Martin Carter

Martin Carter's earliest poetry was shaped by the turbulent days of anti-
colonial radicalism and protest in Guyana (British Guiana) during the 1950s.
During the thirty years since then, especially since the publication of his
hallmark Poems of Resistance ( 1954), his has been the voice of radicalism in
Anglophone Caribbean poetry. This preeminence as the poet of revolution
has generally tended to be emphasized by the fact that revolutionary
rhetoric in general, and revolutionary literature in particular, has been a
rarity in the English-language Caribbean (with all due respect to the ethnic
intensities that have become de rigueur in the literature during the last
twenty years). Indeed, this very uniqueness probably accounts for the fact
that Martin Carter's preeminence as the poet of revolution has not been
seriously eroded by the muting of his revolutionary voice over the twenty
years since Guyanese independence.

This silence, or near silence, may be linked to the profound disillusionment

which has engulfed so much of the Third World intelligentsia, including that
of the Caribbean, since the achievement of (nominal) independence. In
Guyana that disillusionment has been especially intense in the wake of racial
violence between Blacks and East Indians, political stagnation and
repression, and the economic as well as social malaise which has
undermined the experiment in cooperative republicanism. In this period the
Guyanese government has been accused of seizing and maintaining its
power by means of a fraudulent electoral system gerrymandered in
cooperation with the British and the Americans; and more recently, the
government has been accused of complicity in the violent death of one of its
most vocal and popular critics, historian/activist Walter Rodney (1980).
Against such a background Carter's relative silence as revolutionary poet
may be interpreted either as prudence or complete disillusionment--or both.
But that silence is relative: Carter's days of overt revolutionism and rebellion
 may be past, as have been the days of active political involvement and
direct participation in government; but he has continued to write and publish
his poetry-poetry which sometimes manages to convey a special intensity of
feeling and purpose by the very manner in which it studiously avoids a
certain directness of statement. The voice itself may have been muted, but
the fiery sense of engagement which has made that voice all but unique in
Anglophone Caribbean poetry still burns.

BIOGRAPHY

Carter was born in 1927 and received his secondary school education at
Queen's College. During his early twenties he joined the turbulent political
movement for national independence, quickly becoming a leading
spokesman for the more radical forces of the movement. This prominence
inevitably led to his arrest and imprisonment by the British colonial
administration in 1953. At the time of his detention Carter had already
launched his career as a poet, having contributed works to A. J. Seymour
literary magazine, Kyk-over-al, and to Seymour "Miniature Poet" series of
poetry pamphlets ( Hill of Fire Glows Red). But it was during his
imprisonment that he composed his most important collection, Poems of
Resistance, which was eventually published in London, in 1954.

After his release from prison Carter remained active in the independence
movement and in 1965 was a member of the colony's delegation to the
Guyana Constitutional Conference in London, the final hurdle before the
formal achievement of nationhood. Thereafter he served for two years
( 1966-67) as a member of Guyana's delegation to the United Nations. He
has also served in the Guyanese government at home, most notably as
minister of information and culture, finally leaving the government in 1971.
Throughout this entire period he has maintained the dual roles of poet and
activist, an appropriate choice in one whose most important writings have
passionately advocated involvement and commitment. Consequently the
years of political activity and government service also saw the appearance of
the first half of his published output, followed by works ranging from the last
of his outspoken collections, Poems of Shape and Motion ( 1955), to the
cryptic reticence of Poems of Affinity: 1978-1980 ( 1980).

