On the anniversary of Martin Carter’s death, and the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Kind Eagle (Poems of Prison) and The Hidden Man (Other Poems of Prison), Gemma Robinson re-minds us of the landmark cultural developments of 1952.
The Emergency of 1953 looms so large in our reading of Martin Carter’s work that it is easy to forget the activities of the year before. 1952 was a turning-point for a generation of writers: a year of publications that showcased the talents of Guyanese poets such as Carter, Wilson Harris, Jan Carew, and opened up the possibilities of Caribbean poetry.
In 1952 A. J. Seymour edited The Kyk-Over-Al Anthology of West Indian Poetry. Published in Georgetown, it included the work of George Lamming, Derek Walcott, Wilson Harris, E. M. Roach and Carter, and was the first anthology to bring together many of those writers who define anglophone Caribbean literature.
It is a landmark collection and can now be read free online through the Digital Library of the Caribbean. In the Preface, Seymour notes that the Barbadian literary journal, Bim, made the first step in 1946 with a modest collection titled the
