In a Boston Night shortlisted for Guyana Prize

In a Boston Night was recently shortlisted for the 2010 Guyana Prize for Literature. Please see shortlist and note in earlier post.

Guyana Prize for Literature - 2010 Shortlist

This list is not the complete list as presented by the Guyana Prize Committee. The Caribbean shortlist of the prize is available on other websites. A comment on this prize will follow.


SHORTLIST for THE GUYANA PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2010

Poetry
Berkeley W. Semple, The Central Station
Brian Chan, The Gift of Screws
Maggie Harris, After a Visit to a Botanical Garden
Mark Mc Watt, A Journey to Le Repentir
Sasenarine Persaud, In a Boston Night
Stanley Greaves, The Poems Man

Fiction
David Dabydeen, Molly and the Muslim Stick
Janice Lowe Shinebourne, Chinese Women
Karen King-Aribisala, The Hangman’ s Game

Drama
Grace Nichols, Blood and Wedding: A Guyana/Caribbean Version of Lorca’s Tragedy
Harold Bascom, Blank Document
Janice Imhoff, The Changing Hand




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The Guyana Prize for Literature
C/o School of Education & Humanities
University of Guyana
Turkeyen Campus
Greater Georgetown, Guyana
Tel.: 592-222-3470
Fax: 222-3583, e-mail:guyanapri@yahoo.com

Lantana Strangling Ixora

This collection is as much about love and people in and out of relationships as it is about origins and the process of estrangement. The lantana is a flower of South American origin, and the ixora of Asian origin. The lantana, a creeper that grows profusely, often engulfing other plants, provides a ready metaphor for the consciousness of the Americas overcoming that of India in the Americas—the mainstreaming and divesting of yoga from its Hindu origins being the most visible manifestation. This collection ranges widely in its geographical and historical concerns, from Canada to Guyana to India and places in between, exploring the contradictions in our lives: familial influences, terrorism, literature, politics, race, and the power of language and representation. As always in Persaud’s work, love is ever present. This is a collection that displays mastery over nuances of language, and is at once quirky and humorous as it continues an engagement with the theme of “place as muse.”

POETRY ISBN 978-1-894770-72-9,
$17.95 pb, 5.75” x 8.75”, 112 pages
September 2011

Also by Sasenarine Persaud:
In a Boston Night (poetry), ISBN 978-1-894770-49-1, $16.95
Canada Geese and Apple Chatney (fiction), ISBN 978-0-920661-72-7, $15.95

Praise for Sasenarine Persaud’s poetry:

Persaud's poems . . . are like miniature raags, sensuous units of Indian music obeying conventions mysterious to western ears. —The Globe and Mail

CBC.ca | The Next Chapter | Interview

CBC.ca | The Next Chapter | Who and What - March 28th

Interview with Shelagh Rogers on In a Boston Night

Derek Walcott's White Egrets

Finally, completed Walcott’s, White Egrets. Last year it was difficult to get past the first few poems where the egrets were overburdened as metaphors. I couldn’t get past these poems last year and almost didn’t this time. The persona is often in Italy, visiting Leopardi’s home; in love and out; in Spain; in Amsterdam; in his studio painting; in the warmth of a familiar island; in a nursing home meeting a love of a more youthful time he felt would never grow old, both now in wheelchairs facing each other and the ravages of old age on their bodies; in New York overlooking the Hudson, "No words/for the Artic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange/ of old snow moulting from roofs. No poems. No birds"--beautful lines; And there are, of course, the egrets, overburdened as metaphors, and "the bleached regrets/ of an old man's memoirs..." There is a cluster of fine poems (21, 22, 23, and 24 and 39). There appears to be some “influence” from Leopardi in 30 and from Tagore in 38. One love poem to Roberta (who crops up in quite a few poems) in his Italian poems was lovely, but on the whole this was a very disappointing collection. There was a preponderance of literary/writing metaphors and figures of speech that would be fine read as individual poems in journals etc., but together in a collection, too many, too much—as though he had run out of lived/life experiences for metaphors. There were also many lines that could have been edited (but how does one edit Walcott!), lines which an earlier Walcott would not have published: “the boring suffering of love that tires” or “…which death will be taking/from my hand on this chequered tablecloth in this good place.” It was difficult to believe that Walcott would write such lines, especially this last line, at this stage of his life.

It was good to see that he did not include the mongoose poem on Naipaul, which he read in Jamaica in 2008—it was a terrible piece that bordered on racism. And yet he could not resist a poem on Naipaul, “Here’s what that bastard calls ‘the emptiness’” he begins another very poor piece on Naipaul and another very bad lapse. For those who think that Walcott is never bitter, biting, and vicious, this piece on Naipaul and his 2008 mongoose piece show otherwise. It is unfortunate that he and Naipaul should still nurse this bitterness—but poets and writers thrive on this, and, perhaps, I am no different. My forthcoming collection, Lantana Strangling Ixora has three poems which examines this feud, examines “Nightfall on Walcock” and the racial/political conundrum of the Caribbean that has spawned this. While an editorial in the Stabroek News (Georgetown, Guyana) did call his 2008 “poem” on Naipaul, “uncharacteristically bad” I have yet to find an Afro-Caribbean critic, writer or academic who has taken Walcott to task for his continuing attacks on Naipaul. In another poem he writes, in an apparent reference to Naipaul, of departed friends he cherishes more than "the most overprized fiction." This adjusted may well be an apt description for much of the poetry in White Egrets. There is, also, overprized poetry.

Ultimately, a good poet stimulates another—granted, poor poetry does, too—and Walcott in this collection did this to me. But, perhaps, the few fine poems (such as 21, 22, 23, 24 and 39) balances all else in any collection.

Canadian Literature Review of In a Boston Night

Emily Wall reviews In a Boston Night in the currrent issue of Canadian Literature, Autumn 2010. "Persaud's poems are delicious on the tongue...he's one of those rare poets who gets the recipe of humanness exactly right" http://canlit.ca/reviews.php?t=tasting_this_place

Canti - Poems by Giacomo Leopardi

Canti - poems by Giacomo Leopardi translated by Jonathan Galassi