The announcement Tuesday morning (May 19th) that Kaie Kellough had won Canada’s Griffin Poetry Prize—one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world—for his mesmerizing poetry collection, Magnetic Equator —marks an historical moment in the literary histories of diasporic Guyanese and Caribbean writing.
As a poem of multiples and multitudes, Magnetic Equator exemplifies what Brathwaite himself would’ve heralded as the “prismatic” consciousness of the 21st century Caribbean—in particular, of Guyana’s presence in the imagination of Kellough’s ‘sound system’ poetics.
Kellough’s body of work, which, counting Magnetic Equator, includes three poetry collections, two audio recordings of sound poetry, the novel, Accordéon (2017), and a book of short stories, Dominoes at the Crossroads (2020), already seems pathbreaking in its linguistic, structural, emotive, sonic and visual synesthesia.
Ultimately, Kellough homes towards Guyana—towards the ‘magnetic equator’—that looping bending imaginary line that runs (queerly) parallel to the Equator—to equatorial Guyana—an inheritance of historical palimpsest, of submerged (rivers, Mainstay Lake, the Atlantic) and subterranean (rivers of islands, forest, mountain, savanna) poetics.
We emerge from Magnetic Equator holding its various parts within us, realizing that—like the rainforest Kellough describes as “a mixing board” so too are we all— we all
As a child of the Guyanese diaspora—of the Caribbean—of the Americas—of historical cargo— Kellough recognizes himself as a descendent of parts—perhaps, prophesied in the “rumination” —“descended, in part” “from a continent shaped like a question mark” “from those who were sold” “from those indentured” “from those who rebelled” (35) into the “nothing” (36) and everything of that “question mark”:
If you would like to explore Kellough’s magnificent poetry collection, which allows all Guyanese people “an eye” into how we feel through—sound through—Guyana—from wherever Guyana travels in the world—in the sediment of all continents— you can contact the publisher directly to purchase a digital copy of Magnetic Equator at: We hope that Guyana’s Austin’s Bookstore will also be able to get copies for readers at home