MAJOR WORKS AND THEMES

From as early as his first significant publications Martin Carter's distinctive

voice of protest and rebellion is unmistakably clear. Unlike so many early
collections, especially in the Caribbean, The Hill of Fire Glows Red avoids the
neoRomantic idealization of landscape. Instead of the familiar pastoral
clichés, the young Carter's landscape vibrates with historical memories,
which, in turn, inspire an urgent demand for change. In "Listening to the
Land" the poet hears a "tongueless whispering," the possible voice of a
buried slave who embodies the past. The response to the landscape is
activist rather than escapist, and when the young poet dreams, his are
dreams of social change ( "Looking at Your Hands"). In earlier works like
these it is fairly easy to grasp the dominant features of Carter's poetic
personality. It is a personality in which the imagination of activist and artist is
indivisible, and in some respects these poems are about the imagination and
its transforming powers--it transforms the land itself into an insistent voice of
history and, simultaneously, responds to the voices of history by envisioning
change, including revolutionary change, as the desirable and inevitable
consequences of that history. And, finally, the poet's own persona as the
embodiment of the transforming imagination incarnates the vision of
change. Accordingly, the revolutionary idealist envisions change as a
creative process which produces vital forms (social and political structures)
out of the chaos of colonial inequities, in much the same way that the poetic
imagination creates living forms in art ( "The Kind Eagle").

In a sense the poems of The Kind Eagle ( 1952) suggest an interesting

paradox: chaos and repression are reprehensible on the one hand; but on
 the other hand, they emerge as indispensable factors. In political terms the
liabilities of history have inspired the kind of intellectual and political ferment
which fuel an (apparently) inevitable process of fundamental change. Prison,
both as literal experience and as colonial symbol, therefore inspires a fierce
ecstacy in the title poem of the collection: "I Dance on the Wall of Prison!"
( Poems of Succession, 1977, p. 19; hereafter cited as POS). And by a similar
token, the poetic imagination thrives on political adversity and on the
reminders of historical injustices: it carves monuments out of the poet's
"time," from the "jagged block of convict years" ( POS, p. 19). Moreover, the
consistent integration of imagination and historical memory imparts a
powerfully suggestive sense of inevitability to Carter's ethics of change. The
envisioned changes, even if unrealized, are as much a part of a distinctive
historical pattern, as is the past which made the present itself inevitable. And
this pervasive sense of inevitability inspires recurrent images and themes of
movement to the poems of The Kind Eagle--movement as history, history as
change, change as the collective, irresistible pilgrimage undertaken by a
special breed of visionaries: the universe of history moves, "revolves / like a
circling star," and "Only men of fire will survive" ( "The Discovery of
Companion," POS, p. 24).

Altogether, these early collections reflect a tightly knit dialectic, with its
closely integrated poetic forms, which are to define a good part of Carter's
poetry for much of the next fifteen years. The ethos of change is both
political ideal and the creative principle of imagination. The patterns of
history are mirrored in the imaginative patterns of the poet's art, and since
both patterns have been shaped by the same social forces, then the poetic
imagination must, perforce, be politically involved. Or in the words of the
poet himself, "Like a web / is spun the pattern / all are involved" ( Poems of
Resistance, p. 18).
That assertion is the climactic statement of "You Are Involved," a work which
is one of the most typical, in tone and feeling, of the celebrated collection,
Poems of Resistance. This is the collection in which the twenty-seven-year-
old Carter fuses the characteristic themes and forms of the preceding works
into the compact designs of his best, and most famous works--"Till I
Collect,""Cartman of Dayclean,""I Come from the Nigger Yard," and
"University of Hunger." It is characteristic of Carter's writings at this stage of
his development that these successful poems owe much to the turbulent
times and frankly repressive circumstances in which they were written. They
were composed, for the most part, while he was in political detention--in "the
dark time," in "the season of oppression," the "carnival of misery" ( This Is
the Dark Time My Love, POS, p. 42). While it is less celebrated than its
companion pieces, few poems in the collection surpass "I Clench My Fist" in
this regard. The very intensity of feeling and statement owes its very
essence to the forces of repression and exploitation against which the poet
rebels. British colonialism represents social chaos in the immediate,
Guyanese context, and in the broader, global context, the fragmentation of
humanity between the oppressor and the powerless, the haves and the
have-nots. The confrontation between colonizer and colonial rebel is
therefore an allegory of a divided universe, the microcosm of historical
patterns of chaos and conflict. Conversely, the poet's reaction, as artist-
activist,to this chaos amounts to a harmonizing, creative power, the
transforming power of the imagination. The defiant act of clenching the fist
in the face of British weapons and political power suggests a compact
wholeness as well as creative energy which contrasts with the prevailing
chaos, and it is synonymous with the harmonizing patterns of poetic art itself
( "I sing my song of FREEDOM!" [ "I Clench My Fist," Poems of Resistance, p.
41]). Finally, the thematic progression within the poem itself, from images of
fragmentation and conflict to the vision of a powerful, harmonizing energy, is
in itself a structural or formal emphasis on that sense of movement--
historical progression or inevitability--which is always so integral to Carter's
revolutionist vision.

