Literary Festival

Last Friday evening the Guyana Prize for Literature Awards Ceremony was held at the National Cultural Centre (NCC). It was the second consecutive year that the event was staged after apparently being laid to rest during the previous administration and enduring a sixyear hiatus. In September 2022 the current government announced its intention to revive the Guyana Prize, along with future plans to make it an annual event inclusive of a literary festival and a symposium.

Last year’s resuscitation efforts were accompanied by several teething problems. Hardly anyone outside of a niche group – those closely connected with the Arts – were aware that the literary event was being staged. Apart from this publication’s Arts on Sunday column, “Guyana Prize festival next weekend offers literary smorgasbord”, which was published five days before the occasion and penned by Al Creighton (who was heavily involved with the organising), there was hardly any information on the schedule of events available in the print media. Another columnist from this newspaper, Rae Wiltshire, (winner of the Drama Prize), commented postevent, on the lack of advertising. “The list of activities and the shortlist for the Guyana Prize were mainly disseminated via WhatsApp groups the day before the prize-giving ceremony. There was no shortlist of candidates in the media for the Guyana Prize for Literature,” he wrote.

This sad state of affairs of failing to enlighten the public of the events for last year’s festival spawned the question whether it was just the simple lack of competent planning, or a deliberate attempt to downplay the occasion. It appears it was clearly the case of the former, since this year’s arrangements with regard to the timely dissemination of information via the media on the schedule of events, and the short lists for the various categories, was on the opposite end of the spectrum. The list of jurors for the four categories, who are appointed from among distinguished literary figures, writers and critics, was also released, along with their citations (posted in alphabetical order of the writers’ surnames) on the submissions of each of the shortlisted writers.

This year’s festival spread over four days – Thursday, 29th February, to Sunday, 3rd March – was dovetailed onto the prior weekend’s Mashramani celebrations as opposed to last year’s crammed three-day event which took place in isolation from 10th to 12th February. The staging of this literary festival to coincide with a major national milestone is a logical decision to boost and develop the

event. Apart from the Awards Ceremony and the local play, “Father of the Man” by Paloma Mohamed – which closed the festivities on Sunday night – hosted at the NCC, all other events were held at Castellani House, home of the National Art Collection. The packed list of activities included an exhibition of Guyanese literature presented by the University of Guyana, an interactive storytelling and puppet session for children, youth workshops for writing stories and poetry, and the hugely popular Poetry Slam Competition held on the grounds of Castellani House on Saturday night.

The bounty of options for the literati included presentations on fiction and non-fiction masterclass, and readings from internationally acclaimed writers and critics. These included Rawle Gibbons discussing the publications of the late renowned Guyanese Professor Gordon Rohlehr, 2022 Bocas Prize winner Celeste Mohammed speaking about the challenges of creative nonfiction, and two Guyanese writers recounting their experiences at the famous Iowa Writers Workshop Fall Residency programme. On the Saturday afternoon among the offerings were readings by the 2023 Guyana Prize winners from their own work, and Professor Allison Donnell delivering this year’s Edgar Mittelholzer Memorial Lecture on the theme of restoring a lost literary foremother – Edwina Melville and her writing on life in the Rupununi.

Kudos to the government and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport for hosting the Guyana Prize for the second year, and staging a literary festival which offered a diversified programme, inclusive of activities aimed at the younger generation. It is noteworthy that in his remarks at the awards ceremony, Minister Charles Ramson renewed the government’s commitment to the drama sector by providing funding for plays based on award-winning literary works and channelling the revenue generated from these plays to the directors and performers. The challenge for the organisers now lies in sustaining the calibre of the festival whilst seeking to elevate the standards.

It is hoped that the Ministry of Education was paying attention to the comments emanating from the jurors of the Poetry and Youth Poetry genres, with regard to the quality of the entries. Professor Evelyn O’Callaghan, Chair of the Poetry jury pointed out that several entries submitted proved that new writers were not exploring enough published work. “Several writers showed talent but their work would really have benefitted from some robust editing; too many tend to submit manuscripts and even published collections that needed cutting and more rigorous selection process,” O’Callaghan stated. Her advice to budding poets was to read more so as understand various writing styles and to move away from traditional techniques. Youth Poetry Chair Vanda Radzik echoed similar sentiments, pointing out that writers seemingly tried to force rhymes and limited knowledge of the literary form chosen. These observations only serve to confirm suspicions that our younger generation is going through the motions of reading while being force fed to complete bloated syllabi. The students’ idea of reading is most likely resorting to the internet for the quick notes option and skipping the reading of the assigned text. One can only wonder if this generation does any reading for pleasure, or even peruses one of the daily newspapers.

While it is all good and dandy to stage a literary festival inclusive of high quality presentations from internationally acclaimed writers and critics, what purpose does it serve, if our educational standards, as reflected by the poor quality of entries, continue to decline? One can only hope that in the future more students will be encouraged to avail themselves to the several opportunities presented by this festival.