Activity: Poetry recital
Host: Moray House Trust
Date: Saturday 16th October 2021
Time: 5PM Guyana/New York, 10PM UK
YouTube: https://youtu.be/nWLKxh8v-sk
Some months ago, Joan Seymour and Jacqueline de Weever graciously agreed to curate a selection of poems from Kyk-over-al for a series of recitals. (Kyk was a literary magazine published between 1945 and 2000). It has been a fascinating journey. Readers include Konyo Addo, Russel Lancaster, Peter Jailall and Al Creighton.
To look back through the early volumes of Kyk-over-al is to glimpse this nation’s psyche in utero. Early poems show a tendency, as one poet puts it, to seek ‘specious self-expression / in syntheses of european echoes’. Gradually however, as though viewed through a mist, more distinctive and authentic voices, imagery, ideas, rhythms and turns of phrase emerge.
Kyk (and the other regional literary magazines of that era) were foundation stones in the building of their host nations. As Ian Mc Donald pointed out in a tribute to AJ Seymour, Kyk (and its editor) played a seminal role in the design and construction of post-colonial structures of thought, art and writing in Guyana and the Caribbean.
VIDEO
YouTube
Kyk Poems: Moulding a Guianese Consciousness 1945-1961:
https://youtu.be/nWLKxh8v-sk
Additional resources:
Many editions of Kyk are available online:
1: George A. Smathers Library, University of Florida: https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00080046/00007/allvolumes
2: Caribbean Press (under AJ Seymour): https://caribbeanpress.org/caribbean-press-downloads/