Every year since 2002, Belizean writer, Colin Hyde, has been churning out a book, rich with Belizean literary genius, and today, he presses on with his 7th piece: a full-length play of approximately 30,000 words titled, The Last DL of Caneenja, a romantic comedy fiction.
“It’s my craziest piece yet,” Colin revealed to Amandala in an interview today, adding that this composition has enabled him to bring out different parts of himself as a writer: the poet, the novelist, the very raw side of him.
“The play is set about 1,000 years ago in the jungles of Belize. It is about two rivals living on opposite sides of river. They are distant cousins, from a line 7 generations long,” he elaborated.
The play enables him to demonstrate that “the past, present and future are one.”
There is the leader of the uncouth (uncivilized) set and the leader of the gentile group (the good leader), but the “good” leader used to eat dogs, and that is what the “bad” ones have on him, said Hyde, because eating dogs, to them, was an abomination.
But there is more to the contention than that. The “bad” leader has rivals in his camp, and his sister-in-law is fighting to take away his son, because she is childless. And if that was not enough drama for him to contend with, he remains under siege of the rivals from over the river who are waiting to finish him off.
The Last DL of Caneenja is targeted at the few who like something a little different and who like a fun story, said the writer.
All the pieces, said Colin Hyde, are works of fiction written without plots. They come to life suddenly, when inspiration jolts him out of his sleep or arrests him on the bus or in the field, and he gets “feverish about it and write.”
Unbridled (poetry) 2002, They Stole Whopper’s Snapper (2003) – the author’s personal favorite, First Encounter (2004), Curse of the Hnf (2005), Borly and the Slick Jaymz Gang (2007), and Invasion of the Mangrove Goons (2008) are the works he has produced since he became a published author.
“I am totally unschooled in writing,” said Hyde, exclaiming later: “It is incredible in a way that I ended up here! That’s why I am kind of shy with societies and literary groups in Belize. I am in the news, but then I feel like a stranger.”
Hyde’s latent talents as a highly skilled, creative writer came out when he was confronted with some sad news:
“I started writing when I was diagnosed with lupus. It was a misdiagnosis, but I had all the symptoms, and the doctor advised me that life wouldn’t be the same for me anymore. I went from a sun worshipper who never wore sunshades to someone who now wears it all the time. The outdoors was taken from me. Then this latent side came out…
“[Before] all my writing was done with a machete and an axe and a fishing line. That side of me was always there. I always knew that I would write First Encounter, but I felt it would come when I get old. But I realized I was mortal, so I started to put down my stories.”
Hyde says that television, particularly wi th all the foreign content, has essentially wiped good Belizean writers and other storytellers off the map.
Still, he credits Belizean storytellers and foreign writers as sources of inspiration for him, and he specifically mentioned Thomas Hardy, Bismark Ranguy of Punta Gorda, Toledo, and Amandala publisher, Evan X Hyde, Colin’s elder brother, as some persons who have moved his creative spirit.
“From age of 12 or 13, Amandala has been a big part of my formal schooling. I went to high school and then to sea for two years. And then the School of Agriculture opened and I went there [for] one year [of] school. Then I went into farming. I never went abroad and never applied for a scholarship in my life. I have turned down a heck of a lot and never wanted to leave Belize,” said Hyde, adding that he has never set foot in the USA.
Apart from his 6 books of poetry and Belizean stories, Hyde is a regular columnist in the Amandala newspaper, and sometimes, he brings across a different persona.
“In newspaper I am cold and calculated. Some of the stuff, like the flavorful stuff in the newspaper, that just pops out, on the bus going home. We are a funny people and that stuff just pops out. The serious things – we have our share of problems too in Belize…and I share my thoughts in the newspaper on how I see things working out in Belize.”
“If God spares life, I want to write my childhood autobiography, up to when I was about 12,” he revealed. “I wanted to do and I still want to do movies… I don’t see myself that much as a writer. I see myself contributing to developing a movie, but in the meantime I write stories.”
What Colin Hyde has added to the growing body of Belizean literature is already being embraced among the young people at the secondary and tertiary levels, and lecturers like Silvana Woods of the University of Belize are among those who continue to encourage the crop of up and coming writers to clinch their own and to learn from them.
“I have said I want Belizean literature embraced,” said Hyde. “It’s not that important that they use my stuff.”
Just hours before our interview, Hyde was on campus at the Belmopan Comprehensive School, and “the youth treat me like royalty when I walk in there.”
Hyde is not lusting for international fame. He says he is content with looking to a home-based audience as the targets of his literature, and he expresses doubt that a foreign audience would appreciate his works.
“I think Belize has to appreciate me first…” he added. “I have heard whispers in the corridors that the book [Curse of the Hnf] would not make it outside. One person’s reply was: ‘I don’t care what they say, this is for us.’ I go all the way for my Belizean audience. I wouldn’t really explore that. Belize has to love Belize first.”
Apart from his upcoming autobiography, the writer wants to do a sequel to Borly and the Slick Jaymz Gang and a compilation of some of his newspaper columns, not the political ones but the flavorful ones and ones revealing some of his philosophies, he added.
This prolific Belizean writer is one of the few who use their works to help preserve Belize’s traditions – both in language and in lifestyle, and his sense of humor and sharp wit are among the qualities that make his works worth reading.