By Petamber Persaud
(The Commonwealth Writers recently announced the Overall and Regional winners for its 2019 short story competition. The Regional winners are Mbozi Haimbe (Zambia), Saras Manickam (Malaysia), Constantia Soteriou (Cyprus), Alexia Tolas (The Bahamas), Harley Hern (New Zealand), and the Overall winner is Constantia Soteriou.
Guyanese Kevin Garbaran was shortlisted from 5,081 entries. This is the first time he has entered such a competition.
Here he talks about his short Story, ‘The Ol’ Higue on Market Street’.)
PP Guyanese writers have benefited and continue to made good use of the platform provided by the Commonwealth Foundation. Going back a long way, we find Grace Nichols winning the Commonwealth [Poetry] Prize with ‘I is a long-memoried woman’, David Dabydeen with ‘Slave Song’; for short fiction and the novel, we turn to Mark McWatt, Karen King-Aribisala, and Pauline Melville; for writers who have been shortlisted for the short story include Maggie Harris and you, Kevin – and at this point I must say congratulations…
KG Thank you.
PP Awesome news that – you been shortlisted from a huge number of entries….
KG 5,081
PP Dennis Nichols won the short story competition in 2000/2001 with ‘The Release’ – a well-crafted story of under 600 words, I think. You are fortunate that you had 5,000 words to play with.
But let’s get back to the shortlist – an entry that has been shortlisted has the potential to be the winner. So you are a winner in my book.
Let’s locate Kevin Garbaran.
KG I was born in Haslington, [East Coast Demerara] and grew up in Zorg on the Essequibo Coast…
PP Quite a few writers from the Essequibo…
KG My primary school days were at Suddie Primary. After that I went to President College because I always wanted to experience life in the dormitory – I was really inspired by Harry Potter – where children from all over the world would come and interact. So my thinking was by going to President’s College I would meet people from all over Guyana and it would be exciting. However, President’s College was not like Hogwarts …
PP But it did have magic there.
KG Yes, it was a magical experience. I spent many days in the library there and it was there I took a liking to literature.
Before that I read a few stories and lots of nonfiction on subjects like dinosaurs, stars and the universe – things like that. But literature for me really started there at President’s College.
PP And the types of books?
KG Mostly, mythological stuff – stories from ancient India, ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, those stories really got me started.
Then I discovered Arundhati Roy, Emiley Bronte…moving on from there.
PP And you moved into writing. Where did this start?
KG I started journaling when I was 9 or 10 and I continued that throughout my school days because it was a way of making sense of the world, making sense of my experiences and I wanted to record that.
Apart from that, when I was much younger, I used to make up characters for my many cousins, and I would give each a character and we would put on a show for our parents and also the neighbours we had invited. So that is where it started.
PP Keeping a journal is valuable to a writer, valuable material for your writing. I recall writers like A J Seymour and others keeping a diary including Edgar Mittelholzer who use to record things like the weather, in fact, his writing is heavily influenced by the weather [among other things].
KG Yes, I can go back to how I viewed situations in the past; sort of observe the headspace I had at a given time.
I like writing about childhood – childhood experiences. I may not remember everything but during the writing, I would slip back into that time.
PP You mentioned something about getting into the writer’s head and I like doing that – finding out how a writer approach a particular subject/issue as we know there is nothing new under the sun…
KG True
PP So we look for new approaches, new angles and this brings me to your short story which was shortlisted, ‘The Ol’ Higue on Market Street’. I’ve read numerous stories even poems about the Ol’ Higue, what is your take on Ol’ Higue?
KG I wanted to use the Ol’ Higue as a metaphor for such issues that are prevalent in our society …
PP Like?
KG Domestic violence and abuse – when you think about the Ol’ Higue, you conjure images of horror and violence. The story was also triggered by an incident where this woman named Radika was beaten to death because people claimed she was an Ol’ Higue. So in my story I sort of sympatise with her….
PP Interesting, intriguing, tell me more… (to be continued)
Responses to this author please telephone 226-0065 of email: [email protected]
What’s happening:
Coming soon: A new book by Ameena Gafoor: ‘The Evolution of Writing in English By and About East Indians of Guyana, 1838 – 2018’. And it is here: ‘The Dark of the Sea’ by Imam Baksh, two times winner of the Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature.
