Guyanese Writers of African Descent (Part X)
IN KEEPING with UNESCO’s proclamation designating 2011 as ‘International Year of People of African Descent’, we now embark on a series of articles highlighting Guyanese Writers of African Descent who have made significant contribution to our literature. There are many pitfalls and shortcomings associated with listing, grouping and categorising; straightway, I apologise for omissions or any other deficiencies.  Of course, I may stumble here, and, of course, I would depend on your support in supplying necessary information so we are all the wiser in the end.
So far, we have looked at Ivan Van Sertima, N. E. Cameron, Eric Walrond, ER Braithwaite, Jan Carew, O. R. Dathorne, Beryl Gilroy, Denis Williams and Henry Josiah,  getting a feel from whence we came, how we have evolved within new constraints, and how we have had to struggle, and are still struggling, to enjoy inherent human rights.
This continuous battle was, and still is, fought on many fronts, with various instruments of engagement, chief amongst them the pen.
We now take a look at Walter MacArthur Lawrence, a writer who added sumptuous servings of nationalistic flavour to Guyanese Literature.

Walter MacArthur Lawrence
His pen added sumptuous servings of nationalistic flavour to Guyanese Literature long before the words ‘independence’ and ‘republic’ became integral parts of the country’s vocabulary.

‘O beautiful Guyana
O my lovely native land
More dear to me than all the world
Thy sea-washed, sun-kissed strand
Or down upon the borders
Looking down upon the deep
The great Atlantic
Blown into a fury or asleep
At morn, at noon or better
In the crimson sunset’s glow
I love thee, Oh I love thee.’

McA Lawrence carried the love for his country with an enduring passion morning, noon and night. In another poem, ‘My Guyana, Eldorado’, praise for his country continues to flow even if he wander from land to land.
As Guyana celebrates its 41st Republic anniversary, these words of the poet ought to be sobering and inspiring.

‘My Guyana, Eldorado
Best of all the world to me
In my heart where’er I wander
Memory enshrineth thee;
All my hopes and aspirations,
All my longings only tie
Everlasting bonds around us
As the fleeting years roll by.
My Guyana, time’s unfolding
More and more thy destiny,
To redeem in lasting splendour
All the years had lost to thee;
And the dawning of thy glory
O’er the long long night is cast
O arise triumphant, glorious,
From the ashes of the past.
O arise, triumphant, glorious,
From the ashes of the past.’

McA. Lawrence belonged to a tiny cluster of poets in Guyana, making up the Aesthetic movement that upheld ‘the epiphany of national pride’. This movement comprised of a protracted group of early Guyanese poets whose work (sonnets, rondeaux, epics, odes, and lyrics) lent itself readily to music.
Other such poets whose work found its way into the national repertoire of music were W. Hawley Bryant (‘The Song of Guyana’s Children’), Vere T. Daly (‘Hymn for Guyana’s Children’), J. W. Chinapen (‘Arise, Guyana’) and Cleveland Hamilton (‘Song of the Republic’).
Walter MacArthur Lawrence was born in January 1896 in Georgetown. His father, John MacArthur Lawrence, was an accountant and sawmill manager, and his mother, nee Mary Alice MacArthur, was the daughter of a Congregational minister, J. W. MacArthur.
Lawrence grew up in a society governed by pervading religious influence, and of a people coming to grips with itself two generations after emancipation but still under colonial yoke. This meant that the education system was colonial.
He attended St. Thomas’ Scots School. The ‘Tiger Bay Academy’, as it was labelled at that time, was  headed by the famously insidious Dan Sharples, who had a “peculiar predilection for training and tormenting youth,” believing “that the destruction of the body was a necessary preliminary to the reconstruction of the mind.” Parents would readily sacrifice their children to his regimental reputation. And he never failed the parents, and the students never failed.
Later at Queen’s College, that training stood him in good stead. Lawrence now entered a society with much more freedom; freedom which, if not harnessed, could become a liability.  Lawrence cherished the freedom to think, becoming a disciplined thinker.
Lawrence took this discipline into his writing. A. J. Seymour remarked that you could see evidence of Lawrence painstakingly setting “out on paper the metrical base, the music of the poem he was going to write, putting down little marks to indicate the syllables he wanted to emphasis.”
Such a base propelled him into early fame. In 1920, the Daily Chronicle published his first poem, commemorating the arrival in the colony of HRH, the Prince of Wales.
In 1929, he published ‘Meditations’ with a subtitle, ‘Thoughts in the Silence’, solidifying his position on the landscape of Guyanese literature. Two years later, in 1931, Lawrence produced ‘Threnody’, a song of lamentation for his dead son, exploring trauma as part of his heritage — a healing poem.  The following year, 1932, his “delightfully nostalgic” poem, ‘Unreclaimed’, was published in the Chronicle Christmas Annual.
The 1930s was definitely the most notable of Lawrence’s short life. During this period, his poetic output was remarkable — long sentences and very long poems in Greek and Latin traditions, examples in titles of poems like ‘Threnody’, and ‘Meromi’.
In ‘Meromi’, Lawrence displayed an uncommon gift of telling a story in verse, matching Keats’ ‘Isabella’, Tennyson’s ‘Princess’ and Egbert Martin’s ‘Ruth’. Also in ‘Meromi’, he employed a technique that has become quite useful in Caribbean poetry: Borrowing and modifying, he transposed a local heroine into the Garden of Eden.
His work could be found in landmark collections through the ages, first of which was ‘Guianese Poetry’, edited by Cameron in 1931. ‘A Treasury of Guyanese Poetry’, ‘Themes of Song’ and ‘Fourteen Guyanese Poems for Children’, were all edited by Seymour.
‘Sun is a Shapely Fire’, edited by Elma Seymour, is an anthology of great value to researchers, in that it provides biographical sketches of writers sited therein. Of great importance is the anthology, ‘Caribbean Verse’, edited by O. R. Dathorne, who placed Lawrence alongside Derek Walcott, Martin Carter, Eric Roach, Frank Collymore and John Figueroa among others.
Lawrence died in October, 1942, experimenting with modern verse, shaping his thoughts into a contemporary vogue, but never forsaking the older forms.
‘Poet of Guyana’, a posthumous collection of his poetry, was published in 1948 by the Daily Chronicle, Main Street, Georgetown, with an introductory biography by P. H. Daly, who also collected and edited the work.
(To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)

WHAT’S HAPPENING:
•    You are invited to World Poetry Day 2011, which will be celebrated in Guyana on Wednesday, March 23, at the Umana Yana, Kingston, Georgetown. Starting time: 17:00h (5pm).