On the whole, works like "I Clench My Fist" exemplify Carter's protest poetry
at its best. The underlying dialectic is compact, limpid, and consistent. The
dialectic statement is tightly controlled through a disciplined, highly
economic use of language and sense of form; and as a result, the poetic form
itself becomes the imaginative microcosm of that moral wholeness and
social unity which the poetry envisions. Given this tightly integrated schema,
it becomes clear that "poems of resistance" are not simply poems about
political resistance: they are acts of resistance. This implies an aesthetic that
has been rather rare in the generally conservative context of Anglophone
Caribbean literature. It was not to be aired in any significant sense, in any
Caribbean language area, until the successful Cuban revolution began to
define its own revolutionary aestheticsduring the 1960s: the only valid
revolutionary art is that which is committed to, and a part of, the revolution;
writing about the revolution is not enough, the writer must be an active
participant in the revolution. Or to phrase this ideal in Carter's poetic
language, the poet must not simply write about resistance, he himself and
his poetry must be directly involved in resistance.

However, notwithstanding this kind of analogy, and notwithstanding the

power of Carter's own rhetoric of change, it is important to recognize the
substantial limitations of his revolutionism. These limitations are both
external and internal. Externally, Carter has lived and written in a political
and social context in which the idea of change has always been sharply
delineated in nonrevolutionist terms. The rhetoric of rebellion or "revolution"
in the English-language Caribbean of the 1950s and 1960s seldom
encompassed fundamental (i.e., genuinely revolutionary) changes in the
social fabric. "Resistance" as such was conceived and fashioned in relation to
the British colonial order and its associated bureaucracy. In other words,
 resistance was the movement of a bourgeois nationalism, which would
replace the colonial overlord with nationalist leaders and political structures,
which would leave the social and economic order relatively unchanged.
Neither has radical revolutionism demonstrated significant grass-roots
appeal in the English Caribbean--a fact which needs to be borne in mind
when one is tempted to blame the failures of the Guyanese promise on the
demonstrable and alleged sins of the Forbes Burnham regime. The electoral
rejection of "democratic socialism" in Jamaica during the early 1980s is
another example of this limitation, especially when one remembers the
definite, built-in limitations of Michael Manley's democratic socialism as a
revolutionist principle. And in retrospect, the recent collapse of the New
Jewel Movement in Grenada, even before the inevitable U.S. intervention,
suggests that beyond the personal popularity of Maurice Bishop the New
Jewel Movement, as revolutionary ideology, was less deeply rooted than its
most ardent supporters seemed to have imagined.

It is necessary to emphasize this historical and social context because these

are the broader circumstances which go beyond Guyana's immediate
boundaries and which explain, in part, the long-term sense of futility that
now envelops Carter's revolutionist poetry, especially in retrospect. The
limited impact and relevance of his revolutionary themes reflect the limited
capacities of his society for the idea of fundamental change. This, in turn,
leads to the internal limits of Carter's revolutionism itself. Poems like
"University of Hunger," "Cartman of Dayclean," and "I Come from the Nigger
Yard" reverberate with the passions, even violent potential, of the
dispossessed. But there is really no substantial evidence, even in these
works, of a revolutionary vision that goes beyond the immediate anti-colonial
nationalism of "I Clench My Fist." The ferocity with which the poet assaults
an entrenched (colonial) status quo undoubtedly continues to exert a
powerful appeal to present readers who dream of "resistance" to the
neocolonial establishment which succeeded the British colonizers. But this
 ought not to obscure the clearly limited implications of Carter's original
vision.

