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1927-1997 Poet One of the most important poets to come out of the Caribbean, Martin Carter has been compared to literary lions such as W.B. Yeats and Pablo Neruda. His most famous work was fueled by the political turmoil that gripped his native Guyana in the 1950s and 1960s. He told fellow Guyanese writer Bill Carr in an interview for the Guyanese magazine Release that politics and poetry were inseparable. "[If] politics is a part of life, we shall become involved in politics, if death is a part of life we shall become involved with death, like the butterfly who is not afraid to be ephemeral." Unfortunately, because of the fame of his politically-charged poems Carter was often pigeon-holed as a revolutionary poet. But as Guyana's Stabroek News wrote, "there were other voices in Martin Carter, strains of tenderness, love poems of moving fervour, agonies expressed that have nothing to do with politics, insights into all of human nature." During his life, Carter received limited recognition outside of Guyana, mainly because he refused to abandon his country. A friend of his told the Guyana Chronicle, "Exile for him was not going overseas like so many of the Caribbean's best writers, but exiled within his own country; in his own way, and fighting the fight at home." As he fought that fight, he wrought words of defiance, beauty, pain, and hope, leaving a literary legacy that, finally, in the 21st century is receiving worldwide critical respect.
Like many Guyanese at the time, he longed for self-governance. He joined the anticolonialist People's Progressive Party (PPP) and in 1950 published his first poems in the party's magazine, Thunder. However, in order to protect his civil service job, he published the most politically radical of his work under the pseudonym M. Black.
been hailed as one of his most emblematic works. Cudjoe wrote that through the poem, "readers discover Carter's capacity for sustaining and developing a complex emotional response in poetry. The subtle blend of aesthetic control and political content embodies the best of his work." After the release of Poems of Resistance, Carter worked as a teacher for several years. In 1959 he joined the British sugar manufacturing giant Booker as their chief information officer. He also edited the company's newsletter. Meanwhile Guyana continued to struggle fitfully towards independence. In 1955 the PPP had split into two parties, with the PPP being led by a Guyanese of Indian descent and the People's National Congress (PNC) by a Guyanese of African descent. Carter shifted his loyalties to the PNC partly because of the racism he felt the PPP was promoting. The island had long been divided by two racial groupsEast Indians and Africans. Though the PPP had formed as a multi-racial party, by the mid-1950s it was promoting its own interests by emphasizing racial divisions. In reaction to this Carter wrote the pessimistic series Poems of Shape and Motion. http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2449/Carter-Martin.html#ixzz1h0iH21OL