Ian McDonald (born 18 April 1933) is a Caribbean-born poet and writer who describes himself as " Antiguan by ancestry,

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

ian by birth, Guyanese by adoption, and

West Indian A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). For more than 100 years the words ''West Indian'' specifically described natives of the West Indies, but by 1661 Europeans had begun to use it ...

by conviction." His ancestry on his father's side is Antiguan and Kittitian, and Trinidadian on his mother’s side. His only novel, ''The Humming-Bird Tree'', first published in 1969, is considered a classic of

Caribbean literature Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most o ...

Nicholas Laughlin Nicholas Laughlin (born 6 May 1975)"In brief"
Nicholas Laughlin's website. is a writer and editor from

"Ian McDonald: Evening in the Garden"
''

Caribbean Beat ''Caribbean Beat'', founded in 1992, is a bimonthly magazine, published in Port of Spain, Trinidad, covering the arts, culture and society of the Caribbean, with a focus on the region's English-speaking territories. It is distributed in-flight by C ...

'', Issue 96, March/April 2009.

Early years and education

Ian McDonald was born on 18 April 1933, in St Augustine, Trinidad, where his mother, Thelma McDonald (''née'' Seheult), and her parents were born and where his father, John Archie McDonald (who was born in St. Kitts and whose parents were born in Antigua), was Agricultural Director of Gordon Grant Limited. His uncle was Air Marshall Sir Arthur McDonald of

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

. He has four sisters – Heather Murray, Gillian Howie, Robin McDonald and Monica Purkis – and one brother, Archie McDonald. He received his secondary education at

Queen's Royal College Queen's Royal College ( St.Clair, Trinidad), referred to for short as QRC, or "The College" by alumni, is a secondary school in Trinidad and Tobago. Originally a boarding school and grammar school, the secular college is selective and noted for it ...

(1942–51) in Port of Spain, where he obtained distinctions in History and English in the Higher School Certificate. He attended

Clare College Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refounded ...

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

(1951–55), where he obtained a BA Honours Degree in History and later received his MA. He was elected President of the Cambridge University West Indian Society.

Career in Guyana

Sugar industry

In 1955 he went to the then British Guiana with the

Booker Group Booker Group Limited is a British food wholesale operator and subsidiary of Tesco. In January 2017, it was announced that the British multinational supermarket retailer Tesco had agreed to purchase the company for £3.7 billion. It was confirm ...

, working first as secretary of the Bookers BG Group Committee, then secretary of Bookers Sugar Estates, where he rose to be Administrative Director. When Bookers was nationalised in 1976 he remained with the

Guyana Sugar Corporation The Guyana Sugar Corporation, or GuySuCo, is a Guyanese sugar company owned by the government. It is the country's largest cultivator and producer of sugar, a historically important commodity in the country. They produce Demerara Sugar for export ...

where he held the post of Director of Marketing and Administration from 1976 until retirement in 1999. He represented Guyana and CARICOM on innumerable occasions at international conferences and forums on the sugar industry. At the regional level he was involved with the Sugar Association of the Caribbean as Chairman of Marketing from 1990, then CEO from 1999 until retiring in 2007. In November 1995 he delivered an address and presented a paper on "The Sugar Industries of the English-Speaking Caribbean" to the

International Sugar Organization The International Sugar Organization is an intergovernmental organization, based in London, which was established by the International Sugar Agreement of 1968, as the body responsible for administering the Agreement. Unlike its predecessors under p ...

in London. He was also Chairman of Demerara Sugar Terminals, which exports Guyana’s sugar. For 35 years he was a member of the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund Committee, which provides land and housing, water supply, and welfare facilities for sugar workers.

Guyanese business and interest

McDonald was a member of the Guyana National Advisory Committee on External Negotiations. He holds directorships in the Hand-in-Hand Fire and Life Insurance Companies, the Hand-in-Hand Trust Company, Woodlands Diagnostic & Imaging Centre Inc, the Institute of Private Enterprise Development,

St. Joseph Mercy Hospital St. Joseph Mercy Hospital is a Catholic hospital. It is Located on Parade Street, Kingston in Georgetown, Guyana. It was established by the members of the Sword of the Spirit movement and was officially opened in 1945. The hospital includes a ...