While the scope of the revolutionary vision is circumscribed, so is the poet's

realism. The poet's passionate commitment to change of sorts is not really
counterbalanced by a realistic awareness of the substantial barriers to
significant change. In these earlier poems of "resistance," from the first
collection to Poems of Shape and Motion ( 1955), technical polish and
thematic coherence go hand in hand with what, on the whole, is a relatively
limited emotional range or appeal--limited, that is, by an absence of complex
self-awareness vis-a-vis the limits of his own vision and of his society's
capacity for change. It is not surprising that, when those social limitations
were made painfully manifest in subsequent years, Carter's poetry seems to
have retreated into a state of shock from which it has never really recovered.

On the whole, the assessment of Carter's overtly "revolutionary" or

"committed" poems leads to a historically significant, albeit unintended,
irony: his real achievement as a poet of resistance is, in the final analysis, an
exclusively aesthetic one, rather than the effective political-aesthetic
synthesis that is envisaged and structurally symbolized by his poetry. That
is, we can always admire the consistent coherence of thematic statement,
the telling integration of formal structure and theme, the striking tension
between intense feeling and the spare, tightly disciplined language; and
throughout all of this we can admire the skill with which the poet weaves his
complex patterns of imagistic and structural variations on the fundamental
theme of change-as-creation. But that theme is often less profound or far-
reaching than it may sometimes sound.

The poems since Guyana's independence are, collectively, an implicit

admission of the earlier limitations. A somber silence broods over the post-
independence poems first published in Poems of Succession. Silence as
speechlessness and paralysis is the dominant motif here, in contrast to the
defiant energies and perpetual movement in the earlier works. Here silence
and inactivity suggest that history moves, not toward inevitable change and
creation, but in repetitive, predictable cycles. Indeed, this kind of silence is
the main topic of poems like "A Mouth Is Always Muzzled," "Even As the Ants
Are," "In the When Time," and "Fragment of Memory." These works also
demonstrate that despite the changes in mood and historical circumstances,
the older Carter still commands the talents for striking, arresting poetry. The
brooding silence of these poems is not the silence of a lost idealism, or of a
crippled imagination. Far from it, he manages to develop his themes of
silence and futility through "confessional" modes of private experience, or
even through abstract statements, communicating a powerful sense of
repression and stasis in his society while avoiding explicit political protest.
Both the explicit theme of silence and the suggestive absence of overt
protest in themselves become rhetorical symptoms of his real, but implied,
subject. As in his earlier works, the better poems in this later collection
demonstrate his characteristic ability to develop form as statement.

This highly suggestive silence continues in his most recent collection, Poems
of Affinity: 1978-1980. The disillusionment with "history" is more
pronounced, and we are left with only a quiet despair in the face of history's
relentless repetitiveness. It is the image of death, not creation, that
dominates "PlayingMilitia" Militia" where the uniform sleeves droop "like the
wet feathers of a crow's wing / over secret carrion" [ Poems of Affinity, p.
17]). And in "For Cesar Vallejo ii" the decay is everywhere. Clearly, he still
remains the poet of passionate commitment. Where that commitment will
lead his future poetry depends as much upon Carter's world as it does on
himself.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Edward Brathwaite "Resistance Poems: The Voice of Martin Carter" ( 1977) is

one of the more comprehensive studies of Martin Carter's poetry thus far.
 The critic examines all the major publications up to the mid-1970s, with
special emphasis on Carter as the voice of revolutionary change. Briefer,
more general comments also appear in Brown, West Indian Poetry ( 1977),
and Herdeck, Caribbean Writers ( 1979).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hill of Fire Glows Red. Miniature Poet Series. Georgetown: Mater Printer,
1951.

To a Dead Slave. Georgetown: Author, 1951.

