Mark McWatt
Encyclopedia
Mark McWatt is a Guyanese
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...

 writer and educator.

Born in Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...

, McWatt studied at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

 and Leeds University, where he completed a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 He currently heads the English Department at the University of the West Indies
University of the West Indies
The University of the West Indies , is an autonomous regional institution supported by and serving 17 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica,...

, Cave Hill campus, Barbados
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

.

McWatt has published two collections of poetry, the second of which, The Language of Eldorado (1994), was awarded the Guyana Prize. Suspended Sentences (2005), his first work of fiction, was the winner of a Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers is an initiative by the Commonwealth Foundation to unearth, develop and promote the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. It's flagship are two literary awards and a website...

in 2006.

Poetry

  • Interiors - 1989
  • The Language of Eldorado — 1994
  • Ana* Ol' High

anna is about a child that have the freedom to do anything she wanted to do.her dad saw her as an angel when she is asleep so he could write poems about her until she is awaken. She was seen as a wild animal as she leaps off the kitchen counters and was not seen as a nice girl who is surrounded by pretty flowers that her dad pictured her to be but as a wild animal.

Fiction

  • Suspended Sentences: Fictions of Atonement


In the poem Ana, the poet, who happens to be Ana's father has a mental image of his daughter as a quiet, obedient child. However, this image is only mental as is seen in stanzas 1-4. Within these stanzas we are presented with the real image of Ana. Instead of a quiet, obedient child, Ana is portrayed a"little monkey". She demonstrates uncivilised behaviour that contrasts with the sweet image of an innocent child playing in the garden.Regardless of the fact that her father has given up the prospect of having an obedient child he stills considers or pictures Ana as such while she is asleep.

With the poets constitution of poetry descriptions a comparison is made as the world of literature is often contrasted with real life hence Ana's boy like behaviours though the persona seemingly daydreams of an angelic like child.
Ana's father is a fool. She needed some good West-Indian discipline. (Licks)

Anthologies

  • The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse — 2005 (edited with Stewart Brown)
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