Martin Carter

Guyanese poet and political activist Martin Wylde Carter was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, where his family—of mixed African, Indian, and European ancestry—was part of the colored middle class. His father was a civil servant, a reader and discusser of philosophy, and his mother also a lover of books and reciting verse. Carter attended Queen’s College in Georgetown in the early 1940s. After graduation, he worked in the civil service: first in the Post Office, then as secretary to the superintendent of prisons. His first poems began to appear in the early 1950s, and he also wrote political pieces under the pseudonym of M. Black (to protect his civil service post). He published his first collection, The Hill of Fire Glows Red (1951), followed by The Kind Eagle (Poems of Prison) (1952), and The Hidden Man (Other Poems of Prison). He would actually be arrested, twice, by the British government in Guyana in 1953 and 1954, for spreading dissension. In 1954, Carter's book Poems of Resistance from British Guiana established his international reputation.

Carter continued to work as a political activist for decades. His other books include Poems of Succession (1977), Poems of Affinity (1980), Selected Poems (1989), and University of Hunger: Collected Poems and Selected Prose (2006). Carter died in 1997.