The purpose of Guyanese writers at CARIFESTA XIII

THIS year, both the Guyana Literary Arts contingent and the Drama contingent at CARIFESTA XIII, which is currently under way in Barbados, are made up of several stellar writers who are part of the ‘new wave’ of Guyanese literary talent made up largely of writers from the Millenial age-group who are slowly, but definitely, emerging to claim their place on the timeline of Guyanese writers who have become established throughout history.

While I am unaware of the exact events in which these writers will be participating, or what all of their roles will be with regard to writing and Guyanese literature, there are certain important things that I do hope the writers within these two contingents manage to get done. With my not-exactly-extensive contact with the organisers of the local representation at CARIFESTA, it does seem sometimes as if too much emphasis is placed on how they want us (our artists, our delegation, our country) to be perceived, rather than what they want us to achieve during CARIFESTA. Perhaps, from my limited vantage point, I am only offered a partial view of what goals and objectives the local organisers are aiming for.

But I do hope that after the completion of the festival, perhaps a public report on Guyana’s participation in the festival would do well to highlight a few important things. These include, how those goals and objectives (whatever they might be) were met by everyone who were sent to represent the country, and what initiatives were put in place in order to ensure that local writers were able to make an impact on other visiting artists within the Region.

Another area would be how they were able to better themselves as writers by learning from the non-Guyanese participants in CARIFESTA, and how collaboration, for the benefit of everyone involved, was forged in order to ensure the continued unity between countries that CARIFESTA is supposed to bring together, while also ensuring that local writers not only represent, but learn enough to bring some amount of knowledge or experience back to Guyana in order to benefit writers here at home, who were not able to go to Barbados this year.

There are things individual writers can do within their contingents in order to ensure that certain objectives are met and while I’m sure that much of these are being done by the Guyanese writers currently at CARIFESTA XIII, I still wish to outline some of them for the benefit of future writers/representatives at future CARIFESTAs:

1) Writers represent themselves and everyone else.
Sometimes, because of the competitive nature of the literary and publishing world, writers can end up turning into self-centred beings, hungry for attention and praise, and, when having gained that, they tend to forget all the writers who came before and all who will come after.

Every Guyanese writer comes from a long literary history and CARIFESTA is the perfect opportunity to highlight some of that history to the rest of the region. If education is not an important facet of the literary aspect of CARIFESTA, then what is the point? There should be opportunities, or writers should make their own opportunities, to enlighten and teach the rest of the Caribbean about the great Guyanese writers they may be unaware of.

Tell them about the revolutionary poems of Martin Carter and the myths woven through Paloma Mohamed’s plays. Tell them about Wilson Harris’ fantastic use of imagery and David Dabydeen’s Creole. Let the world know of the writers who came before helped to put Guyana on the literary map.

2) There are more writers in Guyana than at CARIFESTA.
Guyanese writers at CARIFESTA need to prepare the knowledge and experiences they would have gained in a comprehensive manner in order to be able to share them properly with the local writers who did not get to go to CARIFESTA.

The knowledge – such as techniques on writing, tips for publishing, methods of crafting a piece of writing, etc. – that is shared among the writers of all the various countries at CARIFESTA must be truly astounding, and it is important for the writers lucky enough to experience this to bring back what they have learnt to their home countries and share them with those who are desirous of learning and becoming better writers.

3) Establishing a Caribbean network.
Collaboration among countries in the Caribbean would be a beautiful and wonderful thing. Imagine if the National Drama Company of Trinidad and Tobago was convinced to stage a play written by a playwright from the National Drama Company of Guyana, or if the National Dance Company of Jamaica set to music some of the poems written by our local poets. There is a great need for such collaboration and something as simple as striking up a conversation with a writer from another country can lead to this.

Of course, there are many other objectives that have been set by CARIFESTA, by organisers, by contingent leaders and by writers themselves. However, these are the three that are closest to me and they are the ones that, built on sharing and collaboration, seem to be most representative of what CARIFESTA is all about.
Image saved as “Carifesta”

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All our printed editions are available online
emblem3
Subscribe to the Guyana Chronicle.
Sign up to receive news and updates.
We respect your privacy.