Discussing Columbus

When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492 he believed that he had landed on the coast of India. Cyril Dabydeen's ancestors came from India to the Caribbean in the nineteenth century as indentured labourers. This is an irony of history that appeals to him. Since then, like many of his fellow Guyanese, Cyril Dabydeen has moved on again to settle in Canada. His poetry grows out of consciousness of a world made up of layers of journeyings and settlement, of the meeting of heterogeneous cultures and the results of their mingling.
Cyril Dabydeen writes as the voice within the convergences begun by Columbus's mistake.