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Martin Carter's earliest poetry was shaped by the turbulent days of anti-colonial radicalism and protest in Guyana (British Guiana) during the 1950s. During the thirty years since then, especially since the publication of his hallmark Poems of Resistance ( 1954), his has been the voice of radicalism in Anglophone Caribbean poetry. This preeminence as the poet of revolution has generally tended to be emphasized by the fact that revolutionary rhetoric in general, and revolutionary literature in particular, has been a rarity in the English-language Caribbean (with all due respect to the ethnic intensities that have become de rigueur in the literature during the last twenty years). Indeed, this very uniqueness probably accounts for the fact that Martin Carter's preeminence as the poet of revolution has not been seriously eroded by the muting of his revolutionary voice over the twenty years since Guyanese independence.

This silence, or near silence, may be linked to the profound disillusionment which has engulfed so much of the Third World intelligentsia, including that of the Caribbean, since the achievement of (nominal) independence. In Guyana that disillusionment has been especially intense in the wake of racial violence between Blacks and East Indians, political stagnation and repression, and the economic as well as social malaise which has undermined the experiment in cooperative republicanism. In this period the Guyanese government has been accused of seizing and maintaining its power by means of a fraudulent electoral system gerrymandered in cooperation with the British and the Americans; and more recently, the government has been accused of complicity in the violent death of one of its most vocal and popular critics, historian/activist Walter Rodney (1980). Against such a background Carter's relative silence as revolutionary poet may be interpreted either as prudence or complete disillusionment--or both. But that silence is relative: Carter's days of overt revolutionism and rebellion may be past, as have been the days of active political involvement and direct participation in government; but he has continued to write and publish his poetry-poetry which sometimes manages to convey a special intensity of feeling and purpose by the very manner in which it studiously avoids a certain directness of statement. The voice itself may have been muted, but the fiery sense of engagement which has made that voice all but unique in Anglophone Caribbean poetry still burns.

BIOGRAPHY

Carter was born in 1927 and received his secondary school education at Queen's College. During his early twenties he joined the turbulent political movement for national independence, quickly becoming a leading spokesman for the more radical forces of the movement. This prominence inevitably led to his arrest and imprisonment by the British colonial administration in 1953. At the time of his detention Carter had already launched his career as a poet, having contributed works to A. J. Seymour literary magazine, Kyk-over-al, and to Seymour "Miniature Poet" series of poetry pamphlets ( Hill of Fire Glows Red). But it was during his imprisonment that he composed his most important collection, Poems of Resistance, which was eventually published in London, in 1954.

After his release from prison Carter remained active in the independence movement and in 1965 was a member of the colony's delegation to the Guyana Constitutional Conference in London, the final hurdle before the formal achievement of nationhood. Thereafter he served for two years ( 1966-67) as a member of Guyana's delegation to the United Nations. He has also served in the Guyanese government at home, most notably as minister of information and culture, finally leaving the government in 1971. Throughout this entire period he has maintained the dual roles of poet and activist, an appropriate choice in one whose most important writings have passionately advocated involvement and commitment. Consequently the years of political activity and government service also saw the appearance of the first half of his published output, followed by works ranging from the last of his outspoken collections, Poems of Shape and Motion ( 1955), to the cryptic reticence of Poems of Affinity: 1978-1980 ( 1980).

MAJOR WORKS AND THEMES

From as early as his first significant publications Martin Carter's distinctive voice of protest and rebellion is unmistakably clear. Unlike so many early collections, especially in the Caribbean, The Hill of Fire Glows Red avoids the neoRomantic idealization of landscape. Instead of the familiar pastoral clichés, the young Carter's landscape vibrates with historical memories, which, in turn, inspire an urgent demand for change. In "Listening to the Land" the poet hears a "tongueless whispering," the possible voice of a buried slave who embodies the past. The response to the landscape is activist rather than escapist, and when the young poet dreams, his are dreams of social change ( "Looking at Your Hands"). In earlier works like these it is fairly easy to grasp the dominant features of Carter's poetic personality. It is a personality in which the imagination of activist and artist is indivisible, and in some respects these poems are about the imagination and its transforming powers--it transforms the land itself into an insistent voice of history and, simultaneously, responds to the voices of history by envisioning change, including revolutionary change, as the desirable and inevitable consequences of that history. And, finally, the poet's own persona as the embodiment of the transforming imagination incarnates the vision of change. Accordingly, the revolutionary idealist envisions change as a creative process which produces vital forms (social and political structures) out of the chaos of colonial inequities, in much the same way that the poetic imagination creates living forms in art ( "The Kind Eagle").

In a sense the poems of The Kind Eagle ( 1952) suggest an interesting paradox: chaos and repression are reprehensible on the one hand; but on the other hand, they emerge as indispensable factors. In political terms the liabilities of history have inspired the kind of intellectual and political ferment which fuel an (apparently) inevitable process of fundamental change. Prison, both as literal experience and as colonial symbol, therefore inspires a fierce ecstacy in the title poem of the collection: "I Dance on the Wall of Prison!" ( Poems of Succession, 1977, p. 19; hereafter cited as POS). And by a similar token, the poetic imagination thrives on political adversity and on the reminders of historical injustices: it carves monuments out of the poet's "time," from the "jagged block of convict years" ( POS, p. 19). Moreover, the consistent integration of imagination and historical memory imparts a powerfully suggestive sense of inevitability to Carter's ethics of change. The envisioned changes, even if unrealized, are as much a part of a distinctive historical pattern, as is the past which made the present itself inevitable. And this pervasive sense of inevitability inspires recurrent images and themes of movement to the poems of The Kind Eagle--movement as history, history as change, change as the collective, irresistible pilgrimage undertaken by a special breed of visionaries: the universe of history moves, "revolves / like a circling star," and "Only men of fire will survive" ( "The Discovery of Companion," POS, p. 24).

