The Guyana Prize for Literature
A jury of acclaimed writers and critics
Arts on Sunday
by Al Creighton
Stabroek News
December 29, 2002
The jury for the Guyana Prize for Literature 2002 has recently released the shortlist of books for this year's awards. As has been the trend in the previous years, the Prize Management Council has assembled a panel of very distinguished critics and writers, who met in Georgetown after having read the entries in Fiction, Poetry and Drama. The members are Dr Denise de Caires-Narain (Chair-woman), Prof Edward Baugh, Dr John Barnie and Dr Adeola James. Prominent West Indian author, George Lamming of Barbados, who was the fifth juror, had to withdraw shortly before the meetings due to extenuating circumstances.
It is the aim of the Prize to draw on the reservoir of the world's literary expertise for the adjudication of entries. Jurors are deliberately selected from different countries with the main criteria being their qualifications and experience in fiction, poetry, drama and criticism. How-ever, attention is also paid to their familiarity with West Indian and Guyanese literature. The end result is a panel that represents an international audience and a unit that brings together acclaimed writers and critics who are well known and highly rated.
Dr de Caires-Narain chaired the proceedings over three days of deliberations. The Guyanese-born academic, author and critic, is a Senior Lecturer in English in the School of African and Asian Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK. She is also Sub-Dean of Student Affairs at the same institution.
While Dr deCaires-Narain has researched and lectured in a range of literatures, she has focused especially on women's literature, and her publications include several articles on West Indian women's writing. She is an external examiner for the University of Guyana.
Her major work so far is a book on Contemporary Caribbean women's poetry: Making Style, published by Routledge in London in 2001. She has also completed a monograph on Olive Senior, the celebrated Jamaican poet and fiction writer, who was a Guyana Prize judge in 2000. Dr de Caires-Narain has also been a Leverhume Research Scholar; a Fellowship from that organization allowed her to work on another book on contemporary post-colonial women's writing. She has also lectured at UWI, Cave Hill Campus, and the Open University in England.
Dr John Barnie is a Welsh poet, musician, critic and editor. He grew up in Abergavenny close to the Black Mountains in Wales. He is editor of the Welsh journal, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, and has published 14 collections of poetry, of which the latest is Ice (2001), a novel in verse. His other publications include The King of Ashes (essays, 1989), and a book written in the Welsh language, Y Felan a Finnau, a personal history of the blues (1992).
Dr Barnie also plays the slide guitar and performs with the bi-lingual band, Y Bechgyn Drwg (The Bad Boys), which goes on tours in and outside of the United Kingdom. He won the Welsh Arts Council Prize for Literature in 1990 and was previously a lecturer in the English Department at Copenhagen University in Denmark.
Prof Edward Baugh, a Jamaican, is the Public Orator at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, a position with the status of an Officer of the University. He has served as Head of the English Department at Mona on different occasions and has been Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
Prof Baugh is among the Caribbean region's most accomplished poets and has published two volumes, A Tale from the Rainforest (Sandberry, 1987) and It Was the Singing (Sandberry, 2000). Canoe Press also published a collection of his orations delivered at UWI Convocations, titled Chancellor, I Present, in 1998. He has been an actor and co-edited, with Mervyn Morris, an issue of Carib devoted to Caribbean drama in 1986.
However, Prof Baugh's publications have included several academic papers and books such as the ground-breaking Critics on Caribbean Literature and Derek Walcott - Another Life: Memory as Vision. These have contributed to his reputation as one of the foremost authorities on Caribbean literature. He was also coordinator for the Caribbean Region for the weighty Routledge Encyclopaedia of Post-Colonial Literatures.
Widely respected as a literary critic, Prof Baugh has been a judge for the Commonwealth Literary Prize and was a member of the panel for the inaugural Guyana Prize in 1987, subsequently returning to serve as Chairman in 1994.
Dr Adeola Abike James, a Yoruba, was born in Nigeria and has adopted Guyana through marriage to a Guyanese Professor of Law. She studied in Britain and has lectured at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria's most established academic institution and at the University of Papua New Guinea.
Dr James is now Head of the English Department at the University of Guyana, taking that chair for the second time since she joined the staff at Turkeyen. She is an authority on women's literature and African literature as well as oral traditions and folklore. Dr James completed a study of the oral tradition in Guyana and her publications include articles in the prestigious African Literature Today as well as a book on West Indian and African women Writers, In Their Own Voices.
She is a member of the University of Guyana Council, and the Academic Board, and has served successive terms as Vice Chairman of the University of Guyana Workers Union (UGWU). This is the second occasion on which Dr James has been a judge for the Guyana Prize, having been a member of the 1996 Jury.
This distinguished panel has now completed the major part of its work. But it is not yet over. The Chairwoman, Denise de Caires, will return to read the Judges' Report and announce the winners on the night of the awards ceremony when His Excellency the President of Guyana will present the prizes. The Judges' Report is usually the major presentation on that occasion and is also an important literary piece highlighting Guyanese literature in particular and literature in general.
The Guyana Prize is managed by an independent Management Council with its Secretariat on the University of Guyana Turkeyen Campus. It comprises Dr James Rose, Vice-Chancellor and Chairman; Al Creighton, Secretary and Administrator of the Prize; Mr Alim Hosein, Lecturer, English Dept, UG; Mrs Yvonne Lancaster, University Librarian; Prof Joycelynne Loncke, Lecturer in French and Coordinator, Music Programme, UG; Dr Ian McDonald, Head, Caribbean Sugar Association; Ms Karen Sills, Chief Librarian, National Library.
