’s degree programme in computer science at UG, is writing his first novel which has similar dark themes to his short stories.
“However, it is more broad in its spectrum. It delves into the human experience, artificial intelligence, and what humanity means in terms of connection and connectivity,” he said. “I’m really trying to take my time with it, perfecting it as I see fit because it is dealing with a lot of heavy existential topics that necessitate prudence and attention to details. It is set in a fictional world parallel to our own where things and technology have taken a different path, yet mirroring technology’s current path with artificial intelligence.”
His 2023 winning entry, “At the Bottom of the Sea”, deals with Mohammed’s own struggles with isolation and loneliness and how he eventually came to grips with what he was searching for.
“It is a story of self-realisation, reflection, introspection and the importance of hope and perseverance,” he said.
The story outlines the events following the abandonment of someone on a deserted island to man a lighthouse.
“I was going through a bit of a bad time in my life so I expressed that through writing this story as a means to try to inspire myself to regain that spark I needed. In a way I was vicariously living through this character. I believe I accomplished a great deal of selfrealisation writing this character because the more I wrote, the more I felt I understood myself,” he said.
The day before the awards ceremony Mohammed was robbed and physically assaulted. While it dampened his spirits a bit he chalked it up to experience and the other side of humanity “I put most of my efforts into my short story, so much so that it went over the word limit for the competition that I had to break it down to its most essential features.”
His entry in the 2022 short story category was “So Does it Stare Back?” His winning poem last year was “Blood and Oil.’ His poem was shortlisted in the 2023 competition.
Ruth Osman
Osman won the first prize in the Best First Book of Poetry and the second prize in the Best Overall Book of Poetry with her collection, “All Made of Longing”. This was her first foray into the Guyana Prize, and she did not expect any win. At the most she thought she might have been longlisted or shortlisted.
“The Guyana diaspora is huge with people there who would submit their works. I felt my chances of actually winning were pretty slim,” she said.
Ian McDonald won Best Overall Book of Poetry. “I grew up reading McDonald’s poetry,” she said. “I studied his work in high school and at university. For me to even imagine that my first book of poetry placed second just after his was almost unbelievable.”
Moving forward, Osman, a singer/ songwriter, plans to release by year end, a hybrid album in which some of the poems from her winning collection, “All Made of Longing” will be set to music. “I will sing while the band plays the music, then I will recite a poem and then I will sing again. That’s a track,” she said.
She works with a group of musicians in Trinidad that include musical director Wayne Guerra, percussionist Sheena Richardson, jazz guitarist Theron Shaw, drummer Makesi Joseph, bassist Clint Harewood, singers/songwriters Karla Gonzales and Gerelle Forbes. Apart from being musicians they are all artists with their own careers.
During Covid-19 when she could not meet with the band, she started to write poetry again as an outlet for her creativity. Osmn has written poetry since her childhood, but her focus was on music.
Osman recited a few of her poems in