Altogether, these early collections reflect a tightly knit dialectic, with its closely integrated poetic forms, which are to define a good part of Carter's poetry for much of the next fifteen years. The ethos of change is both political ideal and the creative principle of imagination. The patterns of history are mirrored in the imaginative patterns of the poet's art, and since both patterns have been shaped by the same social forces, then the poetic imagination must, perforce, be politically involved. Or in the words of the poet himself, "Like a web / is spun the pattern / all are involved" ( Poems of Resistance, p. 18).

That assertion is the climactic statement of "You Are Involved," a work which is one of the most typical, in tone and feeling, of the celebrated collection, Poems of Resistance. This is the collection in which the twenty-seven-year-old Carter fuses the characteristic themes and forms of the preceding works into the compact designs of his best, and most famous works--"Till I Collect,""Cartman of Dayclean,""I Come from the Nigger Yard," and "University of Hunger." It is characteristic of Carter's writings at this stage of his development that these successful poems owe much to the turbulent times and frankly repressive circumstances in which they were written. They were composed, for the most part, while he was in political detention--in "the dark time," in "the season of oppression," the "carnival of misery" ( This Is the Dark Time My Love, POS, p. 42). While it is less celebrated than its companion pieces, few poems in the collection surpass "I Clench My Fist" in this regard. The very intensity of feeling and statement owes its very essence to the forces of repression and exploitation against which the poet rebels. British colonialism represents social chaos in the immediate, Guyanese context, and in the broader, global context, the fragmentation of humanity between the oppressor and the powerless, the haves and the have-nots. The confrontation between colonizer and colonial rebel is therefore an allegory of a divided universe, the microcosm of historical patterns of chaos and conflict. Conversely, the poet's reaction, as artist-activist,to this chaos amounts to a harmonizing, creative power, the transforming power of the imagination. The defiant act of clenching the fist in the face of British weapons and political power suggests a compact wholeness as well as creative energy which contrasts with the prevailing chaos, and it is synonymous with the harmonizing patterns of poetic art itself ( "I sing my song of FREEDOM!" [ "I Clench My Fist," Poems of Resistance, p. 41]). Finally, the thematic progression within the poem itself, from images of fragmentation and conflict to the vision of a powerful, harmonizing energy, is in itself a structural or formal emphasis on that sense of movement--historical progression or inevitability--which is always so integral to Carter's revolutionist vision.

On the whole, works like "I Clench My Fist" exemplify Carter's protest poetry at its best. The underlying dialectic is compact, limpid, and consistent. The dialectic statement is tightly controlled through a disciplined, highly economic use of language and sense of form; and as a result, the poetic form itself becomes the imaginative microcosm of that moral wholeness and social unity which the poetry envisions. Given this tightly integrated schema, it becomes clear that "poems of resistance" are not simply poems about political resistance: they are acts of resistance. This implies an aesthetic that has been rather rare in the generally conservative context of Anglophone Caribbean literature. It was not to be aired in any significant sense, in any Caribbean language area, until the successful Cuban revolution began to define its own revolutionary aestheticsduring the 1960s: the only valid revolutionary art is that which is committed to, and a part of, the revolution; writing about the revolution is not enough, the writer must be an active participant in the revolution. Or to phrase this ideal in Carter's poetic language, the poet must not simply write about resistance, he himself and his poetry must be directly involved in resistance.

However, notwithstanding this kind of analogy, and notwithstanding the power of Carter's own rhetoric of change, it is important to recognize the substantial limitations of his revolutionism. These limitations are both external and internal. Externally, Carter has lived and written in a political and social context in which the idea of change has always been sharply delineated in nonrevolutionist terms. The rhetoric of rebellion or "revolution" in the English-language Caribbean of the 1950s and 1960s seldom encompassed fundamental (i.e., genuinely revolutionary) changes in the social fabric. "Resistance" as such was conceived and fashioned in relation to the British colonial order and its associated bureaucracy. In other words, resistance was the movement of a bourgeois nationalism, which would replace the colonial overlord with nationalist leaders and political structures, which would leave the social and economic order relatively unchanged. Neither has radical revolutionism demonstrated significant grass-roots appeal in the English Caribbean--a fact which needs to be borne in mind when one is tempted to blame the failures of the Guyanese promise on the demonstrable and alleged sins of the Forbes Burnham regime. The electoral rejection of "democratic socialism" in Jamaica during the early 1980s is another example of this limitation, especially when one remembers the definite, built-in limitations of Michael Manley's democratic socialism as a revolutionist principle. And in retrospect, the recent collapse of the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, even before the inevitable U.S. intervention, suggests that beyond the personal popularity of Maurice Bishop the New Jewel Movement, as revolutionary ideology, was less deeply rooted than its most ardent supporters seemed to have imagined.

It is necessary to emphasize this historical and social context because these are the broader circumstances which go beyond Guyana's immediate boundaries and which explain, in part, the long-term sense of futility that now envelops Carter's revolutionist poetry, especially in retrospect. The limited impact and relevance of his revolutionary themes reflect the limited capacities of his society for the idea of fundamental change. This, in turn, leads to the internal limits of Carter's revolutionism itself. Poems like "University of Hunger," "Cartman of Dayclean," and "I Come from the Nigger Yard" reverberate with the passions, even violent potential, of the dispossessed. But there is really no substantial evidence, even in these works, of a revolutionary vision that goes beyond the immediate anti-colonial nationalism of "I Clench My Fist." The ferocity with which the poet assaults an entrenched (colonial) status quo undoubtedly continues to exert a powerful appeal to present readers who dream of "resistance" to the neocolonial establishment which succeeded the British colonizers. But this ought not to obscure the clearly limited implications of Carter's original vision.

