This is an attitude probably left over from a self-censored colonial upbringing, where acquired knowledge had to be certified by “uneducated” individuals eagerly seeking to exhibit and apply their learned assumptions which are usually accepted as unquestionably simply because some form of certified study has produced it. But in the literary world such assumptions are disproved daily.

In the literary world, a certain amount of freedom is permitted based on personal insight. This is why I consider myself a cultural journalist, not a `critic’. There is a difference. The critic will often use some already established artist, or work of art, to judge new art by. The cultural journalist, on the other hand, searches for the uniqueness of the work of art under immediate consideration.

Apparently, just to emerge, as if from nowhere, as a writer of poetry or prose, or as a painter, seems to give birth to suspicion locally. Who are you? How dare you `pretend’ to write something `great’ such as poetry! Clearly, this is a childish, embarrassing and haughty attitude formed within those taught to be always in awe of literary history, whether local or foreign.

The critic therefore, can afford to wear blinders if he or she already has a chosen portfolio of assumptions, usually certified by some form of Diploma which permits easy social and public acceptance. But creative literature, and painting also, are not created like houses, buildings or bridges, which will collapse if strict basic structural rules are not applied. No, in this creative field of writing and painting, no pre-ordained, pre-scribed or predestined approach or viewpoint exists. On the contrary, approaches and viewpoints are invented by the truly creative artist, and the truly perceptive critic will recognise it for the first time. The cultural journalist usually responds to what he or she sees or hears using fresh intuition, rather than relying heavily on borrowed aesthetic criteria to give authority to his or her response.

Many outstanding poems, novels, paintings, etc., are created from this same intuitive source. A self-taught creation such as Peter Kempadoo’s novel `Guiana Boy’ is both aesthetic and valuable because it comes clean out of life, and not rules of art shaping and governing life. Yet, Kempadoo knows there is an aesthetic tradition to which he belongs, which is verified by the novels of Steinbeck, Faulkner and Hemmingway; writers who changed the tradition of writing in English forever by presenting refreshing new topics in a new form of Anglo-American language. Kempadoo’s novels, in fact come closer to the frank vitality found in the rustic American stories and novels of vivid writers like Erskine Caldwell and Hamlin Garland.

It is such a similar approach to new topics, written in new formats, and with less `artificial’ language that the new Guyanese literature is experiencing at present. As a cultural journalist, I have no interest whatsoever in an artist’s background, or whether he or she went to school, is a student, a professor, a taxi-driver, a prostitute, a pimp, a civil servant, a delinquent, etc. Only their work of poetry, prose, painting, etc., before me matters.

An enormous amount of brilliant works of art have come from nascent intuitive people in Europe, North America, and Latin America. But hardly any from the Caribbean and Guyana. Is it that such people do not exist here? I leave the reader to answer that. Recently in France, one of the most original, well-written first-novels, by a street vendor, Jean Rouad, became a well-deserved bestseller. Recently in Canada, Evelyn Lau, a young, wayward Chinese-Canadian girl, saw her autobiographical novel `Runaway: The Diary of a Street Kid’, become a bestseller and turned into a movie. Countless other examples of such works are published yearly in these parts of the world.

Similar signs of literary freedom and freshness are beginning to appear in contemporary Guyanese literature. Perhaps because I also write poetry, I was able to quickly notice certain new topics, new formal arrangements of language occurring in recent Guyanese literature.

What is the precise difference between this literature emerging, and that of the already established Guyanese writers, such as Wilson Harris, A. J. Seymour, Martin Carter, Ian McDonald, Mark McWatt, the Dabydeen brothers, etc.? It is clear that the new Guyanese poets and fiction writers are not writing about the Guyanese landscape, city-scape, people and society, in the usual over-refined, aesthetic manner as before. Among the new poets, especially, there are less historical memories and definitions about the landscape, city-scape and society being expressed, and more intuitive observations being directly communicated.

Unlike many of our already familiar writers and poets who tend to `deify’ the interior (as though our rivers, jungles, mountains, indigenous cultures, are the ultimate reality of Guyana, giving birth to a sort of exotic even escapist, ideal picture-postcard retreat used to inspire one’s linguistic genius) these new writers, such as Sherod Duncan, Kojo McPherson, Ruel Johnson, Alicia Daniels, Shireen Ganga, Danielle Swain, Camille Bobb-Semple, Haslyn Parris, Mohammed Yassin, Harry Narain, Petamber Persaud, Ivan Forrester and Patrick Sumner, have tended to immerse themselves in their environments in a Pantheistic manner.

New topics never written about before, from previously ignored physical and mental viewpoints, are being written about today. Often past, present and future tenses exist within the same poem, giving birth to a sense of practical and fresh wholeness that is not self-indulgent. This surprised me. I had been pursuing similar goals in obscurity for quite some time. These new Guyanese poems describe both outer and inner reality as one topic; visual data, sounds, emotions, and imaginative perceptions come together without confusion within these new poems. The landscape is described mainly because it affects the writer’s personality. Every word is there for a reason; there is no description for description sake, so there is no question about these being incomplete or unaccomplished works of art.

Descriptions function as personal effects in sensual and surprising language which awakens the mind of the reader. As a person who has seen an enormous number of films, I quickly noticed how mobile these poems are. Their written language is suggestive of the combination of sight, sound, and image found in cinematic language. We should realise that today’s emerging generation of Guyanese writers accept audio-visual reality as a normal, inclusive influence, much more than previous generations of Guyanese writers who were confirmed through rigid schooling to ancient literary theories alone.

In addition, I have noticed the frequency of borrowing of recent anthologies of contemporary verse, such as `The Best American Poetry’ series, from the Public Library; so clearly a new generation of Guyanese readers, and perhaps writers, are well informed about new innovative poetry being written today.

This new Guyanese literature must continue to be printed as quickly as possible, in newspapers, magazines and books, before its originality and vitality evaporate in idleness, or become reduced to a mere literal oral recitation where the reader’s ability to see and appreciate the printed poem, to contemplate and learn from it at leisure at any time would be lost.

The emerging Guyanese literature therefore offers fresh hope for our society to become aware of itself in a variety of positive and thoughtful ways, simply because its topic and language describe and pin down numerous tangible realities in the here and now, rather than offer obscure and vague metaphysical generalisations about the purpose of Art.