Guyanese Literature Junction

Nov 09, 2008 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature

by Petamber Persaud

The NEW WORLD journal comprising forty-eight fortnightly and two monthly issues was a periodical that pushed the frontier of magazine production further than its contemporaries, trying to get to the crux of the matter – examining the parameters of a new world, a new Guyanese world after independence in May 1966.

A very slim publication, the NEW WORLD was seemingly a complete package, offering news analyses, features, literature, arts and culture sections.

Turning back those pages now, readers will be treated to topical issues of the critical 1960s including essays on sugar, the rice bill, collated governance, sexual equality, trade unionism, the Moyne Report. Readers could relive debates like the one on art between Philip Moore and Donald Locke.

There are features on drama by Francis Farrier, and Ken Corsbie, on the cinema by N. D. Williams, ‘language and literature’ by Jan Carew, culture by Martin Carter, the dilemma of the artist in British Guiana, jazz and thoughts on a National Orchestra.

Space was made for short fiction, extract from a novel by Wilson Harris, and poems by Slade Hopkinson, Cyril Dabydeen, Carter, Annette Warren, Edwina Melville, Ian McDonald, Arnold Itwaru, among others.

There was however a downside to the successful run of this journal that is instructive to local writers, editors and publishers.

Martin Carter in a letter introducing the journal stated, ‘the editor and the contributors, I know, are well aware of the high death rate of magazine.

But at least they can console themselves with the thought that in order for something to die, it first had to be alive’. Some 28 months and 50 issues later, the editors of NEW WORLD stated, ‘this is the last issue.’

Furthermore, note must be made of the following statement by the journal’s editor, David de Caires, admitting that ‘the economics of producing a small magazine are basically unsound; therefore, the magazine was never on a sound financial footing’.

Lesson learnt, David de Caires (and his associates) avoided that shortcoming in establishing a successful daily newspaper, Stabroek News, progressing gradually from a weekly.

The NEW WORLD series of publications came out of the New World Group which was formed ‘at a time when Guyana was going through a period of great social and political upheaval’ of the 1960s.

The group was formalised after many informal meetings of young Guyanese professionals interested in political and social analysis, a young brigade shunning philistinism for a new world of debate and dialogue.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: [email protected]

Literary update

• You are invited to a lecture by Ruby Ramraj, University of Calgary, on Nalo Hopkinson, the Caribbean foremost sci-fi writer; venue: National Library; date: Wednesday November 12, 2008; time: 1700 hours (5 p.m.)