(2000–2006), and a Trustee of the St. John Boscoe Orphanage for Boys. He is a member, since 2009, of the Council of Schoolnet Guyana, dedicated to the computerization of schools in Guyana. In 1991/92 he held the position of Editorial Consultant with the West Indian Commission, chaired by

Sir Shridath Ramphal Sir Shridath Surendranath Ramphal (born 3 October 1928), often known as Sir Sonny Ramphal, is a Guyanese politician who was the second Commonwealth Secretary-General, holding the position from 1975 to 1990. He was also the foreign minister o ...

. His job was to assist in drafting and producing the Commission’s report, ''Time for Action''. To assist in the work of the Commission he prepared a monograph, ''Bedrock of a Nation: Cultural Foundations of West Indian Integration''. In 1996 he was selected as an inaugural member of the West Indies 2000 Group, a "think-tank" of 40 West Indian personalities that had no agenda except to encourage the reality of a West Indian identity and the strengthening of the values of a West Indian heritage.

Sporting activities

McDonald was junior tennis champion of Trinidad and Tobago for many years and first represented that country at the senior level at the age of 16. He played at Wimbledon in the 1950s (the only player from Trinidad or from Guyana to do so). He captained Cambridge University in 1955. He represented Oxford-Cambridge against Harvard-Yale in the Prentice Cup in America in 1952 and in England in 1954. From 1956 to the early 1970s he was champion of Guyana and captained the Guyana Lawn Tennis team. In 1957 he was Guyana’s "Sportsman of the Year" with George De Peana. He also represented and captained Guyana in Squash. He represented the West Indies in its first ever Davis Cup team in 1953 and went on to play for and captain the West Indies Davis Cup team later in 1950s and in the 1960s. He also served as Secretary of the Commonwealth Caribbean Lawn Tennis Association for a number of years. He received the Guyana National Sports Commission Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development of Sports in Guyana, in 2006 and the

Guyana Olympic Association Guyana Olympic Committee (IOC code: GUY) is the National Olympic Committee representing Guyana. See also *Guyana at the Olympics *Guyana at the Commonwealth Games External links Guyana
at Olympic.org National Olympic Committees, Guyana ...

Award for Contribution to the Development of Sport in General and Lawn Tennis in particular, in 2007. He has the unusual distinction of representing his country in five different decades: tennis (Trinidad) in the 1940s; tennis (Trinidad, Guyana, the West Indies) in 1950s; tennis (Guyana, the West Indies) in the 1960s; tennis and squash (Guyana) in the 1970s; squash (Guyana) in the 1980s.

Sport research

He was a member, with P. J. Patterson and Sir , of the panel set up by the West Indies Cricket Board in 2007 to report and make recommendations on the governance of West Indies cricket. This report was submitted to the

West Indies Cricket Board Cricket West Indies (CWI) is the governing body for cricket in the West Indies (a sporting confederation of over a dozen mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries and dependencies that once formed the British West Indies). It was originally ...

in October 2007. He assisted in the compilation, editing and production of ''Cricket at Bourda'', celebrating the Georgetown Cricket Club, in time for the

World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...

, March 2007. With Dr. Stewart Brown he compiled an ''Anthology of West Indian Cricket Writing'' in 2010.

Literary activities

His first poems were published in the 1950s and over the years his poems have appeared in a number of West Indian journals, particularly ''

BIM ''Bim'' is a 1974 Trinidad and Tobago film written by Raoul Pantin and directed by Hugh A. Robertson. It was described by Bruce Paddington as "one of the most important films to be produced in Trinidad and Tobago and... one of the classics of Ca ...

'', '' Kyk-Over-Al'', '' The Caribbean Writer'', ''The New Voices'', ''The Trinidad And Tobago Review'', ''Poui'', ''The Caribbean Review of Books'' and ''

Jamaica Journal The ''Jamaica Journal'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Institute of Jamaica. It publishes scholarly articles on the history, natural history, art, literature, music, and culture of Jamaica. Its predecessor was the ''Journa ...

