{"id":2345,"date":"2020-04-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=2345"},"modified":"2020-06-12T15:02:25","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T15:02:25","slug":"michael-arthur-gilkes-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=2345","title":{"rendered":"Michael Arthur Gilkes, writer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Michael Arthur Gilkes a Caribbean literary critic, dramatist, poet, filmmaker and university lecturer died in London on 14 April 2020, aged 86, after contracting COVID-19.\r\n\r\nGilkes was involved in theatre for more than 40 years, as a director, actor and playwright, winning the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992 and 2006, as well as the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. He was also respected for his insight into and writings on the work of Wilson Harris.\r\n\r\nGilkes was born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana). His involvement with theatre began in his native Guyana when he was about 12 years old, working in school theatre, and he went on to become involved with the Theatre Guild of Guyana.\r\n\r\nGilkes taught at a number of universities in the Caribbean, Canada and the United Kingdom over the past 40 years, including at the University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Warwick, the University of Guyana, the University of the West Indies (where he served as Reader in English and Head of the English department) in Barbados and the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St. Lucia. He was a Quillian Visiting Professor at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. In Bermuda he directed plays and taught a theatre workshop put on by the Department of Community & Cultural Affairs at The Berkeley Institute.\r\n\r\nHis work includes Couvade: A Dream-play of Guyana (published 1974), Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel (1975), and The Literate Imagination: Essays on the Novels of Wilson Harris (1989). An unfinished project that Gilkes was working on was the film Maira and the Jaguar People, set in the Rupununi in 2016, with a cast mainly featuring the indigenous Makushi population of Surama.\r\n\r\nHis play Couvade was first performed at the first Carifesta in 1972, and in 1978 was produced at the Keskidee Centre in London, directed by Rufus Collins, with a cast including Imruh Caesar and others.\r\n\r\nHis play A Pleasant Career, about the life and fiction of Edgar Mittelholzer, won the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992. Joanstown and other poems, a collection of poetry, won the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. Gilkes won the Guyana Prize for Drama again in 2006 for his play The Last of the Redmen.\r\n<\/p>

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Michael Arthur Gilkes a Caribbean literary critic, dramatist, poet, filmmaker and university lecturer died in London on 14 April 2020, aged 86, after contracting COVID-19. Gilkes was involved in theatre for more than 40 years, as a director, actor and playwright, winning the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992 and 2006, as well as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[46,7019,13],"tags":[2285,891,782],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/wp-content\/uploads\/imageholder\/uploads\/Michael_Gilkes.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3800,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=3800","url_meta":{"origin":2345,"position":0},"title":"John Percy Leon Lewis, military officer","date":"April 8, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"John Percy Leon Lewis - a Guyanan military officer - died on 7 April, 2020 due to COVID-19. Lewis had also been president of the Guyana Rugby Football Union. He is believed to have been Guyana's sixth coronavirus victim, dying a few days after his wife Juliet Lewis who died\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Guyana"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9253,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=9253","url_meta":{"origin":2345,"position":1},"title":"Jermain Ifill, Emergency Medical Technician","date":"April 1, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Jermain Ifill \u2013 an Emergency Medical Technician in Guyana \u2013 passed away on 31 March\u00a02020, after suffering from COVID-19. Jermain was 38 years old. 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His role in the theatre was to seek out, encourage, train, and present\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Noteworthy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2017,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=2017","url_meta":{"origin":2345,"position":4},"title":"Mohammad Riad Hussain Ismat, writer and diplomat","date":"May 14, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Mohammad Riad Hussain Ismat \u2011 a Syrian writer, critic and theatre director \u2013 died on 13 May 2020. Ismat served as Minister of Culture of Syria from 3 October 2010 to 23 June 2012. \u00a0 Ismat studied English literature at the Damascus University and graduated in 1968. In 2000,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Noteworthy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4011,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=4011","url_meta":{"origin":2345,"position":5},"title":"HG Carrillo, writer","date":"April 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Herman \"HG\" Carrillo \u2011 an American writer and Assistant Professor of English at George Washington University in Washington, DC \u2013 contracted Covid-19 and died on April 20, 2020. In the 1990s, he began writing as \"H. G. Carrillo\", and he eventually adopted that identity in his private life as well,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Noteworthy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6123,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345\/revisions\/6123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}