In 1987, then President Desmond Hoyte introduced the Guyana Prize for Literature. It was an inspired decision considering that at that time the country was in the throes of financial difficulties from which there would be no relief until after the introduction of the Economic Recovery Programme two years later. President Hoyte, however, understood something which members of our present government are at pains to grasp. He recognised that the soul of a nation is not defined by its GDP, or how many barrels of oil or tonnes of sugar or ounces of gold it produces; its true significance is to be sought in its great works of art and literature of all kinds. To take purely European examples (although the principle applies globally), what would England be without Shakespeare, or Holland without Rembrandt, or Germany without Beethoven or Russia without the Bolshoi? Indeed, what would the world be without the contributions of the great, and even the not-so-great, artists and writers from all cultures? In the end, they contribute a vital element to what makes us uniquely human.
Stabroek News columnist Mosa Telford reminded us last year that Mr Hoyte quoted a 13th century Persian poem (although she said there was some claim it might have Greek authorship) in relation to his decision to establish the Guyana Prize. It puts the case pithily:
If thou of fortune be bereft
And in thy store there be but left
Two loaves, sell one and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.
Obsessed as it is with oil blocks, oil contracts and oil revenue, feeding the soul finds no space in the coalition government’s vision for the future. In his Arts column in this newspaper last week, Al Creighton, who is also Secretary of the Guyana Prize Management Council, wrote, “As it stands today the Guyana Prize has been discontinued.” It has now been four years since the Prize was last awarded, and there is little optimism in artistic circles that it will be revived. It is a sad comment on the limited imagination of our political principals.
The Guyana Prize for Literature appears to fall under the remit of Dr George Norton, who, along with his Social Cohesion portfolio, also has responsibility for the Department of Culture, Youth and Sport. It is not a duty with which he appears altogether comfortable. In fact, in December of last year during the Committee of Supply debate on the budget, he was asked by Opposition MP Dr Frank Anthony what allocation had been made for the Guyana Prize for Literature. We reported him as responding that it was not part of his responsibility.
“That is not under our [the Department] remit… I don’t know whose,” we quoted him as saying.
He had clearly forgotten that six months earlier he had told Stabroek News that he had embarked on an information gathering exercise as to the feasibility of the competition and whether it was producing the desired impact. Apart from the fact that at this stage he obviously believed the Guyana Prize did indeed come within the ambit of his ministerial responsibility, it was to miss the point about it completely. It is not some little economic project from which short-term financial rewards are to be reaped – although it probably does have economic spin-offs and unquestionably has cultural ones. It is about recognising good writing, and hopefully, at least once in a while to start with, great writing, which can act as a cultural catalyst, not just in the country, but in the region as a whole. If it is allowed to build a heritage over time, it will confer on Guyana a very special image and status.
There was worse to come from Dr Norton. He stated that the ministry did not intend making such a large investment unless it was receiving the desired returns. “We would not go spending that kind of money if we are not certain that it is achieving what it set out to achieve in the first place and if it’s worth the amount of money—because it runs into millions of dollars that we can ill-afford at this time,” he said.
And just what did the government expect the Prize to achieve? The minister characterised its objective as encouraging “young Guyanese writers to continue along that line or to encourage young persons to start writing.” If that was what the goal was, he said, “then we’ve got to look to see how that prize so far has achieved that. If that is what we’re setting out to do and we have not been achieving that, then we need to put measures in place to achieve that.”
Someone needs to inform the minister – and by extension the government − that societies cannot churn out writers like so many ball-bearings on an assembly line. The best writers are born, although like creative people in other artistic fields, they generally have to learn their craft and some can be helped by the teaching of techniques. As Mr Creighton and others have explained in some detail, the Guyana Prize is almost unique among literary prizes in that it was only one of two in the world which trained writers or assisted beginners. The other, he said, was the Commonwealth Foundation, which ran the Commonwealth Writers Prizes. Even it, it might be mentioned, was not as progressive in this respect as its Guyanese counterpart.
Furthermore, the Arts columnist has said, the Prize has evolved over the period of its existence. The inaugural Guyana Prize in 1987 offered only one prize for Best First Book, and both fiction and poetry had to compete for it. “This shows the original orientation … did not put the emphasis on upcoming, developing new writers. It was about the established. It was after further deliberation that the prize was split and there was one each for Best First Book of Poetry and Best First Book of Fiction,” he explained. It might be added that the Prize was extended to include Caribbean writing as well.
It must be emphasised again, however, that the purpose of the Guyana Prize for Literature is not just about training young writers, although it undertakes important work in that regard in order that they can enter the competition; it is about recognising and encouraging high-quality writing submitted by both young and established writers. It is in the end a literary prize, not an educational one. To quote Mr Hoyte in 1987, “We must give stature and status to our makers of words as we do to our makers of things.”
The government’s parsimony in relation to the Prize is incomprehensible. We are talking about sums which are not unthinkable in a country like this, more especially when ministers of government zip all over the place to conferences and the like – some of them no doubt important and useful, but others of which have little value for posterity and will slip by forgotten in a matter of weeks. Given too the amount of money that is sometimes wasted – and the minister himself should know something about this given his unfortunate association with the infamous bond – how can the government seriously deny funding to the Guyana Prize?
Last year, a forum facilitated by Dr Paloma Mohamed and the University of Guyana Department of Philanthropy, Alumni and Civic Engagement was held to “reimagine” the Prize − whatever that meant. There was a report emerging from this, and the last anyone heard from the government side about developments was in February this year, when the minister said it was “at the level of Cabinet.”
It transpires that a decision on the future of the Guyana Prize was with the ministerial plenary which was, at that time, performing the functions of Cabinet. Dr Norton indicated that the intention was for a presentation to be made to Cabinet but a resource person involved in the report whose presence was considered essential, was overseas-based and, therefore, the presentation had been delayed. Complete silence has followed since.
Guyana, with its small population, has in the past given the world some writers of international distinction. Great writers emerge out of a tradition, not out of a vacuum. The Guyana Prize was devoted to building our canon of literary works, and, over time, contributing to that tradition. In seeking to break it, the government is seemingly aspiring to cement a reputation for philistinism.
All human beings, either through the agency of folk art or more formal artistic expression, seek to raise their eyes from grubbing on the ground for a living to look at the stars. The government has no business depriving us of an opportunity to raise our eyes to the stars.
