When William Butler Yeats died in January 1939, W.H. Auden eulogized him as follows:
“He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.”
This is a short section of the longer poem. But, given our recent cold and blustery weather, deep freezes in North America and Europe, the world and our own island seemingly on the brink of many political, social and cultural upheavals (Auden wrote in 1939 with the world on the brink of World War II), death a growing, unsettling reality for those who are Gandolph’s generation, the words of this poem seemed appropriate.
Gandolph “Abbeystone” St. Clair, born April 3rd, 1951, has died. He passed away at the Victoria Hospital on Sunday February 11th after a brief illness.
He was a Saint Lucian writer, playwright, director, actor, singer, songwriter, pioneer film maker, radio personality, community carnival organiser. He sang with the Soca Village calypso tent and helped with their management.
He attended St. Aloysius R.C. Boys’ Infant and Primary Schools, Vide Bouteille Government School, Choiseul R.C. Boys’ Primary School and St. Mary’s College. He attended Brixton College and West Norwood Polytechnic in London between 1969-1971, and Burnhampthorpe Collegiate of Canada in 1994.
A native of Vieux Fort, he won a UNESCO bursary in 1979 to attend the Jamaica School of Drama, where he majored in Directing. His numerous credits include his own plays ‘One Love’, ‘Guess Who Came to Visit the Doctor’, and ‘The Hustlers’, a one-act play written with Robert Lee and directed by Hayden Forde which has been twice staged: 2003 and 2005. He also directed, in Jamaica, ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Kendel Hippolyte’s ‘Drum Maker’, Errol John’s ‘Moon on a Rainbow Shawl’, ‘The Harrowing of Benjy’ by Roderick Walcott, among other Caribbean and international plays. He worked with well-known Caribbean playwrights and directors like Derek Walcott, Dennis Scott and Rawle Gibbons.
He was an accomplished actor, performing roles in Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘Raisin in the Sun’ and in ‘Julius Caesar’; he gave a memorable performance as Dessalines in stage and film versions of Derek Walcott’s ‘Haytian Earth’, among others.
In 1999 Gandolph St. Clair wrote and directed ‘A Twist In Time’, a forty-three minute film, which has been shown locally and in St. Maarten at the Soulaiga Film Festival. He also wrote and produced the radio play ‘1+1+1’ for Saint Lucia’s 15th Independence Anniversary.
In the mid-seventies he was a popular radio announcer on Radio St. Lucia and was known for his tag-line “Gandolph St. Clair, the man in the chair, the voice in the air.”
He worked for many years at the Cultural Development Foundation where he was Director of Carnival and was primarily responsible for the development of community carnivals. He travelled often to the French Caribbean islands to participate in their carnivals.
He also served as the CDF’s representative on the Nobel laureate Week Committee where he was responsible for organisation of the annual Derek Walcott lecture.
In 2013 he was field producer on the film ‘Poetry is an Island’, a documentary on Sir Derek Walcott, directed by Ida Does.
Gandolph was a singer and songwriter working with musicians like Mervyn Wilkinson, Charles Cadet, Lennie Stone, the group Survival and folk groups like The Helenites and Hewanorra Voices. His hit songs included ‘Let’s Start a Revolution’ and ‘Love Me’,
In April 2014 the Central Library of Saint Lucia honoured Gandolph St. Clair for his invaluable contribution to the Literary Arts in Saint Lucia. In 2015 as part of the 36th Independence Anniversary celebrations, he was awarded the Saint Lucia Medal of Merit, Gold for long and dedicated contribution in the field of Culture and the Arts.
In 2016 he published his final book ‘The Calabash Tree’, a collection of poetry, prose and drama.
In March 2017 the Saint Lucia Writers Forum hosted Gandolph in the Laureate’s Chair.St. Clair published several collections of poetry, plays and prose.
The Monsignor Patrick Anthony Folk Research Centre extends its condolences to his family and joins with the arts and cultural communities in mourning his passing.
Editor’s note: John Robert Lee is a Saint Lucian writer. His “Collected Poems 1975-2015” was published by
Peepal Tree Press in 2017.
