Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
Martin Carter - CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
UNIVERSITY OF Hunger pulls together the poetry and prose of Guyana's Martin Carter, a giant in Caribbean literature, nearly 10 years after his death in 1997.
The five decades of published verse, from the 1951 To A Dead Slave through to the posthumous Suite of Five Poems, in addition to a double handful of uncollected poems, "bring together all of Carter's published poetry", as a note to the text states. However, it is further noted that the 169 poems are not all that he wrote.
What we do have is more than enough to give us the wonderfully crafted thoughts and views of a man moving with his nation and region through the struggle against colonialism into nationhood. He also looks at the challenges of a Third World nation susceptible to the unfriendly tides of international affairs. Along with this is Carter's personal journey from prisoner of the British colonials to Minister of Government, then disillusionment and resignation, throughout all phases and changing times remaining a poet.
CONGENIAL AND GENTLE
The face of an older, smiling man which looks out from the page across from the title, as well as a younger figure in rounder but still heavy-framed glasses on the back cover, is congenial and gentle. His imprisonment in 1953 and again in 1954 for 'spreading dissension' and taking part in an illegal procession, respectively, show that he put action to his words.
And those words show that there was fire behind that congenial face.
"I only want/to heat these pages with my own heart's fire," Carter writes in 'To a Dead Slave'. In 'Tomorrow and the World' Carter captures the cauldron of changing times with "smoke rises from the furnace of life/red red red the flame".
In his older years, Carter is passing on advice For the Students of St. Rose that "life is not a uniform" (1974) and asks in For My Son "who will awaken/ One little flower/Sleeping and growing/Hour and hour".
He is in Guyana but his outlook goes further than that country or the Caribbean:
"No matter where I turn/the fierce revolt goes with me/like a kiss/the revolt of Malaya/and Vietnam/the revolt of India/and Africa".
He could have been summing up his own 70-year life in the title poem, with "O long is the march of men and long is the life/And wide is the span" but there are no doubts about how Carter saw his craft, as he writes in I Am No Soldier:
"I am no soldier, with a cold gun to my shoulder
no hunter of man, no human dog of death.
I am my poem, I come to you in particular gladness
In this hopeful dawn of earth I rise with you dear friend....
I am no soldier hunting in a jungle
I am this poem like a sacrifice".
University of Hunger is published by Bloodaxe Books and edited by Gemma Robinson.
