–with Guyana Prize laureate Maggie Harris

By Ariana Gordon
AN AVID reader with an interest in art and the arts, Maggie Harris has overcome many challenges and is a proud recipient of the Guyana Prize for Literature 2014.

Though not her first award, Maggie cherishes the Guyana Prize she has won, for it symbolises her Guyanese roots.
Born in New Amsterdam, Berbice in 1954, Maggie remembers fondly her life growing up in the country. Though she migrated in 1971, she believes much of her talent was evident in Guyana.
“My father, James Harris, was born at Fort Nassau, Berbice River, and became a riverboat captain and then Commodore for the then Reynolds Metals Company, who managed the movement of bauxite from Kwakwani to Everton along the Berbice River. He was also an accomplished musician and carpenter, and played a Hawaiian guitar. My mother was of Portuguese and Scottish descent, her surname was Hawker. She was born in Buxton. After her mother died when she was just five months old, her aunt Angela took her and her brother to live with them at Williamsburg, Corentyne,” she told the Pepperpot.
Harris, who now resides in Wales, United Kingdom (UK), said: “As a child, I loved drawing and reading, inspired both by what I learnt at school, and my mother telling us stories. As I grew older I would spend all my time reading, borrowing books from New Amsterdam’s well-stocked library, from friends, and when I could afford it, from the Graphic Book-Store. I read any and everything, from war comics to true life magazines.”
She explained that it was not only books that influenced her as a writer, but music and movies. She attended the Berbice High School, where she said she was provided with “an excellent education.”
“I got involved in Drama and produced drawings and poems for the school magazine. My art teacher at BHS was the esteemed Stanley Greaves. I also acted with the Berbice Arts Theatre in productions at New Amsterdam Town Hall,” said Harris.

INSPIRATION
It was from those periods of inspiration that her writing evolved over the years. “I kept a diary from the age of 10, which proved useful when I was writing Kiskadee Girl, and I also had many pen friends all over the world. My poems mostly began as songs, and apart from patriotic poems about Guyana, were mostly about love. I was quite a giddy teenager, and was always in love!”
Circumstances in her family prevented her from attending Art College in the UK but “Maggie,” as she is fondly called by those in her circle, said she participated in art exhibitions across the country. “One of my early pen-and-ink drawings is on the cover of my recent Guyana Prize-winning book of poetry, Sixty Years of Loving,” the writer said fondly, noting that marriage and motherhood intervened in her desire to do more in the field of art.
“As my children grew older, I began to write, and after Adult Education classes in Creative Writing, I went to Kent University at the age of 39, where I won the TS Eliot Poetry Prize for Students, and achieved a BA in African and Caribbean Studies and a MA in Post-Colonial Studies, followed by a Leverhulme Research Abroad Scholarship to UWI in Barbados to research Performance Poetry.”
Harris explained that during and after those years, she became proactive in organising poetry readings in libraries, schools and theatres. She also ran writing workshops for children and adults, and organised literary walks and cross-cultural activities while collaborating with artists across genres, including music and dance.
“This interest led to my organising the first live Literature Festival, Inscribing the Island, in Thanet, Kent, and I was able to invite many Black, British and Caribbean writers to Kent, including Valerie Bloom, Zena Edwards and Jackie Kay. My posts included Creative Writing Tutor, Kent’s first Reader Development Worker, and International Teaching Fellow at Southampton University. I now work freelance,” she told the Pepperpot.
But her accomplishments did not come easy. Harris explained that her challenges as a writer were many. “It is not a career that provides an income, and many writers have to seek alternative employment. The challenge of getting published is only the beginning; having opportunities to share your work and to promote it, to cover travel expenses and hopefully sell copies, are ongoing difficulties. Getting books into bookshops is almost impossible, unless you are a famous novelist or are with a major publishing house,” she said.

FORTUNATE
The Guyanese writer described herself as fortunate, as her work was initially published by Mango Publishing. Her first book, Limbolands, won the Guyana Prize in 2000.
“Since then I have published more collections of poetry, latterly with Cane Arrow Press, two short story collections with Cultured llama Press, and my memoir with Kingston University Press and Hope Road Publishing.”
A new collection of stories, Writing on Water, will be published by Welsh Press, SEREN, in 2017. One of her stories, Sending for Chantal, was the Caribbean Regional Winner of The Commonwealth Short Story Prize, 2013.
Asked how it feels to be a Guyana Prize Winner, Harris said, “Winning the Guyana Prize is a magnificent and overwhelming honour, and the fact that it provided me with the opportunity to return to Guyana after 38 years has been a significant and poignant occasion.”
On her visit to Guyana, Harris met other esteemed writers and was also able to visit her hometown, New Amsterdam. “All the writing I have done has been underlined by the fact of my being Guyanese and coming from a very special place. Being Guyanese has made me what I am. That is not to deny the opportunities the UK has provided me with – a university education and the help of the Arts Council, which has supported me with some of my writing.”
Though she cannot speak to opportunities available to writers in Guyana, Harris said what has helped her over the years to become a writer was determination to create an opportunity where none existed.
“My determination to create opportunity where there was none; to organise literary events, bond with like-minded others to read together, collaborate with other performers, run workshops, support each other, walk and talk together, visit exhibitions, produce pamphlets. Anyone can do that; that is how I built my poetry connections. I have besieged venues to use their space; run around in the days before email; putting up posters; written to newspapers and the radio; turned up when I promised to; and supported and encouraged new writers,” she said.
Secondly, she believes that Guyana needs to have a body like the Arts Council that exists in the UK which supports writers to have time out to write, and helps to facilitate communication and collaboration between artists, and provides them with training and financial grants.
“I believe that, as artists, we are meant to communicate with others, not live in an ivory tower distanced from the community,” she added.
Harris said, she was pleased to see young writer Subraj Singh win the Guyana Prize. “I sent him heartfelt congratulations. I was interested, seeing he is also involved in drama, something I myself believe helped me to become the writer I am – to be able to understand perspective and the other point of view.”
Maggie Harris won the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry 2014, for her book, ‘60 Years of Loving’.