While the scope of the revolutionary vision is circumscribed, so is the poet's realism. The poet's passionate commitment to change of sorts is not really counterbalanced by a realistic awareness of the substantial barriers to significant change. In these earlier poems of "resistance," from the first collection to Poems of Shape and Motion ( 1955), technical polish and thematic coherence go hand in hand with what, on the whole, is a relatively limited emotional range or appeal--limited, that is, by an absence of complex self-awareness vis-a-vis the limits of his own vision and of his society's capacity for change. It is not surprising that, when those social limitations were made painfully manifest in subsequent years, Carter's poetry seems to have retreated into a state of shock from which it has never really recovered.

On the whole, the assessment of Carter's overtly "revolutionary" or "committed" poems leads to a historically significant, albeit unintended, irony: his real achievement as a poet of resistance is, in the final analysis, an exclusively aesthetic one, rather than the effective political-aesthetic synthesis that is envisaged and structurally symbolized by his poetry. That is, we can always admire the consistent coherence of thematic statement, the telling integration of formal structure and theme, the striking tension between intense feeling and the spare, tightly disciplined language; and throughout all of this we can admire the skill with which the poet weaves his complex patterns of imagistic and structural variations on the fundamental theme of change-as-creation. But that theme is often less profound or far-reaching than it may sometimes sound.

The poems since Guyana's independence are, collectively, an implicit admission of the earlier limitations. A somber silence broods over the post-independence poems first published in Poems of Succession. Silence as speechlessness and paralysis is the dominant motif here, in contrast to the defiant energies and perpetual movement in the earlier works. Here silence and inactivity suggest that history moves, not toward inevitable change and creation, but in repetitive, predictable cycles. Indeed, this kind of silence is the main topic of poems like "A Mouth Is Always Muzzled," "Even As the Ants Are," "In the When Time," and "Fragment of Memory." These works also demonstrate that despite the changes in mood and historical circumstances, the older Carter still commands the talents for striking, arresting poetry. The brooding silence of these poems is not the silence of a lost idealism, or of a crippled imagination. Far from it, he manages to develop his themes of silence and futility through "confessional" modes of private experience, or even through abstract statements, communicating a powerful sense of repression and stasis in his society while avoiding explicit political protest. Both the explicit theme of silence and the suggestive absence of overt protest in themselves become rhetorical symptoms of his real, but implied, subject. As in his earlier works, the better poems in this later collection demonstrate his characteristic ability to develop form as statement.

This highly suggestive silence continues in his most recent collection, Poems of Affinity: 1978-1980. The disillusionment with "history" is more pronounced, and we are left with only a quiet despair in the face of history's relentless repetitiveness. It is the image of death, not creation, that dominates "PlayingMilitia" Militia" where the uniform sleeves droop "like the wet feathers of a crow's wing / over secret carrion" [ Poems of Affinity, p. 17]). And in "For Cesar Vallejo ii" the decay is everywhere. Clearly, he still remains the poet of passionate commitment. Where that commitment will lead his future poetry depends as much upon Carter's world as it does on himself.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Edward Brathwaite "Resistance Poems: The Voice of Martin Carter" ( 1977) is one of the more comprehensive studies of Martin Carter's poetry thus far. The critic examines all the major publications up to the mid-1970s, with special emphasis on Carter as the voice of revolutionary change. Briefer, more general comments also appear in Brown, West Indian Poetry ( 1977), and Herdeck, Caribbean Writers ( 1979).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hill of Fire Glows Red. Miniature Poet Series. Georgetown: Mater Printer, 1951.

To a Dead Slave. Georgetown: Author, 1951.

The Hidden Man. Georgetown: Author, 1952.

The Kind Eagle. Georgetown: Author, 1952.

Returning. Georgetown: Author, 1953.

Poems of Resistance. London: Lawrence, Wishart, 1954; Georgetown: Guyana Release, 1979.

Poems of Shape and Motion. Georgetown: Author, 1955.

Conversations. Georgetown: Author, 1961.

Jail Me Quickly. Georgetown: Author, 1963.

Poems of Succession. London: New Beacon Books, 1977.

Poems of Affinity: 1978-1980. Georgetown: Release, 1980.

(LLOYD W. BROWN)

They call here,

-Magnificent Province!

Province of Mud!

Province of flood!

Who are the magnificent here?

Not I with this torn shirt

but they, in their white mansions

by the trench of blood!

I tell you

this is no magnificent province

no El Dorado for me

no streets paved with gold

but a bruising and battering for self preservation

in the white dust and grey mud.

I tell you and I tell no secret -

now is the long past time for worship

long past time for kneeling

with clasped hands at altars of poverty

How are the mighty slain?

by this hammer of my hand!

by this anger in my life!

by this new science of men alive

everywhere in this province!

thus - are the mighty slain!

(Martin Carter in The Hill of Fire Glows Red 1951)

Do not stare at me from your window, lady

do not stareand wonder where I came from

Born in this city was I, lady,

hearing the beetles at six o'clock

and the noisy cocks in the morning

when your hands rumple the bed sheet

and night is locked up the wardrobe.

My hands are full of lines

like your breast with veins, lady -

So do not stare and wonder where I came from

My hands are full of lines

like your breast with viens, lady -

and one must rear, while one must suckle life...

Do not stare at me from your window, lady.

Stare at the wagon of prisoners!

Stare at the hearse passing by your gate!

Stare at the slums in the south of the city!

Stare hard and reason, lady, where I came from

and where I go.

My hand is full of lines

like your breast with veins, lady,

and one must rear, while one must suckle life.

(Martin Carter in The Hill of Fire Glows Red 1951)

Old Higue in the kitchen

peel off her skin -

mammy took up old higue skin

and pound it in the mortar

with pepper and vinegar.

"Cool um water cool um

cool um water cool um"

Old higue come back in the kitchen

"Cool um water cool um"

She grab the skin out of the mortar

"Cool um water cool um"

She danced merengue when the pepper

burn up her skin -

dance merengue when the pepper

burn up her skin

"skin skin you nah know me

skin skin you nah know me"

She danced merengue when the pepper

burn up her skin.

