At lunchtime on December 18, 1989, AJ Seymour (AJS) phoned to ask me if I would be very kind and pass for him that afternoon to take him to the Guyana Prize Awards Ceremony at the Cultural Centre. The old man was always courteous. He took no favour asked for granted. I said of course I would be delighted.
The Guyana Prize Awards Ceremony was exactly the sort of event which AJS had been inspiring, encouraging, assisting, contributing to, sponsoring, god-fathering, and often single-handedly creating for his people for over 50 years. His distinction was solid and lasting as a greenheart tree. Growing and alive, it was beautiful. Even cut down it would last as long as forever lasts.
At the Cultural Centre I went on the platform with AJS and we sat next to each other waiting for the President to arrive and the Awards Ceremony to start. I told him the latest issue of Kyk-Over-Al, No 40, badly delayed at the printers, was about to come out at last. He leaned over and pressed my arm. “That is wonderful. Ah, Ian, Kyk, what a time that was!” Forty-four years before, in 1945, he brought out Kyk No 1 and for the next 16 years virtually alone he regularly edited and sometimes almost entirely wrote one of the two most important literary magazines in the West Indies, thus incalculably ministering to the region’s cultural life, the region’s artistic self-confidence, and even the region’s political development.
