Arise, Sir Wilson
ON BENDED knee to rise again to new heights; on bended knee to rise, again, to new levels of recognition, rise again, rising to different levels of consciousness, to be discovered and re-discovered, to be invented and re-invented, to be read and re-read, to be endowed and re-endowed with a new lease of life. That’s the story of the life and work of Wilson Harris. The recent conferral of knighthood on Harris by the Queen of England is another form of re-discovering, re-inventing, re-visiting, re-reading Harris.

Harris would be humbled by such an honour. That’s the nature of the man and his writing, engaging the mind from various angles, extending the conversation in different directions, eking out diverse responses.

The knighting of Harris is the first time a Guyanese writer would be so honoured, and this means a lot to Guyanese literature. This will serve to erase the nagging perception by writers that there is a lack of respect for the work of writers, and reinforce the fact that there is indeed a healthy respect for producing good literature, and that governments do acknowledge the importance of their writers.

In fact, every award and every honour conferred on a Guyanese writer add to the validity, vitality, volatility and development of a Guyanese literature.  And those awards and honours amount to a healthy list: Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Grace Nichols, David Dabydeen); Commonwealth Fiction Prize (Mark McWatt, Karen King-Aribisala); Gabriela Mistral Commemorative Medal from the Government of Chile (Martin Carter); Casa de Las Americas Literary Prize (Harry Narine, McWatt); T. S. Elliot Poetry Prize (Fred D’Aguiar); Whitbread First Novel Award (Pauline Melville); Raja Rao Prize of India (David Dabydeen); Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (A.J. Seymour, Ian McDonald, and Dabydeen) among others.

All of the above mentioned names, except for King-Aribisala, Harry Narine, and Seymour have won the Guyana Prize for Literature, some on more than one occasion.

The life and work of Harris are coloured with numerous awards and honours. Wilson Harris is the recipient of five honorary doctorates. In 1968, he obtained an Arts Council Grant, and in 1971, he was a Commonwealth Fellow in Caribbean Literature at Leeds University, UK. He’s held the revered position of writer-in-residence at many universities around the world, including places like Australia, New York, Texas, Toronto and Cuba.

In 1987, he won the inaugural Guyana Prize for Literature in the fiction category, and in 2002, he was awarded the Guyana Prize Special Award.

In 2003, the University of Warwick staged a conference in honour of Harris. In 2009, he was honoured by the XXVIII Conference on West Indian Literature staged in Guyana (Edgar Mittelholzer was also honoured on that occasion).

In 1968, Wilson Harris was a delegate to the National Identity Conference in Brisbane, and in the same year, he was a delegate to the  UNESCO symposium on Caribbean Literature held in Cuba. In 1970, he was part of the Convention of Caribbean Writers and Artists held in Guyana, planning for what turned out to be the Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta).

During that visit to Guyana, he delivered a number of talks in the Edgar Mittelholzer Memorial Lecture Series. (Both Harris and Mittelholzer were born in New Amsterdam, Berbice, Guyana. Mittelholzer wrote twenty three novels. Harris has twenty four novels to his credit and still writing.)

Harris’ short stories appeared first in KYK-OVER-AL as early as the 1940s. About the same time, some were aired on ‘Caribbean Voices’. His stories were anthologised in prominent collections, including West Indian Stories, West Indian Narrative and Caribbean Rhythm.

Some of his poems were collected in three volumes: FETISH, 1951, ETERNITY TO SEASON, 1952, and THE WELL AND THE LAND, 1952.

He has written numerous essays on topics including ‘The Enigma of Values’, ‘Fossil and Psyche’, ‘Greatness and Bitterness’ and ‘The Making of a Book’.

Wilson Harris has written and published some twenty three novels since his first, PALACE OF THE PEACOCK, appeared in 1960.  THE MASK OF THE BEGGAR (2003), gives a possible starting point that led Harris on the road of his remarkable literary achievement.

When Wilson was only eight, he started reading THE ODYSSEY with the help of his mother, Millicent. The Ulysses of that book became one of the motifs Harris employed in his writing.

Novelist, poet, short-fiction writer and essayist, Wilson Theodore Harris was born on March 24, 1921. He was the eldest of two children. When he was only two years of age, his father died, and when he was six, his stepfather seemed to have deserted the family. The family, headed by the mother who was an active member of Smyth Congregational, made a number of house moves, twice to East Street and twice to Lime Street, before settling.

Along with chalking up his first read book, young Wilson was part of an informal literary circle comprising of Sheila King and Malcolm King, discussing mainly Shakespeare, Milton, and Camus.

During his high school days, he was a member of another literary group, Club 25. This group, limited to twenty five members only, operated from Progressive High School headed at the time by Leslie C. Davis. It included the likes of Allan Young, W. G. Stoll, E. O. Q. Potter, Maurice Charles and Jan Carew. One of the club’s events was a debate on the moot, ‘Poets and Scoffers’, judged by A. J. Seymour.

Later, when he moved into the world of work, Harris became part of a number of social and literary groups. One such gathering was labelled ‘The Anira Group’, operating out of the home of Martin Carter’s mother. It included Martin and his brother, Keith, Sydney Singh, and others. That group eventually moved to Carter’s home with additional members like Jan Carew, Slade Hopkinson and Milton Vishnu Williams.

Harris was also a part of a group that met at the home of Cheddi Jagan, many attracted to his vast library and his political vision for Guyana.

Another formal body of which Harris was a member was the Carnegie Library Discussion Circle. In 1956, when George Lamming visited Guyana to organise public readings, it was Harris who read Carter’s poems because Carter was under house arrest.

So Harris was well grounded in literary matters before his sojourn in the wilderness of Guyana, and was conversant in such matters during his years as a surveyor, exploring the ‘womb of space’.

So much emphasis is being placed on the influence of the jungle on his work that his steady growth in literature in the ‘civilised’ Georgetown environs is overlooked.

Of all those comments, however, one is quite useful in the reading of Harris. Jan Carew said that Harris’ kind of writing came out of “someone accustomed to talking to himself in the Guyana bush for seventeen years.”

So, persons accustomed to talking to themselves and thinking aloud would easily get a handle on Harris’ seemingly difficult writings. It would be useful here to emphasise that Harris attended Queen’s College, one of the top schools at the time. All (of his city associations) helped to harness the jungle within covers of books.

When he was 17, he left school to train as a land surveyor, an occupation he stayed with until he migrated to England in 1959, where he now lives and is still writing.

To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com

What’s Happening
•        The Guyana Annual 2010 issue is now available at Guyenterprise Ltd. on Lance Gibbs and Irving Streets, Queenstown.

•        The new closing date for the Ministry of Culture, Youth & Sport literary competition for school is July 9, 2010. Please contact me for more information. This competition includes three follow-up components via a writers’ workshop using entries submitted, performances of shortlisted entries and a publication of the outstanding works.