(Martin Carter in The Hill of Fire Glows Red 1951)

If I wanted

I could make pictures of night

the map of stars above the mass of water

the mass of water underneath the stars

the beauty of my beloved

like a flower bringing dawn light into dark.

Yes, if I wanted

I could close my eyes right now

and bring these things like life into my brain.

but new are these times

and no matter where I turn

like fierce revolt goes with me

like a kiss -

the revolt of Malaya

and Vietnam -

the revolt of India

and Africa -

like guardian.

like guardian at my side

is the fight for freedom -

and like teh whole world dancing

for liberation from the slave maker

shines the beauty of my darling in her laughing eyes

(Martin Carter in The Hill of Fire Glows Red 1951)

I grieve

At least

Your land is vast, full of plenty and your people hope

What tragic Fate

Has betook you

And left you barren

Of love, of the beauty, and of the freedom of Existence

I grieve

When I

Behold the state of a child amongst many

In desperation beg

From want?

From a formed habit?

From a need to dissuade hunger’s pang?

Not to be re-missed to mention

A beggar man

Who refused in disdain

A dollar gain

I grieve

At least

My lamentation is a prayer

To stop this disorder

I grieve

When I in divers places

Observe the similitude yet again

The pain

The desperation

The fear of life – not of death

On strained faces

Stark naked of expression

I grieve

At least

On everything, there is the Creator’s hand

And once in a while

There is a standing ovation

For the plight of the poor man

For the plight of the poor man

For the plight of the poor man

Child and Woman.

Poem by: James C. Richmond

Amy Ramdass
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Terry B. - Live Music For All Occasions

I stretch my hand to a night of barking dogs

feeling for rain or any dropping water:

But the wind is dark and has no shower for me

and the street is strange and has no pathway for me

and the sky is old and keeps no comet for me.

I stretch my hand to a nightof weary branches

feeling for leaves or any twig fo blossom:

But the branch is withered with no green leaf for me

and the stalk is brown and has no petal for me

and the root is tap root boring in equator.

I stretch my hand to a night of clinging distress

feeling for sleep or any rest to heal me:

But dreams are things that never come at calling

and sleep is time that hides me from my labour

and rest is death that rids me of my panting

and dogs and branches and dim rooms of distress

are living worlds that populate my dark

(Martin Carter in The Hidden Man, 1952)

Now to begin the road:

broken land ripped like a piece of cloth

iron cartwheel rumbling in the night

hidden man consistent in the dark

sea of dayclean washing on the shore

heart of orphan seeking orphanage.

Now to begin the road:

The bleeding music of appellant man

starts like a song but fades into a groan

His hopes are whitened starched with grief and pain

yet questing man is heavy laden cart

whose iron wheels will rumble in the night

whose iron wheels will spark against the stone

or granite burden of the universe.

Now to begin the road:

hidden cartman fumbling for a star -

brooding city like a mound of coal -

till journey done, till prostrate coughing hour

with sudden welcome take him to his dream

with sudden farewell send him to his grave

(Martin Carter in The Hidden Man, 1952)

Now to absborb and be absorbed again

and in such fashion marry to the world

Sky blue, grass green, glittering moon.

Dust white, bones naked - beautiful world!

No mark, no madness like this sanity.

At a bright day's end the dark sky will hide us

dream time will guard us, night will mend our being

yet wind will wake us, rain drench every doorway.

Now to absorb and be absorbed again

and in such fashion marry to the world.

City moon clad, black tree domestic, dreary

doormouth gaping

earth no mother, sky no father, space no home in comfort:

No mark, no madness like this sanity.

At a dark night's enda darker night will choke us

night claws wil rend us, gloom lay bare our being

and smoke engulf us, swirling in our faces.

How to absorb or be absorbed again?

(Martin Carter in The Hidden Man 1952)

This I have learnt:

today a speck

tomorrow a hero

hero or monster

you are consumed!

Like a jig

Shakes the loom:

like web

is spun the pattern

all are involved!

all are consumed!

(Martin Carter in the Kind Eagle, 1952)

University of Hunger

is the university of hunger the wide waste.

is the pilgrimage of man the wide march.

The print of hunger wanders in the land.

The green tree bends above the long forgotten.

The plains of life rise up and fall in spasms.

The huts of men are fused in misery.

They come treading in the hoofmarks of the mule

passing the ancient bridge

the grave of pride

the sudden flight

the terror and the time.

They come from the distant village of the flood

passing from middle air to middle earth

in the common hours of nakedness.

Twin bars of hunger mark their metal brows

twin seasons mock them

parching drought and flood.

is the dark ones

the half sunken in the land.

is they who had no voice in the emptiness

in the unbelievable

in the shadowless.

They come treading on the mud floor of the year

mingling with dark heavy waters

and the sea sound of the eyeless flitting bat.

O long is the march of men and long is the life

and wide is the span.

is the air dust and the long distance of memory

is the hour of rain when sleepless toads are silent

is broken chimneys smokeless in the wind

is brown trash huts and jagged mounds of iron

The come in long lines toward the broad city

is the golden moon like a big coin in the sky

is the floor of bone beneath the floor of flesh

is the beak of sickness breaking on the stone

O long is the march of men, and long is the life

and wide is the span

O cold is the cruel wind blowing.

O cold is the hoe in the ground.

They come like sea birds

flapping in the wake of a boat

is the torture of sunset in purple bandages

is the powder of the fire spread like dust in the twilight

is the water melodies of white foam on wrinkled sand.

The long streets of night move up and down

baring the thighs of a woman.

and the cavern of generation.

The beating drum returns and dies away.

The bearded men fall down and go to sleep.

