Simon Lee
Published:
Monday, September 14, 2015
Let your blackness
lead
out of this dungeon
into the unknowing
At least no fear
lurks there
New adventure
excites
the fateful step
White bones and skull
smiling beatific
beckon
with wistful sighs
I look
and long
(To Death/Anson Gonsalez)
On September 6, one of the Caribbean’s largely unsung but widely revered man of letters finally succumbed to a long-term heart condition. Already critically ill, Anson Gonzalez had left T&T back in 2013 to join one of his daughters living in Wales. Besides his own poetry Anson will be remembered for his “work toward sustaining the literary culture of the Caribbean and T&T in particular.” In 1973 he founded edited and published The New Voices, a bi-annual journal which ran for 20 years and published work by more than 300 Caribbean writers and which was also responsible for the Bibliography of Creative Writing in T&T from 1962 onwards, now available online. The New Voices imprint founded in 1974 published both his own poetry and that of many others including Jennifer Rahim and Paula Obé. The New Voices Newsletter he founded in 1981 was another of his initiatives servicing Caribbean writing with its information on writers, competitions, workshops and grants. More egalitarian than the pioneering Beacon magazine of the 1930s, New Voices along with the Bajan Bim, the Guyanese Kyk-Over-Al and the Jamaican Focus magazines, provided the vital first publication portal for new writers in the pre-Bocas Lit Fest period when regional publishing was either moribund or minimal and metropolitan publishers only dealt with established names.
As co-founder and former president of the Writers’ Union of T&T, in 1979 Anson established Poetry Day, celebrated on October 15, initially in T&T and now in eight other Caribbean territories. In addition to teaching creative writing courses across the region, as a facilitator par excellence, he adjudicated many regional poetry and literary competitions, including the prestigious Casas de las Americas prize.
Back in May, T&T Guardian spoke with Anson, via Skype. While he joked about being “one step from the exit”, he made light of his terminal condition and was happy to reminisce about his early days. As the son of a primary school teacher he spent a peripatetic childhood in Central and South, moving from Mayo to Palo Seco, Erin, Siparia and Caratal. When he wasn’t “skating down hill on coconut branch” and “tearing up pants”, from the age of about ten “reading was a major pastime” and he particularly recalled Dickens and RL Stevenson.
After graduating in Form 3 from Presentation College, San Fernando, armed with his Cambridge School Leaving Certificate he took up his first teaching appointment at Caratal RC Primary School. He was to remain in the primary sector for eight years, eventually taking a degree at UWI followed by a year at Mausica Teachers’ College.
As a young man, he tried his hand at various cultural and other activities, wryly remembering that “Because I was red and went Presentation I felt I could play football.” His complexion neither improved his footballing skills, nor the roles he was offered, as an aspiring actor. “I wanted to be an actor, but never got good parts. Anytime they wanted a light skinned person, they got me. One of my first roles was a Chinaman in a shop, in Douglas Archibald’s Rose Slip.”
Never one to take himself too seriously Anson nevertheless wanted to correct or inform a younger generation often entirely ignorant of its elders’ youthful achievements: “Remember we’re all old bats, nobody knows we did anything. I tried playwriting, but it was too hard. I scrambled through one play with Freddie Kissoon, Eric Roach, Walcott, but I couldn’t compete.” He did however, try his hand as director and went on to act with the Trinidad Theatre Workshop (remembering the late great Errol Jones as “a very harsh critic”). He also appeared in several Dimanche Gras productions, and recalled the intense rivalry between Errol Hill and Walcott, in whose Drums and Colours, commissioned for the inaugural ceremony of the West Indies Federation, he also appeared. He remembered being “shocked to discover Walcott had published three books.”
Retrospectively, one can read Anson’s individual development as an artist (His volume of collected poems is aptly titled Artefacts of Presence) as synchronous with the collective spirit of creativity generated by the transition from colonialism, through federation and on to independence and the forging of a national cultural identity. He encountered the same impulse to research, document and develop folk resources, which drove Beryl McBurnie’s Little Carib Theatre intiative in the person of Eileen McSween of The Sando Arts Fest; “She’d encourage us to visit old people and learn their folksongs and dances.” The Arts Fest provided a welcome forum for nurturing and giving exposure to young talent, “I learnt the Maypole and the Bongo. Yuh boy was a dancer!”
Besides the visceral attractions of dancing and acting the young Anson was also developing his eye – photography and poetry both claimed his interest. He quickly developed into “an amateur photographer of note”, winning several prizes and showing signs of his later prodigious organisational skills founding the Focus Club and setting up competitions and exhibitions.” While teaching at Newtown Boys he met bibliophile and bookseller Clifford Sealy, who ran a bookshop from his home and who edited the journal Voices. The discussions he had with Sealy obviously proved formative (“I learnt a thing or two from him”) when he later embarked on New Voices.
The hand of fate almost struck Anson down before his prime when he lost his right kidney in his twenties. “I thought I was going to die.” Surviving this brush with mortality “led to a frenzy of artistic activity” but also prompted him to “look for something more sedentary.” By now he “had begun to make a little mark as a poet.” His inclusion in the 1967 government sponsored literary collection commemorating the fifth anniversary of Independence “gave me a leg up” into the burgeoning literary scene. And when he was drafted to the Publications Unit of the Ministry of Education where he “had a small role on the book selection committee”, all those who have benefitted from his unstinting generosity can be grateful that for once at least the bureaucrats, in seconding him, unwittingly launched a thousand writing careers.
Although he may not have fulfilled the wish expressed in Exit (“If I had my way I would decide/when I should die”) back in May, Anson seemed reconciled to his imminent departure. He spoke with self-deprecating humour and a modesty which belied his achievement. While it may be too soon to fully assess his contribution to Caribbean culture in general and literature in particular, there can be no doubt that Anson Gonzalez, (along with AJ Seymour of former British Guiana and founding editor of Kyk-Over-Al and Frank Collymore of Barbados’ Bim magazine) was one of the major agents of developing and promoting indigenous literary production. The legacy of his selfless lifework continues not just with Poetry Day, but in the pages of the books he helped inspire and bring to print and in the inclusive creative vision he helped foster, which we need now more than ever.
RIP Anson, we’ll be looking out for your poems in the sky.
lifestyle
Anson Gonzalez and his wife Sylvia on their 50th wedding anniversary.
PHOTO COURTESY MIGUELA GONZALEZ