Minister Anthony reveals  Caribbean category in Guyana Prize 2010
FUNDING has been provided in the budget for a Caribbean category of the Guyana Prize for Literature 2010, said Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Dr. Frank Anthony at the 13th Annual Eastern Caribbean Islands Conference, currently going on at the Education Lecture Theatre of the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen Campus. In his address to participants that included 60 persons from North America and the Caribbean, Anthony said that it was often lamented that not much is done for literature, and he expressed the hope that the prize would serve as an incentive for emerging Caribbean writers.
He noted that the Ministry had also created the Caribbean Press since 2008, and this aims to publish 36 books in a series called the Guyana Classics, the first eleven of which have already been released and will be followed by 12 more titles by next month and 13 more in 2011.
Anthony said that the Government of Guyana believes that Caribbean writers have a special role to play in society and must use the language to shape the ideas and thoughts of our Caribbean civilizations and help people to understand the complexities and challenges of the current world.
Noting the importance of language to a society, Anthony said that if we do not have a language to communicate with each other, express our thoughts, contain our memories and transmit our stories, then that community will inevitably wither and die.
He noted that in Guyana there are several indigenous languages that are classified by UNESCO as endangered.
He noted the Ministry’s efforts to highlight the languages, including compiling dictionaries for five languages through the University of Guyana’s linguistic Department, but cautioned that the measure was not enough, saying there is need to do more, such as exploring collaborations among universities and using academic skills to add new life to these languages.

In this vein, he went on to note the importance of language to preserving a culture, saying, “When we kill a language, we take away from a people their way of being”.  He noted that in this we have a shared experience telling those present that we have witnessed a “linguistic holocaust” as persons were uprooted from various continents and transplanted into the Caribbean, during slavery and indentureship. The minister pointed out that even with the “borrowed language”, it was possible to find a voice and use it to fight injustice and find a new identity.
He noted that even though “creative giants” are made in the Caribbean and consumed by the world, going on to note Nobel Prize winners Derrick Walcott, Sir V.S. Naipaul and Saint-John Perse, many persons’   contributions go unheralded because we have not spent enough time studying, researching, and understanding our own. He opined that as a region, we lag  in our research and even when we have research findings to share, the opportunities are few.
Lauding the conference as a bright spot, he said it created the academic space for the presentation of research to one’s peers, and gives them an opportunity to question, debate and discuss the findings and arrive at new knowledge for our community.
Anthony said that he would like to see new literature emerging that speaks to the revolutionary technology that is around us,  driving the information age, medicine,globalization,climate change and other contemporary issues.
He praised the exploration of women’s literature at the conference, saying that the evolution of this type of literature fills an existing gap. He exhorted universities to help fashion the next batch of creative beings, stressing the importance of acquiring  the technical skills of the language, the mechanics to wield the pen, but more importantly, developing a sense of responsibility.
Making an analogy to Diwali, he advised his listeners to “Let the diya or light of the conference bring new wisdom to our Caribbean civilization”.
The conference is a collaboration among the University of West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus, and the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) Rio Peidras Campus with a university of the host country, which is Guyana this year.
Known as the “Islands In Between” Conference, it focuses on the literature, language and culture of the Eastern Caribbean and attracted some 60 attendees from throughout the hemisphere.