– in observance of 100th birth anniversary of AJ Seymour

IN addition to the many activities to mark the centennial birth anniversary of late Guyanese poet Arthur James Seymour, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport (MCYS) has announced that the editions No. 1 through No. 13 of the literary journal Kyk-Over-Al will be republished in the Caribbean Press.According to a press release, the journal which featured the work of many leading Guyanese and Caribbean writers was founded by AJ Seymour in 1945. Over a 16-year-span, 50 issues of the magazine were published. (Kyk-

Over-Al was a Dutch fort in the then colony of Essequibo).
In 1984, with the help of poet and novelist Ian McDonald, Seymour revived Kyk-Over-Al, which he co-edited with Ian McDonald until his death in 1989, after which McDonald became the sole editor.
Additionally, Seymour also edited and published An Anthology of Guianese Poetry (1954); The Kyk-Over-Al Anthology of West Indian Poetry (1952); revised edition (1958); and the Miniature Poets Series of pamphlets (1951–1953), which included works by Martin Carter, Wilson Harris, Ivan Van Sertima, Trinidadian Harold Telemaque, Barbadian Frank Collymore, and Jamaican Philip Sherlock.
Later anthologies include My Lovely Native Land: An Anthology of Guyana (Longman, 1971), co-edited with Elma Seymour; New Writing in the Caribbean (Georgetown: National History and Arts Council, published after the Caribbean Festival of Arts in Guyana in 1972) and A Treasury of Guyanese Poetry (1980). Starting in 1976, Seymour also wrote five volumes of autobiography.
In 1936, Seymour began writing poems, and one year later he had completed his first collection, Verse; followed by More Poems in 1940. The title poem of Over Guiana, Clouds (1944) was a landmark in the development of Seymour’s poetic style. Suns In My Blood (1945) contained at least three poems that have come to be considered classics: “Sun Is a Shapely Fire”, “There Runs a Dream”, and “The Legend of Kaieteur”. The latter poem was later set to music by Guyanese composer Philip Pilgrim.
Seymour’s later major collections include Leaves from the Tree (1951), Selected Poems (1965), Patterns (1970), My Lovely Native Land (1971) and Selected Poems (1983). A tribute volume called AJS at 70 (1984), edited by Ian McDonald, contained a selection of 15 poems under the title “The Essential Seymour”, chosen by Seymour himself.
In 2000, Seymour’s Collected Poems, 1937-1989, was published and edited by Ian McDonald and AJ’s niece Dr Jacqueline de Weever.
The release also said that Guyana is bestowed with brilliant masterminds in the literary arts, and noted that their existence in the past has permeated the present literary culture.

(By Michelle Gonsalves)