By Petamber Persaud
(Extract of an interview with Dr. Ian McDonald, Georgetown, Guyana, March 2019.
McDonald has published eight collections of poetry, one award-winning novel, one award-winning play, three non-fiction works, and has written over 1,500 articles. He has won the Guyana Prize for Literature on three occasions, all in the poetry category.
Here, he talks about his latest poetry book, ‘New and Collected Poems’ which runs into 447 pages. His most recent publication is ‘An Abounding Joy: Essays on Sport’ is 558 pages long.)
PP: From ‘Selected Poems’, 1988, to ‘New and Collected Poems’, 2018, a lot has happened in your life, in fact, too much to discuss everything here. Your first love – poetry, sport, Mary, Mary’s garden?
IM: First of all, I love life. And of course, Mary, my wife, the great love of my life. But I know what you mean, you mean activities. I really can’t put which comes first because you live your life -24 hours- in a day and I have found so much in my life that is so fascinating, interesting, enlivening
PP: Sustaining…
IM: Sustaining, yes, certainly including sport and my life in the sugar industry which I’ve always found to be very stimulating, very challenging, very interesting and very fulfilling. There was that and there was sport – I played sport when I was twelve or thirteen until I was a veteran in my 50s, also I played competitive sport – tennis and squash – and I loved that. I still love sport, I love watching it, I love cricket all my life, it is such a great game, I watch it all the time. I still have heart failure with the West Indies. Sport has been and still is very big in my life. But you’re right about poetry from ever since I was a schoolboy – it has been a big part, a very important part of my life throughout.
PP: I think this book, ‘New and Collected Poetry’, will illustrate poetry in your life, throughout your life because it includes ‘Mercy Ward’, ‘Essequibo’, ‘Jaffo The Calysonian’, ‘Between Silence and Silence’, ‘The Comfort of all things’, ‘Selected Poems’, and ‘River Dancer’. A huge book without an introduction so it behooves you to introduce to us this huge book.
IM: Well, Petamber, what I am hoping is that people like you, and other critics and other literary people will themselves write about a book like this so I wouldn’t have to do it myself.
You’re right, it is a compendium, it is a collected work of poems going back to the first poems published, going back to when I was a schoolboy, when I wrote my first poem over 70 years ago…one of the early poems was published in a wonderful magazine, the Kyk-over-Al, which was edited by A. J. Seymour from 1945 to 1961….What I am really saying: there are poems in this book going back to 60 to 70 years. And at intervals in my life, I published poetry – I think you mentioned six or seven collections there. Also there is a big section of new poetry, about 170 poems, which is in essence two books.
PP: Wow
IM: In addition to that ‘River Dancer’ is really a set of new poems because the poems in ‘River Dancer’ were written in 2014 and that’s only five years ago. So I could say that all the poems in this book from ‘River Dancer’ onwards are new poems – ‘River Dancer’ has about 70/75 poems and the final section has about 170, so there are about 250 poems that are very new, going back only five or six years, so you could see in this latest phrase of my life, I have written a lot of poetry, in fact, when I look back, I probably wrote more poetry in that time span than in any other similar time span in the rest of my life. This book does go back all the way….
PP: Beginnings, let’s talk beginnings….
IM: Poetry is in my genes. Remember my great, great, great grandfather was a poet back in England and published poetry in the 19th c., my great uncle was a poet and published a book of poems out of Antigua, my grandmother, Hilda McDonald, my father’s mother, published two books of verse out of Antigua. So I always say in me there is a poetry gene that emerged in me as well. So I have always known about poetry. Also, my parents had a very good library including lots of books on poetry…
PP: Important influence that….
IM: I remember reading poets like Tennyson, Keats, and Shelly and Wordsworth when I was quite young. Very formative was my English Teacher at Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad. A man I can remember now – I wrote a poem about him called ‘John Hodge’ – he inculcated a love for poetry in me, not just text book poetry but poetry from all over the world, from poets we weren’t studying at school…he said that we must remember that there is lots of wonderful poetry well beyond our syllabus. He was very important in my life.
Then I have a distinct memory of someone putting in my hand a very small collection, almost a pamphlet of poems written by a young West Indian called Derek Walcott, and it was his first collection when he was about eighteen or nineteen and it was called very simply ‘Twenty-five Poems’ by Derek Walcott….I remember reading it and, Petamber, I am going back more 70 years, I remember reading it and saying this poetry is so good and it is affecting me so much, and it was by a West Indian, not an Englishman, or a Frenchman in translation, or anyone else, it was by a West Indian.
A West Indian writing poetry like this – this is marvelous. And I think, from then I realize why not, why not try writing poetry myself. (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’.
