My Poetry Corner August 2026 features the poem “As New and As Old (I)” from the poetry collection Poems of Affinity 1978-80 by Guyanese poet Martin Carter (1927-1997), published by Release Publications (Guyana, 1980). He is regarded as the finest of all Guyanese poets.

Carter was born in Georgetown, Guyana (then British Guiana), to middle-class parents of mixed African, Amerindian, and Portuguese ancestry. His father, a civil servant and avid reader, introduced him to a love of books and philosophy. His mother imbibed in him a love of poetry.

In his early twenties, he became a member of the anti-colonialist political party, founded in 1950. His early poetry reflects his concern about the human condition and freedom from colonial oppression. In “Tomorrow and the World,” published in 1951 (Footnote 1), he expresses his joy of being one with people on the streets and sharing their hope for a better world.

In verse one of four he writes: I am most happy / as I walk the seller of sweets says “friend” / and the shoemaker with his awl and waxen thread / reminds me of tomorrow and the world.

The political party’s gains towards self-governance were short-lived. In 1953, British troops landed and the British governor suspended the newly inked constitution. Together with other political leaders of the party, the poet-politician was arrested and interred at the British/American airbase for three months.

After his release in 1954, Carter published his renowned collection, Poems of Resistance from British Guiana. These poems reflect the anxiety of the times from oppression, fear, and bloodshed. In the poem “This Is the Dark Time My Love” (F2), he writes in verse two of three: This is the dark time, my love. / It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears. / It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery. / Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.

Joy spread across the land on Guyana’s Independence Day in May 1966. Carter left his position as Information Officer at the multinational Booker group of companies to become the fledgling nation’s first representative to the United Nations. The following year, he joined the newly elected government as the Minister of Information (1967-1971). Disillusioned by growing corruption among the political leadership, he resigned his position. He wrote at the time: a mouth is always muzzled / by the food it eats to live.  

Retreating from the public sphere to ruminate on the vileness crawling over the land, he asks in the poem “What Can A Man Do More?” (F3): How utter truth when falsehood is the truth? / How welcome dreams, how flee the newest lie? Six years would go by before the publication of his next collection in 1977.

In 1978, then the Writer in Residence at the University of Guyana (1977-1981), Carter connected with the cause of the rising opposition political party—growing in popularity across all racial groups—under the leadership of the Afro-Guyanese historian Walter Rodney. That same year, while taking part in a peaceful demonstration against the proposed changes in the election process, the poet-educator received a beating by thugs of the autocratic regime. The following year, he witnessed a similar gang of thugs murder the British Jesuit priest Father Bernard Darke, photographer for the Catholic newspaper. In broad daylight. Just taking photos.

The grief-stricken poet shares his disbelief in the poem “Bastille Day – Georgetown” (F4): With / my own eyes, I saw the fierce / criminal passing for citizen / with a weapon, a piece of wood / and five for one. We laugh / Bastille laughter. These are / not men of death. A pot / of rice is their foul reward.

The non-violent civil rebellion (1978-1980) against the autocratic regime culminated in the assassination of Walter Rodney on June 13, 1980. An act of betrayal and deception. Carter’s response to the events during that period is his dense, multi-layered poems in Poems of Affinity 1978-80, published in 1980. In what became his final collection, the poet-politician turned poet-philosopher expresses an affinity with the shared humanity and struggle of people everywhere. He dissects the vileness of humanity during bleak times, and our place in time. In “Some Kind of Fury,” he writes (F4): In this foul age of a new / and recurring despair, I / keep working for a storm, some / kind of fury to write new dates / in our vile calendar and book.

Though I don’t recall meeting the Resident Writer on campus, I was working at the University of Guyana Library (1979-1980) when these events unfolded. Now that a similar vileness has spread across my adopted homeland, I was pulled in by the title of the featured poem “As New and As Old (I). A poem that had made little sense to me in the past now held new meaning. History is repeating itself. What was once old is new again.

The terse verses of the short 19-line featured poem are shrouded in metaphor, subject to different interpretations. The opening verses (1-5) read like a riddle filled with contrasts, as the poet-philosopher reflects on the human conception of time.

Every day is as old
as a new day is. Time
represents itself. Night fakes
the rule of stars; as we fake
light’s good pencil….

The poet-philosopher would’ve been eighteen years old when World War II (1939-1945) ended; old enough to recall the bloodshed caused by a dictator intent on dominating the world. Time appears to have come full circle, much like day turns into night. Lessons learned are soon forgotten. In the same way as the star-studded night turns away from the ruling sun, we turn away from the light when we fake good intentions and make false statements. Promises made to gain power fail to materialize.

The mention of a child in verses 5 to 12 comes as no surprise. As the father of four children, the poet has raised concerns about children in several poems. In this collection (F4), he calls on society to “Let Every Child Run Wild.”    

… A child’s
chalk ridden black board. Alphabet
of hope in a season of insects. Crawl
of the beast in a season of days. I
unapologetic, remember why every
day was once a new day. As new
and as old as my childhood roaming
among grass….

The poet doesn’t apologize for the idyllic childhood he enjoyed as a more privileged member of the middle-class. He wishes the same for all children. Hope resides in their schooling from a young age. But this hope for a carefree childhood for the nation’s children is now threatened by a perverse society that has lost its humanity to act like insects and crawling beasts. I sense anger with this description.

His existential despair is evident in the following five verses (12-16):

… The world is a cold
wind. It is a glass of sweet water
in a grim place of thirst.
Farewell rain. When again shall I
taste your high cloud?…

Life has lost its warmth and sweetness. In its place remains a thirst for justice and righteousness. He knows not when life will flourish again in the minds and hearts of the people. How had they lost their way? How had they arrived at this point of degradation?

The poet-philosopher concludes in the final four verses (16-19):

… Having betrayed
old gods in an old day, we seek
now to betray new ones
in a new day.

The mention of “old gods” suggests that their fall into depravity is the result of a religious or moral failure among the leadership and society in general. The nature of the new gods eludes me. Perhaps, they are the proclaimed political and social ideologies intended to govern the new society of citizens freed from the shackles of colonial rule. Co-operative socialism has morphed into an autocracy. The betrayal is glaring. The promise of a better tomorrow is but a glass of sweet water / in a grim place of thirst.

The vileness of humanity is as new and as old as time itself. Time reveals that those who covet the fruits of our shared planet for themselves alone become the victims of their own greed and excesses. Whether all-powerful or regarded as the scum of society, each one of us is a mere measure of time here on Earth.

To read the featured poem “As New and As Old (I)” as well as “As New and As Old (II) and learn more about the work of Guyanese poet Martin Carter (1927-1997), go to my Poetry Corner August 2026.

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FOOTNOTES:
(1)  The Hill of Fire Glows Red, British Guiana, 1951
(2)  Poems of Resistance from British Guiana, London/England, 1954
(3)  Jail Me Quickly: five poems, British Guiana, 1966
(4)  Poems of Affinity 1978-1980, Guyana, 1980