Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 18, 2009 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature
by Petamber Persaud
Wherever he went or lived, Seymour found himself in a literary environment. During a 30-day sea trip on the ‘Marine Marlin’, he formed a cultural group and started a magazine! He was never at sea when it comes to literature.
The life and work of A. J. Seymour is best summed up by Ian McDonald who noted that Seymour’s ‘life at one very important level is a record of 50 years of dedicated work in literature. He began in an era when everything was still to be done…his overall contribution to the cultural tradition of Guyana and the Caribbean is truly astonishing.
This amazing man’s work contains poems, historical publications, reviews, broadcasts, essays, addresses, entries in anthologies, forewords, lectures, talks, pamphlets, memoirs, sermons, eulogies, magazine work, and books in such profusion that one would be excused for thinking this was the record of a school, not one man alone.
Seymour’s prodigious poetry output included more than 500 poems, some captured in almost thirty collections from the first volume, ‘Verse’, in 1937 to ‘70th Birthday Poems’, in 1984.
Other forms of his writing included his invaluable scholarship on Guyanese and Caribbean literature; some of those titles are, ‘Introduction to Guyanese Writing’, and ‘The Making of Guyanese Literature’, ‘ A Survey of West Indian Literature’ and ‘Studies in West Indian Poetry’.
In addition to his writing, he edited numerous anthologies of poetry. But the true mark of his editorship came by way of ‘Kyk-over-al’, a local journal which also encompassed the literature of the Caribbean, and the ‘Kaie’ journal which captured the literature and culture of Guyana, extending to the Caribbean with the journal’s coverage of Carifesta events.
All in all, his poetry, scholarship, autobiographies and other genres of writing effectively mapped the course of his life and the history of the development of a Guyanese literature.
Poet, literary critic, radio programmer/broadcaster, anthologist, ‘nativist publisher’ and cultural historian, A. J. Seymour was born on January 12, 1914, grew up in Georgetown, but spent many delightful August school holidays in New Amsterdam, in the neighbourhood of N. E. Cameron, Jan Carew, Wilson Harris, the Abbensetts and Edgar Mittelholzer.
Arthur James Seymour died on December 25, 1989, hoping (through his autobiographies) that some academic at the university will continue his scholarship in Guyanese literature.
Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: [email protected]
What’s happening:
• Book your copy of The Guyana Annual from Guyenterprise Ltd, or from the Editor; sample the writing of a new brigade of writers, sample features on Carifesta X, Edutainment, 100 years of rice in Guyana, and fillers on home economics, household tips, Guyanese proverbs and much, much more and a special tribute on Edgar Mittelholzer as we commemorate the writer’s 100th birth anniversary with exciting new photographs, and handwritten tributes from the 1960s.
• Look out for the next stage of the ‘Journey’, an evening of literature, at Castellani House.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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