Heart / Land

About the Book

What makes “Heart / Land” both rewarding and challenging are the contrasting landscapes (ranging from the Guyana rainforest through Caribbean islands to the islets of the Bermuda atoll ) and the poems’ frank celebration of the diversity of language and life of the Caribbean / South American world. The poems move, in a variety of poetic styles, between the threat of global disaster (“Leaf,” “Summit”) and the healing nature of landscape and love (“Fall,” “Saint Lucy,” “Mother/Nature”). The complex scenarios of life from childhood to adulthood and old age are all sketched within the challenging embrace of their landscapes.

About the Author

Michael ( BA honours 1st class London, Ph.D Kent, Professor Emeritus university of Guyana ) is both an academic and a creative writer. He has taught at universities in the Caribbean and the United Kingdom over the past 40 years, including the University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Warwick, the University of Guyana, the University of the West Indies (where he served as Reader in English and Head of the English department) in Barbados. He was also Quillian Visiting professor at Randolph-Macon Women’s College Lynchburg, Virginia U.S.A. (1999). He is also an actor, poet and playwright, and a director and script writer/producer in the fields of theatre and film. His published work includes Couvade: a dream-play of Guyana (1974), a double edition of Couvade and A Pleasant Career (a play on the life and work of Edgar Mittelholzer.), a critical study Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel (1975), a lecture series (The Literate Imagination 1989) and a critical study ( Caribbean Literature , Twayne. U.S 1981) Awards: A Pleasant Career won the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992. Joanstown and other poems, a first collection of poetry, won the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. Michael won the Guyana Prize for Drama again in 2006 for his biographical, one-man play, The Last of the Redmen.