'' as well as in ''Planet'', ''Outposts'', ''Voices'', and other magazines in Britain and America. His poems have appeared in many anthologies of poems of the region, including ''Caribbean Poetry Now'', ''Voiceprint'', ''The Graham House Review'' issue on West Indian Poetry, the Archipelago issue of '' Conjunctions'', the Caribbean Poetry issue of the ''

Atlanta Review ''Atlanta Review'' is an international poetry journal based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded by Daniel Veach in 1994 and is published twice a year. Karen Head of the Georgia Institute of Technology became editor in 2016. The jou ...

'' and the ''Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry''. He was awarded The Caribbean Writer’s Prize for Poetry in 1991 and 2007. He also writes short stories and his work has appeared in anthologies, most recently in the ''Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories'' and the ''Faber Book of West Indian Stories''. His novel ''The Humming-Bird Tree'' was first published by Heinemann in 1969, when it won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize from the Royal Society of Literature for best regional novel. It was re-issued as a paperback in the Heinemann Caribbean Writers series in 1974, and has been widely used as a textbook in schools in the region and abroad. The

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

made a film of ''The Humming-Bird Tree'' for broadcast at Christmas 1992, and in the same year Heinemann re-issued the novel in a new edition. In 2006 Macmillan published a new edition of ''The Humming-Bird Tree''. His one-act play ''The Tramping Man'', first produced at the Theatre Guild in Guyana in October 1969, has been staged throughout the West Indies and in London. It has been published by UWI’s School of Continuing Studies in a collection of eight Caribbean plays. Since 2009 he has been consulting Editor for the Guyana Classics, a series of Guyanese "Classics" to be republished by the Caribbean Press funded by the government of Guyana. He was Chairman of Demerara Publishers Limited, which produced and printed 36 books by Guyanese between 1987 and 1992. McDonald helped to edit and wrote the foreword for the first edition of

Martin Carter Martin Wylde Carter (7 June 1927 – 13 December 1997) was a Guyanese poet and political activist. Widely regarded as the greatest Guyanese poet, and one of the most important poets of the Caribbean region, Carter is best known for his p ...

’s definitive ''Selected Poems'' published in 1989 by Demerara Publishers in Georgetown, and later in a new edition by the Red Thread Press in 1997. His ''Selected Poems'', edited and with an Introduction by Professor

Edward Baugh Edward Alston Cecil Baugh (born 10 January 1936) is a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott, whose ''Selected Poems'' (2007) Baugh edited, having in 1978 authored the first book-length study of the ...

, was published by Macmillan in 2008, in honour of his 75th birthday. This book was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature

Ondaatje Prize The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by the Royal Society of Literature. The £10,000 award is for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that evokes the "spirit of a place", and is written by someon ...

in 2009.

''Kyk-Over-Al''

In 1984, he edited the book ''AJS at 70'' in honour of Guyana’s great man of letters A. J. Seymour’s 70th birthday. Also in 1984, he was instrumental in reviving the literary magazine '' Kyk-Over-Al'', which had first been published in Guyana between 1954 and 1961, and was joint editor, with A. J. Seymour, until Seymour's death in 1989, after which McDonald continued to edit the magazine with Vanda Radzik. In June 1990, a joint issue of ''Kyk-Over-Al'' and ''BIM'' was published, co-edited by McDonald with John Wickham; reviewing it in ''The Caribbean Writer'', Cedric Lindo said: "Perhaps most striking about this joint issue is the ability of Ian McDonald to provide so much material, and very interesting material at that, in 'Across the Editor's Desk.' Seymour has clearly left a good heir in him." The 50th Anniversary issue to ''Kyk-over-Al'', No. 46/47, was published in December 1995. In the Guyana 1997 National Honours List ''Kyk-Over-Al'' received the Group Medal of Service for its outstanding contribution to literature.

