Preserving our literary heritage
by Petamber
Persaud
 |
| A.J. Seymour |
On Monday January 13, 2014, the
National Library staged the unveiling of a plaque on the former residence of
Arthur James Seymour (AJS) at lot 23 North Road, Bourda. The event was
witnessed by family members – Seymour’s second daughter, Joan Seymour;
Seymour’s niece, Dr Jacqueline de Weever; close friends including Dr Ian
McDonald, the present owner of the property, media houses and staff members of
the National Library. (The unveiling followed the ‘See More Poetry’ performance
on Sunday January 12, 2014, marking Seymour’s birth centenary.)
It was an overcast morning with
intermittent drizzle being shooed away by ‘the cool Trade Winds’. The clouds
over Guyana were like ‘little curled feathers on the back of the sky [T]hen
frisky lambs that gambol and bowl along [s]hephered by the brave Trade Wind’.
Many of the persons witnessing the unveiling knew the house and its
surroundings intimately as captured in the following poems/odes by AJS – ‘The
House’ and ‘To the Family House Awaiting Repair’:
.jpg) |
| Guyana. Foto Marina Caf |
The House
I have a room
Where several sages
Sleep in their serried shelves
And await my conversation
Here
I-fashion images
Carving and fitting words
Polishing syllables
Shaping new rhythms
To grace new meanings
Distilling experience
Hammering metal
In my spirit’s workshop
To the Family House Awaiting Repair
Oh, the long narrow home heavy with
living
An age of memories people the walls
Around your naked frame.
Warm shell of love and crowding
children
Where young girls in uniform
Hats worn like horse guards
Speech full of the school diction
And the cool Trade Winds carry
echoes…
The scent of roses in the slim
garden
Growing in the four-hour overhead
sun
Smell of bread from the oven
Everything mingling in the wind
Image of the dedicated student..
Impatient for games and parties but
slow for school
So many came here – tea visiting
professors
Exam students, poets, novelists,
sculptors,
A Chief Justice – a future Prime
Minister…
And little children to the
Kindergarten
Wrestling their way into the hall of
learning
Chattering, tormenting the wild
cherry-tree
That always yields its fruit.
O, crowd your long years of memories
Into a prayer for their future
For all who lived and loved and
studied here
To fill out those poems, to add life
and colour to those words, to find out more about the rich and rewarding lives
of ‘all who lived and loved and studied’ at that house and to know more about
the life and work of Seymour it would be useful to read the following four of
five of his autobiographies:
‘Growing up in Guyana’
‘Pilgrim Memories’
‘Family Impromptu’
‘Thirty Years a Civil Servant’
The plaque was another way of
preserving our literary heritage and I suspect the National Library will again
in the near future continue and extend similar gestures to other literary
shrines across the country.
Responses to this author telephone
(592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com
What’s happening:
• ‘An Introduction to Guyanese
Literature’ is now available from the author at the above contacts, Austin’s
Book Service (telephone # 226-7350) and at the National Library (telephone
#226-2690).
[from Guyana Chronicle Online]