The Hidden Man. Georgetown: Author, 1952.

The Kind Eagle. Georgetown: Author, 1952.

Returning. Georgetown: Author, 1953.

Poems of Resistance. London: Lawrence, Wishart, 1954; Georgetown:

Guyana Release, 1979.

Poems of Shape and Motion. Georgetown: Author, 1955.

Conversations. Georgetown: Author, 1961.

Jail Me Quickly. Georgetown: Author, 1963.

Poems of Succession. London: New Beacon Books, 1977.

Poems of Affinity: 1978-1980. Georgetown: Release, 1980.

(LLOYD W. BROWN)

Not I With This Torn Shirt

 All Are Involved: The Art Of Martin Carter by Stewart Brown

(Click on image to order)

The Guyanese poet Martin Carter was without question one of the major poets of the English language of our time.
In the Caribbean, Carter has long been regarded as one of the great poets who chronicled the journey from
colonialism to independence, alongside such figures as Aime Cesaire, Derek Walcott, Nicholas Guillen and Kamau
Brathwaite. While his earlier poems have become classics of socialist literature, translated into many languages,
and are among the foundation stones of Caribbean poetry, they have hardly been acknowledged in more general
accounts of poetry in English. It was too easy for lazy critics and anthologists to dismiss him as 'merely' a political
poet, one who swore, as he put it in one poem, to use his shirt as 'a banner for the revolution.'

In fact, looking at Carter's work overall it is hard to think of a contemporary poet writing in English who showed
more concern for craft, who measured his utterance with greater care. His later work, while it never lost its political
edge, was more oblique and cerebral than the overtly political poems of his youth. It sits comfortably alongside that
of fellow South American poets Valejo, Neruda and Paz. They are his contemporaries in every sense; his work is of
that originality, stature and elemental force.

This book sets out to celebrate Martin Carter's life and work and to establish a context for reading his poetry. It
locates the several facets of Carter's work in the historical and cultural circumstances of his time, in Guyana, in the
Caribbean. It includes essays by many leading academics and scholars of Caribbean literature and history. It is
distinguished particularly by a collection of responses to Carter's work by other creative writers, both his
contemporaries and a younger generation for whom Carter's work and commitment has been a powerful influence
on their own thinking and practice. As well as demonstrating the profound respect in which he is held as a writer,
what emerges most strongly from this group of essays and poems from his fellow writers is the extent to which he
was loved and admired as a man who - despite the turmoil Guyana has experienced over the last fifty years -
remained true to his fundamental belief in the dignity of humankind.

Contributors include John Agard, Edward Baugh, Kamau Brathwaite, Stewart Brown, Jan Carew, David Dabydeen,
Fred D'Aguiar, Kwame Dawes, Michael Gilkes, Stanley Greaves, Wilson Harris, Roy Heath, Kendel Hippolyte, Louis
James, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Eusi Kwayana, George Lamming, Ian McDonald, Mark McWatt, Mervyn Morris, Grace
Nichols, Ken Ramchand, Gordon Rohlehr, Rupert Roopnaraine, Andew Salkey and many others.

Niyi Osundare writes in World Literature Today: 'All Are Involved is a difficult book to review. Its contents are so
packed, so vital, the statements so well made that paraphrasing them becomes an act of egregious violence. Here
is Martin Carter, that "gifted, paradoxical man" (p.45), that "friendly, dreamful, dangerous man" (p.370), analysed,
 extolled, lavished with the recognition which eluded him in life because of the politics of his poetry, and the
poignant truth and moral force of that politics. This book demonstrates how wrong we were to have neglected
Carter’s voice, how diminished. All Are Involved is a treasure so empowering, a tribute we pay through Martin
Carter to all that is human in us. It is a most enduring legacy.'

Stewart Brown lectures at the Centre for West African Studies at the University of Birmingham. He has edited
several anthologies of Caribbean writing and published many books and essays on aspects of West Indian culture.

(Courtesy of Peepal Tree Press