Arts organizations

He was a member of the first Management Committee of the Guyana Prize for Literature in 1987. He was the Regional Chairman (Canada and Caribbean) on the panel of judges for the 1991

Commonwealth Writers' Prize Commonwealth Foundation presented a number of prizes between 1987 and 2011. The main award was called the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was composed of two prizes: the Best Book Prize (overall and regional) was awarded from 1987 to 2011; the Best ...

. From its inception in 1980 he has been a Director of the Theatre Company of Guyana, which during the period 1980–2001 produced nearly 100 plays, musicals and revenues and promoted the careers of many of Guyana’s leading theatrical talents. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Theatre Guild of Guyana. He is a member of the Management Committee of the Castellani House National Art Collection in Guyana. Between 1990 and 1995 he was a member of the Guyana Book Foundation, which encourages the wide distribution of books and the establishment of small publishers. He was also a member of the National Archives Advisory Committee. He is a member of the Guyana National Nominating Committee for the Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence, from 2006.

News media

He is a regular contributor of articles on government, current affairs, problems of the Third World, education, literature, and sport in the newspapers. He has written a weekly column, "Ian on Sunday","A Guyanese and West Indian treasure"
''Stabroek News'', 5 December 2014. for the '' Stabroek News'' since the newspaper started publication in Guyana in 1986. His columns also appear in ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...

'' in Barbados, ''

The Gleaner ''The Gleaner'' is an English-language, morning daily newspaper founded by two brothers, Jacob and Joshua de Cordova on 13 September 1834 in Kingston, Jamaica. Originally called the ''Daily Gleaner'', the name was changed on 7 December 1992 to ' ...

'' in Jamaica and the ''Trinidad and Tobago Review''. He also contributed to ''Outlet'' in Antigua. He contributed more than 400 ''Viewpoints'' and ''Sports Views'' on the radio to these two GBC series. His writings on cricket in particular have gained widespread regional notice. In January 2009, he was appointed Chairman of Guyana Publications Inc., publishers of '' Stabroek News''.

Lectures

In 2005 he gave the inaugural lecture entitled "Cricket: a Hunger in the West Indian soul" at the

London Metropolitan University London Metropolitan University, commonly known as London Met, is a public research university in London, England. The University of North London (formerly the Polytechnic of North London) and London Guildhall University (formerly the City ...

in the Frank Worrell lecture series. He gave the address at the

Frank Collymore Frank Appleton Collymore MBE (7 January 1893 – 17 July 1980) was a Barbadian literary editor, writer, poet, stage performer and painter. His nickname was "Barbadian Man of the Arts". He also taught for 50 years at Combermere School, where he ...

Literary Awards ceremony in Barbados in 2009, entitled "I Shake Hands With You in My Heart". In November 2014, his literary archives were donated to the

Alma Jordan Library The Alma Jordan Library at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Trinidad and Tobago, was named after UWI librarian Dr. Alma Jordan in 2012. The four-storied library is located on the St. Augustine Campus of the UWI. It is the largest of the ...

at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine.Shivanee Ramlochan
"Ian McDonald honoured by Friends of Biswas"
''Trinidad and Tobago Guardian'', 7 December 2014.

Honours and awards

* A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1970 * Guyana National Honour, Golden Arrow of Achievement in 1986. * Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) in recognition of his services to Caribbean sugar, sport and literature from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus in 1997. *

Wordsworth McAndrew Award The Wordsworth McAndrew Awards celebrate Guyanese who have made important contributions to the country's cultural life. Awardees' talents include broadcasting, cultural promotion, drama, music, painting, theatre, and writing. The awards, founded ...

2004 from the Guyana Cultural Association, New York. * Inducted into the Queen's Royal College Hall of Honour in 2004. * Honoured by the Friends of Mr Biswas, an NGO in Trinidad dedicated to the preservation and development of the Naipaul House Literary Museum on Nepaul Street, St James in 2014.

Ken Ramchand Kenneth Ramchand (born 1939) is a Trinidad and Tobago academic and writer, who is widely respected as "arguably the most prominent living critic of Caribbean fiction". He has written extensively on many West Indian authors, including V. S. Naipau ...

"Ian McDonald: Caribbean man"
''Trinidad and Tobago Guardian'', 23 November 2014.

