IT WAS Friday, May 24, 2013, the final working day of the week before the long weekend holiday to mark Guyana’s 47th Independence Anniversary.

The holiday fell on Sunday, May 26, so it meant, in our context, that Monday will given as a holiday, thereby shortening the working days of the following week.
What all of this meant was that I had push in as much official business as possible.
It so happened that my first business of the day was completed without a hitch, freeing up some precious time. Next business of the morning was set for 1100 hours, so, instead of going home and coming out again, I decided to stop at the Cara Lodge on Quamina Street to uplift two books sent me by Janice Shinebourne.
There, I met Grace Nichols, John Agard and Michael Gilkes, all having breakfast. The ever helpful maître d’, Tulsi, offered me a platter of fruits and a glass of juice, so I joined the table.
Grace Nichols was born in Guyana, but later migrated to the UK. She has written several books, for both children and adults, and has collaborated with John Agard to produce children’s literature. Nichols has won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Guyana Prize for poetry.
John Agard was also born in Guyana, and, like Nichols, later migrated to the UK. He, too, has written several books, for both children and adults. Agard is a multiple winner of the Guyana Prize in poetry. His other awards include the Casa de las Americas Prize for Poetry, and in 2012, he won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.
Michael Gilkes is a diverse artist — poet, literary critic, playwright, actor, director, filmmaker — just to name a few of the art forms in which he has distinguished himself. He is also a winner of The Guyana Prize in Poetry.
There was so much to talk about that the conversation rapidly veered from subject to subject, but, at times, we would refocus on the engagements that brought us together.
Agard and Nichols were here to launch their most recent books at the University of Guyana, and also to attend the Caribbean Poetry Project conference to be staged at the International Conference Centre at Liliendaal.
The Caribbean Poetry Project is a collaborative effort between Cambridge University and the University of the West Indies. During the course of the conference, Agard (along with other notable poets) will also conduct a poetry workshop.
During breakfast, Nichols was considerate enough to interrupt her meal to go get the books Shinebourne sent me, ‘Timepiece’ and ‘The Last English Plantation’.
‘Timepiece’ won the Guyana Prize for Literature in its inaugural year, 1987. Grace also brought me her new collection of poems for children, ‘Sun Time Snow Time’, which is a reprint of two of her early books, ‘Come into my tropical garden’ and ‘Give yourself a hug’.
Later, Agard slipped out to get me a copy of his book, ‘Travel Light Travel Dark’, returning with word that he just ran into Dave Martins.
On receipt of that bit of information, Gilkes excused himself from the table to meet with Dave; they were preparing to depart Georgetown for the interior of Guyana, the location for the shooting of Gilkes’ film, ‘Maira and the Jaguar People’.
So, my weekend was filled with books; those book already mentioned, along with the recent reprint of ‘Other Leopards’, by Denis Williams; ‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravistz’, by Mordecai Richler; and a critical study of Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’, gifts from a friend as part of a package of advice to me on reworking a novel that I thought I had completed satisfactorily.
While I was attending to my reading, I was working on my own book, reworking some of my articles, interviews, and book reviews into book form for publication.

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