The cocks of dawn stand up and crow like bugles.

is they who rose early in the morning

watching the moon die in the dawn.

is they who heard the shell blow and the iron clang.

is they who had no voice in the emptiness

in the unbelievable

in the shadowless.

O long is the march of men and long is the life

and wide is the span.

(Martin Carter in Poems of Resistance,1954)

Above green cane arrow

is blue sky

Beneath green arrow

is brown earth

Dark is the shroud of slavery

over the river

over the forest

over the field.

Aie! black is the skin!

Aie! red is the heart!

as round it looks

over the world

over the forest

over the sun.

In the dark earth

in cold dark earth

time plants the seeds of anger.

This is another world

but above is the same blue sky

the same sun

Below is the same deep heart of agony.

The cane field of green, dark green

green with a life of its own.

the heart of a slave is red, deep red

red with a life of its own.

Day passes like a long whip

over the back of a slave.

Day is a burning whip

Biting the neck of a slave

(Martin Carter in Poems of Resistance, 1954)

Death must not find us thinking that we die.

Too soon, too soon

our banner draped for you.

I would prefer

the banner in the wind

Not bound so tightly

in a scarlet fold

not sodden sodden

with your people's tears

but flashing on the pole

we bear aloft

down and beyond this dark dark lane of rags

Dear Comrade

if it must be

you speak no more with me

nor smile no more with me

then let me take

a patience with a calm

for even now the greener leaf explodes

sun brightens stone

and all the river burns.

Now from the mourning vanguard moving on

dear Comrade I salute you and say

Death will not find us thinking that we die

(Martin Carter in Poems of Resistance, 1954)

This is the dark time, my love,

All round the land brown beetles crawl about

The shining sun is hidden in the sky

Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow

This is the dark time, my love,

It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.

It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery

Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious

Who comes walking in the dark night time?

Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass

It is the man of death, my love, the stranger invader

Watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.

(Martin Carter in Poems of Resistance, 1954)

You come in warships terrible with death

I know your hands are red with Korean blood

I know your finger trembles on a trigger

and yet I curse you - Stranger khaki clad

British soldier, man in khaki

careful how you walk

My dead ancestor Accabreh

is groaning in his grave

At night he wakes and watches

with fire in his eyes

Because you march upon his breast

and stamp upon his heart.

Although you come in thousands from the sea

Although you walk like locusts in the street

Although you point your gun straight at my heart

I clench my fist above head; I sing my song of freedom

(Martin Carter in Poems of Resistance, 1954)

I come from the nigger yard of yesterday

leaping from the oppressors' hate

and the scorn of myself;

from the agony of the dark hut in the shadow

and the hurt of things;

from the long days of cruelty and the long nights of pain

down to the wide streets of to-morrow, of the next day

leaping I come, who cannot see will hear.

In the nigger yard I was naked like a new born

naked like a stone or a star.

It was a cradle of blind days rocking in time

torn from the skin from the back of a slave.

It was an aching floor on which I crept

on my hands and on my knees

searching for the dust for the trace of a root

or the mark of a leaf or the shape of a flower.

It was me always walking with bare feet.

meeting strange faces like those in dreams or fever

when the whole world turns upside down

and no one knows which is the sky or the land

which heart is his among the torn or wounded

which face is his among the strange and the terrible

walking about, groaning between the wind

And there was always sad music somwhere in the land

like a bugle and a drum between the houses

voices of women singing far away

pauses of silence, then a flood of sound.

But these were things like ghosts ro spirits of wind

It was only a big world spinning outside

and men, born in agony, torn in torture, twisted and broken like a leaf

and the uncomfortable morning, the beds of hunger stained and sordid

like the world, big and cruel, spinning outside.

Sitting sometimes in the twilight near the forest

where all the light is gone and every bird

I notice a tiny star neighbouring a leaf

a little drop of light a piece of glass

straining over heaven tiny bright

like a spark seed in the destiny of gloom.

O it was the heart like this tiny star near to the sorrows

straining against the whole world and the long twilight

moving in darkness stubburn and fierce

till leaves of sunset change from green to blue

and shadows grow like giants everywhere.

So I was born again stubborn and fierce

screaming in a slum

It was a city and coffin space for home

a river running, prisons, hospitals

men drunk and dying, judges full of scorn

priests and parsons fooling gods with words

and me, like a dog tangled in rags

spotted with sores powdered with dust

screaming with hunger, angry with life and men.

It was a a child born from a mother full of her blood

weaving her features bleeding her life in clots.

It was pain lasting from hours to months and to years

weaving a pattern telling a tale leaving a mark

on the face and the brow

Until there came the iron days cast in a foundry

Where men make hammers things that cannot break

and anvils heavy hard and cold like ice.

And so again I became one of the ten thousands

one of the uncountable miseries owning the land.

When the moon rose up only the whores could dance

the brazen jazz of music throbbed and groaned

filling the night air full of rhythmic questions.

It was the husk and the seed of challenging fire

birth and the grave challenging life.

Until to-day in the middle of the tumult

when the land changes and the world's all convulsed

when different voices join to say the same

and different hearts beat out in unison

where on the aching floor of where I live

the shifting earth is twisted into shape

I take again my nigger life, my scorn

and fling it in the face of those who hate me.

It is me the nigger boy turning to manhood

linking my fingers, welding my flesh to freedom.

I come from the nigger yard of yesterday

leaping from the oppressors' hate

and the scorn of myself.

I come to the worldwith scars upon my soul

wounds on my body, fury in my hands

I turn to the histories of men and the lives of the peoples.

I examine the shower of sparks and the wealth of the dreams.

I am pleased with the glories and sad with the sorrows

rich with the riches, poor with the loss.

From the nigger yard of yesterday I come with my burden

To the world of to-morrow I turn with my strength.

(Martin Carter in Poems of Resistance, 1954)

I have not eaten for four days

My legs are paining, my blood runs slowly

It is cold to-night, the rain is silent and sudden,

And yet there is is something warm inside of me.

