Martin Carter

Guyanese poet and political activist.

• Born: June 7, 1927
• Birthplace: Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana)
• Died: December 12, 1997

Biography

Martin Wylde Carter’s passionate and lyrical political poetry on behalf of the people of British Guiana during that country’s tempestuous transition from British control essentially defined the literary consciousness of the fledgling republic. Carter was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, in 1927. His family reflected the makeup of the longtime British colony: Carter had African, British, and Indian ancestry. His father, a civil servant, and his mother were both educated and gave their son a deep respect for books and a love of poetry. Carter himself attended the storied Queen’s College in England. He returned to his country in 1945 to work in civil service, first as a postal employee and then as secretary to the superintendent of prisons.

It was during this time that Carter was initially involved in the leftist Political Affairs Committee. Although Carter had already published three collections of verse and many political essays under a pseudonym, his Poems of Resistance from British Guiana, published in 1954 in London, secured him an international reputation. Like William Yeats, Carter offered more than a simple voice of protest. He explored social and political questions in charged, often dense verse that affirmed progress to a half-formed nation burdened by an imposed government. Within his vision, the poet uses the energy of the imagination to project a changed world. Although he had affiliations with socialism, Carter did not merely versify Marxism—as with Pablo Neruda, to whom Carter is often compared, Carter defines history, politics, and social evolution by how such energies impact the individual: the shaping of personal identity, the search for love, and the confrontation ultimately with death.

As Guiana’s political situation grew unsteady, Carter distanced himself from the battling political parties, maintaining an integrity that defined justice and progress as republican goals that had been distorted, first by imperial governance and then by indigenous warring parties. He wrote little poetry—from 1954 to 1959, he taught school before working as information officer for the Bookers News. Political instability and dissatisfaction with the leftist regime returned Carter to political activism in 1962; ultimately, he served as United Nations delegate and then minister of information for the government that succeeded the leftist regime. He resigned that position in 1970, disgusted by the government’s rampant corruption and blatant racism. In the 1970s, Carter accepted two writing residencies, first at the University of Essex, England, and later at the University of Guyana.

Carter briefly returned to poetry—his verse now more cerebral, more meditative, more intimate—before taking up a political crusade to oust the corrupt regime, action that led to a street beating in 1978 during a rally to demand free elections. His Poems of Succession and Selected Poems (1989) earned Carter’s considerable body of work international attention; yet when Carter died on December 12, 1997, his death received scant notice outside his native country. But a generation of Caribbean poets of the postcolonial era, including Aimé Césaire, Nicholas Guillen, and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, have acknowledged the influence of Carter’s visionary poetry that insisted on the dignity of the individual and the importance of the artist amid a chaotic political environment.

Author Works

Poetry:

The Hill of Fire Glows Red, 1951

Poems of Resistance from British Guiana, 1954 (also known as Poems of Resistance, 1964, and as Poems of Resistance from Guyana, 1979)

Poems of Succession, 1977

Poems of Affinity, 1978-1980, 1980

Poems of Succession and Selected Poems, 1989

Selected Poems, 1997

Miscellaneous:

University of Hunger: Collected Poems & Selected Prose, 2006 (Gemma Robinson, editor)

Bibliography

"Anglophone Caribbean Poetry." Cross / Cultures: Readings in the Post / Colonial Literatures in English, vol. 171, Apr. 2014, pp. 183–233. Literary Reference Center Plus, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=93668824&site=lrc-plus. Accessed 28 June 2017. Compares and contrasts Carter's poetics with those of fellow Caribbean writers Claude McKay and George Campbell.

Brown, Stewart, editor. All Are Involved: The Art of Martin Carter. Peepal Tree Press, 2000. A collection of literary analyses of Carter's work.

Carew, Jan. "Tribute to Martin Carter, 1921–1998." Race & Class, vol. 40, no. 1, 1998, pp. 105–10. Examines Carter's work in light of racial and class differences in the Caribbean.

"Every Poem Is Incomplete." Caribbean Review of Books, no. 18, Nov. 2008, pp. 49–51. Literary Reference Center Plus, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=36423065&site=lrc-plus. Accessed 28 June 2017. Explores Carter's unpublished notebooks, which contain correspondence, memoranda, government documents, and poetry.

"Reigniting the Life & Work of Guyana’s Most Significant Poet, Martin Carter." Guyana Chronicle, 15 July 2012, guyanachronicle.com/2012/07/15/reigniting-the-life-a-work-of-guyanas-most-significant-poet-martin-carter-composed-his-most-important-collection-of-poetry-in-prison. Accessed 28 June 2017. A brief, retrospective profile of Carter's life and work published in the national newspaper.