Cyril Dabydeen (born 1945) is a Guyana-born Canadian writer of Indian descent. He grew up in Rose Hall sugar plantation with the sense of Indian indenture rooted in his family background (he lived with his mother and with a grandmother in an extended family of aunt, nieces, nephews). He's a cousin of the UK writer David Dabydeen.
History
He began writing in the early 1960s, winning the Sandbach Parker Gold Medal for poetry (1964) and the first A. J. Seymour Lyric Poetry Prize (1967). His first chapbook collection, Poems in Recession, was published in 1972. In his early years he taught school, from 1961 to 1970, beginning as a pupil teacher (a British educational tradition, e.g., D. H. Lawrence also worked as a pupil teacher); Dabydeen taught mainly at St. Patrick's Anglican School, Rose Hall, and received formal teacher-training.
In 1970 he attended university in Canada and obtained a BA degree in English (First-Class Hons.) at Lakehead University, an MA degree in English (thesis on American poet Sylvia Plath) at Queen's University, and a Master of Public Administration degree also at Queen's University. He was twice admitted to the PhD Program at York University. In his early years in Canada he worked in a variety of summer jobs to pay his way through university, e.g., as a tree-planter in the Canadian forests around Lake Superior and lived in bush camps with Native Canadians and others, sometimes six weeks at a time--forming part of his drawing of imaginative connections between Guyana and Canada, both with large "unpeopled" hinterlands and surviving native peoples.
He was a literary juror in 2000 and 2006 for Canada's Governor's General Award for Literature (poetry); the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (University of Oklahoma), in 2000; the James Lignon Price Competition (the American Poets University & College Poetry Prize Program) via St. Lawrence University, New York, in 2003; the Small Axe Magazine Poetry Prize (NYC) in 2011; the Bocas (Trinidad/Caribbean) Literary Prize for poetry in 2013; Canada Council for the Arts awards;and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Canada Writes, 2014), among others.
Awards
He was appointed the official Poet Laureate of the City of Ottawa from 1984 to 1987, perhaps the first minority person to hold such a position in a Canadian city. A finalist at least 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 shortlisted finalist for the Ottawa Book Award. He was again a winner (2nd place) of the Guyana Literature Prize for Fiction, 2022. His writing has also been nominated (twice) 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 Ottawa Citizen, 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; the Canute A. Brodhurst Fiction Prize (The Caribbean Writer/UofVirginIslands), 2020; and acclaimed with Poet of Honour via Ars Notoria (UK) and Word Masala Foundation/UK (2021). For the Strands International flash-fiction awards he was: shortlisted (May 2020); achieved Honourable Mention (Dec.2020); Second Prize-winner (Sept. 2021); and a finalist (Jan. 2022). In 2023, he was acclaimed a prize-winner in the International Conference on the Short Story (in English) held in Singapore.
He's described as "a noted Canadian poet" and his work--"a great poem"--was read in Parliament (House of Commons, Ottawa, April 24, 2001, recorded in Hansard).