New Stanza by Cyril Dabydeen

Poem by: Competent But Unfitted

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A micro fiction with extremely rich cultural implication
Cover photo by Raven3K

New Stanza

Cyril Dabydeen

“Why not an Indian girl?” I say, tentatively.

Really from India? “I don’t want a girl

who’s an untouchable,” he says, shaking his head.

I remain silent. “Did I say something wrong?”

he asks. Oh, it’s back to English lessons,

and self-improvement, and indeed where

he’s going next being here in Canada.

Cyril Dabydeen is a Guyana-born Canadian writer of Indian descent. He was appointed the official Poet Laureate of the City of Ottawa from 1984 to 1987. A finalist four times for Canada's Archibald Lampman Award for poetry, as well as for the Guyana Prize, Cyril Dabydeen eventually won the top Guyana Prize for Fiction in 2007 for his novel Drums of My Flesh, which was nominated for the prestigious International Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award. His writing has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (US), the Journey Prize, and he has twice won the Okanagan Fiction Prize. He received the City of Ottawa's first award for Writing and Publishing, and achieved a Certificate of Merit, Government of Canada (1988), for his contribution to the arts. He has published almost 100 book reviews in outlets such as Books in Canada, Canadian Literature, The Dalhousie Review, The Ottawa Journal, The Chelsea Journal, and has been a regular book critic for World Literature Today(University of Oklahoma). He'd been invited to join the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in the mid-80's. He has received Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Department of Canadian Heritage, and City of Ottawa Arts awards over the years. He achieved a Word Masala Award (Skylark Publications, UK), 2018, and the Canute A. Brodhurst Fiction Prize ('The Caribbean Writer/UofVirginIslands), 2020.

Submitted: January 30, 2021

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