At my side my comrade lies in his bed watching the dark.

A cold wind presses chilly on the world.

It is the night of a Christmas day, a night in December,

We watch each other noting how time passes.

To-day my wife brought me a letter from a comrade.

I hid it in my bosom from the soldiers

They could not know my heart was reading 'Courage'!

They could not dream my skin was touching 'Struggle'!

But comrade now I can hardly write at all,

My legs are paining, my eyes are getting dark.

It is the fourth night of a hunger strike, a night in December.

I hold your letter tightly in my hand...

(Martin Carter in Poems of Resistance, 1954)

(Click on image to order)

The Guyanese poet Martin Carter was without question one of the major poets of the English language of our time. In the Caribbean, Carter has long been regarded as one of the great poets who chronicled the journey from colonialism to independence, alongside such figures as Aime Cesaire, Derek Walcott, Nicholas Guillen and Kamau Brathwaite. While his earlier poems have become classics of socialist literature, translated into many languages, and are among the foundation stones of Caribbean poetry, they have hardly been acknowledged in more general accounts of poetry in English. It was too easy for lazy critics and anthologists to dismiss him as 'merely' a political poet, one who swore, as he put it in one poem, to use his shirt as 'a banner for the revolution.'

In fact, looking at Carter's work overall it is hard to think of a contemporary poet writing in English who showed more concern for craft, who measured his utterance with greater care. His later work, while it never lost its political edge, was more oblique and cerebral than the overtly political poems of his youth. It sits comfortably alongside that of fellow South American poets Valejo, Neruda and Paz. They are his contemporaries in every sense; his work is of that originality, stature and elemental force.

This book sets out to celebrate Martin Carter's life and work and to establish a context for reading his poetry. It locates the several facets of Carter's work in the historical and cultural circumstances of his time, in Guyana, in the Caribbean. It includes essays by many leading academics and scholars of Caribbean literature and history. It is distinguished particularly by a collection of responses to Carter's work by other creative writers, both his contemporaries and a younger generation for whom Carter's work and commitment has been a powerful influence on their own thinking and practice. As well as demonstrating the profound respect in which he is held as a writer, what emerges most strongly from this group of essays and poems from his fellow writers is the extent to which he was loved and admired as a man who - despite the turmoil Guyana has experienced over the last fifty years - remained true to his fundamental belief in the dignity of humankind.

Contributors include John Agard, Edward Baugh, Kamau Brathwaite, Stewart Brown, Jan Carew, David Dabydeen, Fred D'Aguiar, Kwame Dawes, Michael Gilkes, Stanley Greaves, Wilson Harris, Roy Heath, Kendel Hippolyte, Louis James, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Eusi Kwayana, George Lamming, Ian McDonald, Mark McWatt, Mervyn Morris, Grace Nichols, Ken Ramchand, Gordon Rohlehr, Rupert Roopnaraine, Andew Salkey and many others.

Niyi Osundare writes in World Literature Today: 'All Are Involved is a difficult book to review. Its contents are so packed, so vital, the statements so well made that paraphrasing them becomes an act of egregious violence. Here is Martin Carter, that "gifted, paradoxical man" (p.45), that "friendly, dreamful, dangerous man" (p.370), analysed, extolled, lavished with the recognition which eluded him in life because of the politics of his poetry, and the poignant truth and moral force of that politics. This book demonstrates how wrong we were to have neglected Carter’s voice, how diminished. All Are Involved is a treasure so empowering, a tribute we pay through Martin Carter to all that is human in us. It is a most enduring legacy.'

Stewart Brown lectures at the Centre for West African Studies at the University of Birmingham. He has edited several anthologies of Caribbean writing and published many books and essays on aspects of West Indian culture.

(Courtesy of Peepal Tree Press)

Plantation Enmore, East Coast Demerara, British Guiana (circa 1900).

Main Street, Georgetown, British Guiana. (circa 1960-70)

Church Street, Georgetown, British Guiana. (circa 1910)

19th Century Indentured servants at depot.

19th Century Indentured servants eating at depot.

19th Century Indentured servants cutting sugar cane.

19th Century Indentured servants working in a field.

19th Century Indentured servants.

Cover of racist book dealing with Indians and Chinese immigrants.

If anyone wants to submit a photo, please send it to me at jonathanbratt@rogers.com

I was wondering if I could shape this passion

just as I wanted in solid fire.

I was wondering if the strange combustion of my days

the tension of the world inside of me

and the strength of my heart were enough.

I was wondering if I could stand as tall,

while the tide of the sea rose and fell.

If the sky would recede as I went,

or the earth would emerge as I came

to the door of the morning, locked against the sun.

I was wondering if I could make myself

nothing but fire, pure and incorruptible.

the wound of the wind on my face

would be healed by the work of my life

or the growth of the pain in my sleep

would be stopped in the strife of my days.

I am wondering if the agony of years

could be traced to the seed of an hour.

If the roots that spread out in the swamp

ran too deep for the issuing flower.

I was wondering if I could find myself

all that I am in all that I could be.

If all the population of stars

would be less than the things I could utter

And the challenge of space in my soul

be filled by the shape I become.

(Martin Carter in Poems of Shape and Motion, 1955)

Pull off yuh shirt and throw 'way yuh hat

Kick off yuh shoe and stamp down the spot

Tear off yuh dress and open yuhself

And dance like yuh mad

Far far.

Oh left foot, right foot, left - Ah boy!

Right foot, left foot, right - Ah boy!

Run up the sky

Run down the road

But run like you mad

Far far.

Jump off the ground

Pull down a star

Burn til you bleed

Far far.

Oh right foot, left foot, right - Ah boy!

Left foot, right foot, left - Ah boy!

Oh right foot, right foot

Left foot, left foot

Dance like you mad

Far far.

