Will the election make us happier?
The debate about what constitutes happiness has been going on for thousands of years. It is unlikely ever to end. Even if scientists come up with a pill which, taken daily like a vitamin tablet, imparts an all-encompassing feeling of permanent contentment, that will not end the questions. Can such artificially induced euphoria really be [...]
All leaders need Archilochus
When I worked in the sugar industry I remember once discussing a problem with a young and junior colleague. I was absolutely certain that I had the right answer but he argued and put another view. I found myself getting irritated and probably I showed it. It would have been easy for him to shrug [...]
Does everything come from nothing?
The title I gave to my last collection of poems was Between Silence and Silence. I have always thought it sad, and occasionally a matter of momentary despair, that each of us emerges from oblivion into life, without permission given, and after a really very brief period of existence is hustled back into oblivion. The [...]
They do not come again
Death is among the most ordinary of experiences. After all everyone dies. In this sense it is no big thing. Indeed there is a view which holds that death should not concern us at all since, as the philosopher Epicurus long ago pointed out: “Death is nothing to us, since when we are death has [...]
The last poems of Mahadai Das
They have become an inspiring part of Guyana’s poetic heritage. I found them instantly unforgettable. I have come to think of them as the last poems of Mahadai Das. In the Peepal Tree edition of her poems, A Leaf In His Ear, they among others are listed as being composed – but composed may not [...]
Today fulfils itself
As I get older I find I try to capture in memory more fully than ever the passing marvellousness of an ordinary day by writing down what happens in a journal. The attempt to capture everything is, of course, impossible. I once experimented by attempting at noon one Saturday to describe every single thing that [...]
Nothing is trivial
Two impulses contend in me – one is to allow chaos to take hold and the other is to keep everything tidy and in good order. The mass of stuff builds and builds into unsorted piles collapsing on the study floor and thickening files and folders of paper-clutter accumulate. But eventually the tidying impulse wins. [...]
Poetry is bread
Theodor Fontane is the German writer best known as the author of novels which are considered “the most completely achieved of any writer between Goethe and Thomas Mann.” He possessed a clear and vivid sense of “factuality.” He sought in his work to transfigure everyday facts into something imbued with Rätsel and Halbdunkel, ‘mystery‘ and [...]
Browsing
for what else is there but books, books and the sea, verandahs and the pages of the sea to write of the wind and the memory of wind whipped hair in the sun, the colour of fire. Derek Walcott As I get older, the attractions of foreign travel and the lures of encountering new [...]
What happens hereafter
One of the most remarkable men of the 20th century undoubtedly was King Sobhuza the Second, Lion of Swaziland. In 1898 he was anointed future King of Swaziland at the age of four months. In 1921 he ascended the throne and for 61 years he ruled his people shrewdly and well. In his lifetime he [...]
History makers: The ultimate list
It has been a pleasant diversion to think back over the years and give brief accounts of outstanding people whose paths in life I have crossed, if only peripherally. Of course it has led to many a comment on how to measure genius, greatness or historical importance and many a question asked regarding who were [...]
Encounters with genius: Denis Williams and Philip Moore – ‘wrapped in my cloak of dreams’
In a long life I have read the books and been taught the deeds and studied the scholarship and seen the art of the famous in many great countries of the world. The work of some of our own in this small corner where I have lived and which is blessed and which I love [...]
Encounters with genius: Cheddi Jagan and Sonny Ramphal
Hardly a month or even a week went by in my working life without one or other or both of these men appearing in the world’s headlines. It was exciting to play a small part in their big lives. * For everyone it was like a death in the family. Even those who opposed him [...]
Encounters with genius: Derek Walcott, Wilson Harris And Aubrey Williams
Sparks from the central fire – I was lucky to be near enough to feel the blaze these men ignited in the world ● Derek Walcott, or rather his poetry, entered my life when he was twenty and I was seventeen. I had read poems in the English Classics on my parents’ bookshelves earlier [...]
Encounters with genius: George Giglioli and Martin Carter
These are no more than sparks snatched from the fire of their lives – encounters with two of the men who were most memorable in my life. * I was in my early twenties, recently from university and starting work with Bookers in British Guiana, when as part of my induction into the sugar industry [...]