Dear Editor,

As we are about to celebrate ten years since the death of our national poet Martin Carter, we should remember his poems.

Since literature died a long time ago in our poor system of education it’s about time our educators re-introduce the poetry of Martin Carter into our educational system as well as other Guyanese writers.

On the 22nd October 1963,Carter said:

“Publishing poetry in this country is like lending books to corpses. Few read and those who do are not equipped either by curiosity or sensibility to understand what is confronting them.” {22/10/63}

This prophetic statement came to pass because very few read poetry; and many are not equipped with a background in literature to comprehend poetry.

Martin Wylde Carter was the greatest poet Guyana has produced. He was one of the Caribbean’s greatest intellects and a distinguished literary personality, whose creative imagination left an indelible mark on the English speaking Caribbean and the Western hemisphere. He ranked among literary exponents like Derek Walcott,V.S. Naipaul, Wilson Harris, Ian McDonald, A.J Seymour and Kamau Braithwaite. He was active in liberating Guyana from British colonialism. His literary works are now being studied at Caribbean and British Universities and the wider world. Dr. Gemma Robinson from the University of Newcastle-on-Tyne in England wrote her Phd dissertation on the life and writings of Carter.

Carter’s poems can be compared to those of Tagore, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden and W.B. Yeats. He was a great teacher of mankind and an ardent seeker of truth. His poems are rich in symbolism, philosophy, theology, and some very profound and complex imageries. In his poem: ”Looking At Your Hands,” he writes:

“And so if you see me looking at your hands/listening when you speak/ marching in your ranks you must know/I do not sleep to dream but dream to change the world…..”

His political poems of resistance registered social and political protest and they spoke out against the stark poverty, injustice, the dehumanization and degradation of human existence among the masses. In the “University of Hunger” he cried out:

“Is the University of hunger the wide waste?

is the pilgrimage of man the long march?

The print of hunger wanders in the land.

The green tree bends above the long forgotten…….”

In Carter’s best known theological or metaphysical poem: “Death Of A Comrade” he sees death as eternal and not something that is just a natural phenomenon like most poets and philosophers in the modern age. In the last stanza of Death of a comrade he writes:

“Now from the mourning vanguard moving on dear comrade/I salute you and say/ Death shall not find us thinking that we die.”

We may ask the question how can a dead man think? If a man dies will he live again? Job asked this question in the Bible. Jesus answered by saying: “He who believes in me shall never die.”

He is like Tagore when Tagore writes: “On the day when death shall knock at my door what will I offer to him.” For many critics his eternal line “death shall not find us thinking that we die” means very little. For the spiritual mind that’s a very profound statement because we must not die in regret when we enter into hell; it’s like Dante in the “Divine Comedy” teaching us the way of heaven and hell.

Carter was a man of wisdom and wit, a gracious and elegant personality, a unique and fascinating figure. The quality of his poetry will be remembered. Let us remember him as the poet-philosopher from his intricate lines below:

“Wanting to write another poem for you

I searched the world for something beautiful

The green crown of a tree offered itself

Because it’s leaves were combed just like your hair.”

Yours faithfully,

Rev Gideon Cecil