Dear Editor,
It was inevitable that so many significant cultural journalists and observers should rush to pay homage to Wordsworth McAndrew, a genuine embodiment of the creolese environment, moreso within the context of the colonial society in which he and his contemporaries were born. Young ‘Mac,’ the name to which he readily responded, was a natural creator and communicator. His intellectualism was not the more obvious product of the academic. He simply ignited, and those of us who imbibed with him in those fledgling years could not help but be singed by the instinctive heat which he generated.
In that very colonial context not all of his poems were well received, certainly not by those who led the formal literary establishment at the time. In a programme titled ‘Poetry I Like’ which I produced, I had arranged a reading of a number of Mac’s poems, including the famous ‘Old Higue’ and what turned out to be the infamous ‘Magdalena.’