Personal life

McDonald is married to Mary Callender and they have two sons: Jamie and Darren. He has a son Keith, from a previous marriage.

Publications

* ''Sugar in B.G: Challenge and Change'' (1965) – New World Publication, Georgetown. * ''The Tramping Man'' – one-act play first staged in 1969. Published by UWI's School of Continuing Studies in a collection of eight Caribbean plays entitled...''a time and a season''. * ''Poetry Introduction 3'' (1975) – London: Faber and Faber. * ''Selected Poems'' – Labour Advocate, Georgetown, 1984. * Editor: AJS at 70 – Autoprint, Georgetown, Guyana 1984. * ''Mercy Ward'' (1992) – collection of poems published by Peterloo Poets, UK, . Republished as Guyana Classics series, Caribbean Press, December 2010. * ''Essequibo'' (1992) – collection of poems published by Peterloo Poets, UK, and Story Line Press, US (winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature 1992), . * Monograph, ''Bedrock of a Nation: Cultural Foundations of West Indian Integration'' – for West Indian Commission, 1992. * Contribution as Editorial Assistant: ''Time For Action: Report of the West Indian Commission'', 1992. * ''Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry'' (1992) – edited jointly with Stewart Brown, published by Heinemann. * ''Jaffo The Calypsonian'' (1994) – collection of poems; Peepal Tree Press, UK. * ''Between Silence and Silence'' – collection of poems; Peepal Tree Press, 2003 (winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature 2004). * ''The Humming-Bird Tree'', novel – Heinemann, 1969; Macmillan, 2004; filmed by the BBC in 1992. * A. J. Seymour, ''Collected Poems 1937–1989'' (edited with Jacqueline de Weever), New York: Blue Parrot Press, 2000. * Foreword to ''Selected Poems of Martin Carter'', first published Demerara Publishers, 1989; revised edition, Red Thread Women's Press, 1997. * ''They Came in Ships'' (compiled and edited with Lloyd Searwar, Laxshmi Kallicharan and Joel Benjamin), anthology of Guyanese East Indian Writings – Peepal Tree Press, 1998. * ''Poems by Martin Carter'' (edited jointly with Dr. Stewart Brown) – Macmillan, September 2006. * Contributed to ''Caribbean Despatches'' – Macmillan, 2006. * Contributed to ''Penguin Book of Short Stories'' and the ''Faber Book of West Indian Stories''. * ''Cricket at Bourda'' (2007) – compiled with Paul Chan-A-Sue; Sheik Hassan Printery, Georgetown. * ''Report of the Governance Committee on West Indies Cricket'' (2007) – joint author with Hon. P. J. Patterson and Sir Alister McIntyre. * ''Selected Poems'' – Macmillan, 2008. * ''The Bowling Was Superfine – West Indian Writing and West Indian Cricket'' – edited jointly with Stewart Brown, 2010; paperback 2012, *''Ian McDonald’s New and Collected Poems'' (2018) Peepal Tree Press.

References

External links

Nicholas Laughlin Nicholas Laughlin (born 6 May 1975)"In brief"
Nicholas Laughlin's website. is a writer and editor from

"Ian McDonald: Evening in the Garden"
''

'', Issue 96, March/April 2009.
''Kyk-Over-Al''
in the

Digital Library of the Caribbean The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is an international digital library operated collaboratively by the contributing partners. Partners Current partners continue to grow on a regular basis and are listed on thdLOC Partner Page Partners in ...

Newspaper clippings on Ian McDonald
digitized by CARICOM and openly available in the

{{DEFAULTSORT:McDonald, Ian Trinidad and Tobago novelists Trinidad and Tobago poets Guyanese male writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature 1933 births Living people Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Guyanese male tennis players Alumni of Queen's Royal College, Trinidad Guyanese novelists Guyanese poets Trinidad and Tobago male writers Male novelists Male poets 20th-century novelists 20th-century poets People from Tunapuna–Piarco 20th-century male writers 21st-century male writers Recipients of the Wordsworth McAndrew Award