(Martin Carter in Poems of Shape and Motion, 1955)

I walk slowly in the wind,

watching myself in things I did not make;

in jumping shadows and in jumping cripples

dust on earth and houses tight with sickness

deep constant pain, the dream without sleep.

I walk slowly in the wind,

hearing myself in the loneliness of a child

in woman's grief, which is not understood

in coughing dogs when midnight lingers long

on stones, on streets and then on echoing stars,

that burn all night and suddenly go out.

I walk slowly in the wind

knowing myself in every moving thing

in years and days and words that mean so much

strong hands that shake, long roads that walk

and deeds that do themselves.

And all this world and all these lives to live.

I walk slowly in the wind,

remembering scorn and naked men in darkness

and huts of iron rivetted to earth.

Cold huts of iron stand upon this earth

like rusting prisons

Each is well marked and each wide roof is spread

like some dark wing

casting a shadow or living a curse.

I walk slowly in the wind

to lifted sunset red and gold and dim

a long brown river slanting to an ocean

a fishing boat, a man who cannot drown.

I walk slowly in the wind

and birds are swift, the sky is blue like silk.

From the big sweeping ocean of water

an iron ship rusted and brown achors itself.

And the long river runs like a snake

silent and smooth.

I walk slowly in the wind.

I hear my footsteps echoing down the tide

echoing like a wave on the sand or a wing on the wind

echoing echoing

a voice in the soul, a laugh in the funny silence.

I walk slowly in the wind

I walk because I cannot crawl or fly.

(Martin Carter in Poems of Shape and Motion, 1955)

(Click on image to order)

This dual language selection of Martin Carter's poems, edited by David Dabydeen, translated into Spanish by Salvador Ortiz-Carbonares and with an introduction by Gemma Robinson, will establish very clearly that Carter is a major South American poet, in the company of Valejo, Neruda and Paz.

As Ian McDonald writes: 'What we have is enough to prove, if proof has been needed... that Martin Carter is, without reservation, one of the finest poets to have emerged in the Caribbean region. And the varied subtlety and strength of his poetry carries him without any doubt into the first rank of world poets. Long after the politics which prompted a number of his poems have been forgotten, and long after the society which he often so scathingly indicted has been changed utterly the poetry will continue to strike a chord among new generations.'

The late Martin Carter was without doubt one of the Caribbean's major poets, only less well known than Walcott and Brathwaite because he rarely left his native Guyana. He came to notice first for his Poems of Resistance (1954) written out of his experiences of the anti-colonial struggle which included his imprisonment by the British for his political activities. His work has been a major influence on the current generation of Caribbean poets as John Agard, David Dabydeen, Fred D'Aguiar, Kwame Dawes, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Grace Nichols among others have elsewhere testified.

(Courtesy of Peepal Tree Press)

by Al Craighton

Among the many things the poets W.B.Yeats and Martin Carter have in common is the role they played in the shaping of nationhood in their respective countries. Each holds a very high place in the hierarchy of the literary genius produced by his country, but in both cases, their role goes beyond the production of the great corpus of national literature. It includes the formation of a literary consciousness and involvement in the corresponding current of revolutionary politics. Yeats' Ireland and Carter's British Guiana fifty years later, waged wars of independence against the same colonizing power. The similarities between them come to life in this comment on the life of Yeats by critic and editor, George MacBeth.

"His greatest successes seem to me to have been achieved in writing about his friends and the causes for which they spoke, fought and died. Irish history and Irish politics came alive to Yeats through the doings of people he knew and loved. His best work is a commentary on the history of a whole country at the establishment of its freedom, a period of agonizing crisis seen through the eyes of a particularly sensitive and involved member of it. Ireland was still small enough in the early twentieth century for one man to feel its problems personally and mould great poetry out of them."

Substitute Guyana for Ireland and that could well be a comment on Carter. Yeats became an Irish Senator after a period of tangential involvement in the political rebellion. His poem Easter 1916 is about the Easter Rising for which some of his friends were executed. Like others of his friends and associates in the PPP, Carter was imprisoned in a detention camp at Atkinson Field in 1953. Like Yeats, he became a minister of government, a 'technocrat,' under the PNC after independence. Yet he was to take to the streets again in protest against that same government a decade or so later. Yeats claimed he properly learned to be a poet during those years close to the revolution in Dublin when he came to appreciate poetry as a public art. Similarly. Carter grew up as a poet against a political background that no doubt helped to bring him to maturity as a writer, but he emerged as "a particularly sensitive" universal humanist who could feel his country's problems "and mould great poetry out of them."

The June, 2000 issue of Kyk-Over-Al (Number 49/50) is a testament of this aspect of the life and work of Martin Wylde Carter (1927-1997), to date, Guyana's greatest poet. The journal documents his career in 411 pages. The editors, Ian McDonald and Vanda Radzik silently celebrated Kyk's 50th volume, launched on December 19, 2000 on the virtual anniversary of Carter's burial (on December 18, 1997). The memorable celebration of the poet was more loudly proclaimed, and for this they drew on a large number of contributors who knew him personally, are fellow writers, or mere critics and students of his work. The result is a virtual biography of the poet.

One of the vital factors that emerges from the volume is the contribution Carter made in a very informal way to literary consciousness in pre-independence Guyana. Eusi Kwayana, Jan Carew, David de Caires, Roy Heath and Wilson Harris among others, recall the almost ritual sessions of literary readings and discussions in which Carter was central. They continued even up to the seventies, contributing to Guyanese nationhood no less than the political activism recorded by other contributors such as Janet Jagan and Rupert Roopnaraine.

Kyk 49/50 is thus sub-titled 'The Martin Carter Tribute,' following Number 48, which is a Language Issue dedicated to linguist and lexicographer, Richard Allsopp. But it is more than the biography of one described by Kwayana as "a friendly, dreamful, dangerous man." It includes critical essays by leading scholars, reviews, poems dedicated to Carter as well as a selection of his own prose and poetry.

