Inspire students to enjoy literature while helping them to prepare effectively for the CSEC (R) examination; ensure coverage of all prescribed poems for the revised CSEC (R) English A and English B syllabuses with an anthology that has been compiled with the approval of the Caribbean Examinations Council by Editors who have served as CSEC (R) English panel members. - Stimulate an interest in and enjoyment of literature with a wide range of themes and subjects, a balance of well-known texts from the past and more recent works, as well as stories from the Caribbean and the rest of the world. - Support understanding with notes on each text and questions to provoke discussion, and a useful checklist to help with literary analysis. - Consolidate learning with practical guidance on how to tackle examination questions including examples of model answers for reference.

Inspire students to enjoy poetry while helping them to prepare effectively for the CSEC (R) examination; ensure coverage of all prescribed poems for the revised CSEC (R) English A and English B syllabuses with an anthology that has been compiled with the approval of the Caribbean Examinations Council by Editors who have served as CSEC (R) English panel members. - Stimulate an interest in and enjoyment of poetry with a wide range of themes and subjects, a balance of well-known poems from the past and more recent works, as well as poems from the Caribbean and the rest of the world. - Support understanding with notes on each poem and questions to provoke discussion, and a useful checklist to help with poetry analysis. - Consolidate learning with practical guidance on how to tackle examination questions including examples of model answers for reference.

Offering a range of insightful and thought-provoking critical perspectives--from publishing history to genre narrative to socio-political contexts--this comprehensive study of Caribbean short stories across the 20th century details the integral role the form has played in the region's literary traditions and cultural production. Including single author studies as well as more wide-ranging explorations of particular periods and locales, this collection of 25 essays provides insight into a broad selection of short fiction from across the Caribbean's linguistic zones. The essays in this resource are complemented by an extensive literary and critical bibliography and a detailed, accessible introduction.

Weaving together autobiography, historical narrative, postcolonial voices, and a deeply sensuous ecology of place, this bold and ambitious collection of poems explores four phases of life: childhood; adolescence and young manhood; maturity, and old age. Within each section an intersecting narrative sequence complements, expands, and runs counter to the main voice, creating a complex web of interconnecting themes that stretch throughout the entire work. Moving from the search for the fantastic El Dorado to the celebration of the powerful rivers of Guyana, these poems explore guilt, sexuality, identity, and independence in life and politics.

A group of sixth formers vandalize an exclusive Georgetown club on the day of their school leaving, coincidentally also the day of their country's independence. Several of their parents think a lesson is in order and the semblance of a trial is organized. The sentences they are given are suspended provided that they fulfil the task set by their English teacher, who has interceded on their behalf. Each must write a short story that says something about the newly independent Guyana. Years later, Mark McWatt, one of the group, is handed the papers of his old school friend, Victor Nunes, who has disappeared, feared drowned, in the Guyanese interior. The papers contain some of the stories, written before the project collapsed when the group realized the trial was a hoax. As a tribute to Victor Nunes, McWatt decides to collect the rest of the stories from his friends. "Suspended Sentences" is a tour-de-force of invention. The stories, entertaining in their own right, whether supposedly written by eighteen year olds or in later adult life, work not only like Chaucerian tales to reveal their teller, but have an affectionately satirical take on the nature of Guyanese fiction making. By ranging across Guyanese ethnicities, gender and time in the purported authorship of these stories, McWatt creates a richly dialogic work of fiction. And when McWatt apparently slips some of his own biography into a brilliantly comic story of betrayal (that ends in the victim's suicide), but told by another member of the group, the implications of the collection's subtitle, 'Fictions of atonement' become teasingly ambiguous.

Caribbean verse is among the most diverse and exciting in the world, encompassing work from nations as different as Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica, Dominica, Puerto Rico, Martinique, and Cuba. In The New Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, Stewart Brown and Mark McWatt offer the only anthology of Caribbean poetry that represents all of the Caribbean - not just the English language writers, but the Spanish and French poets as well. The book features a range of writers from Claude McKay and Derek Walcott, to Jesus Cos Causse and Aime Cesaire, to Julia Alvarez and Julia De Burgos. It covers acclaimed and lesser-known poets of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, as well as exciting newer voices from the 80s and 90s. Poetry lovers will find this a rich and satisfying book, offering an original context in which to explore the unique poetry of this region. Now available with a stylish, contemporary look, this rich reissue will enchant, entertain, and inform.