There are two significant observations about the poetry. Carter's celebrated piece, Proem is reprinted as a kind of preface to the volume. It is a fitting statement about the poet, his poem and its audience, which is an overture to the book Poems of Succession and Selected Poems (1989). But it was removed from that strategic position in the Red Thread reprint of Selected Poems (1997) and is now restored in this document. Secondly, and of greater importance, is the recent discovery, after his death, of previously unknown, unpublished Carter poems, which now appear in Kyk 49/50. Of these, the most noteworthy is an untitled love poem, which seems far more complete and polished than the other four. "Wanting to write another poem for you," the poet "searched the world for something beautiful." What he finds is crafted with the usual neatness of Carter's metaphysical verse.

Outside my window, law unto itself

This tall green crown confirms an oath I swore

With mighty roots invisible in earth

And amongst seeds that war with God and die.

Of importance too, is the publication of two original handwritten manuscripts. The first is the poem now known as Death of a Comrade, which was first scribbled on a page and sent to Janet Jagan under its original title For a Dead Comrade. It was written as a tribute to late Barbadian trade unionist, Ivan Edwards. The second, Poem of Prison, was also handwritten and sent to A J Seymour for possible publication. The prose selections are mixed, (some early pieces which are not earth-shaking and others of greater import), and are of historical importance, following Nigel Westmaas' much more substantial collection in The Martin Carter Prose sampler in Kyk 44.

Collections of poetic tribute to a great personality are normally valued more for the tribute than for the poetry. Such is the case with the volume dedicated to the memory of Cheddi Jagan and edited by David Dabydeen, which mixes genuine poetry with contributions of no poetic pretensions, published in good faith to record the writers' valuable sentiments. It is of note, therefore, that Kyk 49/50 prints poetic tributes to Carter including two which are particularly serious verses of merit. The Last Walk by Stanley Greaves is no surprise from a long established poet whose first collection is expected soon out of Peepal Tree. But Freedom, a well crafted poem, startles, coming from Ameena Gafoor, previously known as a critic.

Also of interest is that this edition of Kyk-Over-Al may be seen as a companion volume to Stewart Brown's All are Involved: The art of Martin Carter, released by Peepal Tree at the 'West Indian Literature Conference, Textualities/ Sexualities,' hosted by the University of Guyana in March, 2000. Brown edits the most important collection of Carter criticism, drawing on a wider field of writers, but for the most part, sharing the same list of contributors with Kyk. Brown himself, as well as Clem Seecharran in the UK, has a critical essay in the journal, whose tributes are not mere sentiment, but include sound, scholarly papers. Nevertheless, the journal, even while honouring the poet, does not abandon some of its routine features. It still keeps abreast of the latest books through reviews of Pauline Melville by Denise de Caires, and of the newly emerged Onya Kampadoo by Joyce Jonas, while the paintings of another Guyanese great, Aubrey Williams, is noticed by Elfrieda Bissember.

It is Wilson Harris who mentions Carter's admiration for Yeats. He recalls Carter quoting a line from the Irish poet, "What if the mob at the door is the state." It is no wonder such a line appealed to Carter, who expressed many similar sharp observations that shock and disturb. If the editors of Kyk-Over-Al 49/50 had asked Yeats to submit a poetic tribute to Carter, his most likely selection might have been A Coat, written in 1914, to express his moving from "old mythologies" to poems wrought out of the problems of his newly emerging nation. For Carter whose shirt became a banner for the revolution, whose lips and fingers became the ragged edges of a cloud and the trembling leaves of the canna lily, and who recognized "the man who walked sideways," Yeats is a kindred spirit. It is this, above all, that is documented in Kyk-Over-Al.

A Coat I made my song a coat

Covered with embroideries

Out of old mythologies

From heel to throat;

But the fools caught it,

Wore it in the world's eyes

As though they'd wrought it.

Song, let them take it,

For there's more enterprise

In walking naked.

W.B. Yeats

(Editor’s Note: This review appeared in the Stabroek News, in December 2001. The biography itself is in the literary magazine in Guyana, Kyk-Over-Al, 49/50, edited by Dr. Ian McDonald and Vanda Radzik, June, 2000.)

They say I am a poet write for them:

Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I solemnly nod.

I do not want to look at them in the eye

lest they should squeal and scamper away.

A poet cannot write for those who ask

hardly himself even, except he lies;

Poems are written either for the dying

or for the unborn, no matter what they say.

That does not mean his audience lies remote

inside a womb or some cold bed of agony.

It means that we who want true poems

must all be born again and die to do so.

(Martin Carter in Converstations, 1961)

Groaning in this wilderness of silence

where voices hardly human shout at me

I imitate the most obscure of insects

and burrow in the soil, adn hide from light

Speaking with one on a pavement to the city

I watched the greedy mouth, the cunning eye

I reeled and nearly fell in frantic terror

seeing a human turn into a dog.

Recovering, I studied this illusion

and made a stupid effort to be strong

I nodded and agreed and listened close

But when I tried to utter words - I barked!

(Martin Carter in Conversations, 1961)

The wild men in prisons, they who rot like rust!

The loud men who cry freedom and are so full of lies!

The drunk men who go dancing like shadows down in the street!

These all surround me, shouting God to help!

I really do not see how God can help them.

For each one wants the same thing - who can share

With prisoners, politicians and drunk men

What only souls that blaze and burn can win?

(Martin Carter in Covnversations, 1961)

In a great silence I hear approaching rain:

There is a sound of conflict in the sky.

The frightened lizard darts behind a stone.

First was the wind, now is the wind assault.

I wish this world would sink and drown again

So that we build another Noah's arc

And send anotehr little dove to find

what we have lost in floods of misery.

(Martin Carter in Conversations, 1961)